I look out of the window. A little warbler is looking for a place to build its nest in a cypress tree. The bright green of the tree is streaked with black shadows. I feel warmed by this sight: it is just for me. It matters to me that the tree I planted is home to these tiny guests. My day has begun with empathy given to me by the energy of light. I hope that it will lead me on today’s journey so that I may let it redress the busyness that threatens it at every moment.

Understanding Empathy.

Empathy is two things: first, it is a person’s way of being in the world, so that we do not just “have” experience; we sense it, feel it, and care about it. It becomes a gift that we receive consciously. It means losing one’s ego and opening oneself to every experience, sensing, feeling, and caring about it without prejudice or control.

Secondly, empathy is the power whereby a person radiates this openness onto other people through speech and action, in being present. We give back what we have received.

People are so closely connected by technology that they need leaders to be educators and guides who make empathy the context for transaction, rather than transaction being the context for empathy.

Most of us give and receive empathy in our close relationships and our wonder at the world, but it is often still considered irrelevant, even an obstacle, in business leadership.

People are so closely connected by technology that they need leaders to be educators and guides who make empathy the context for transaction, rather than transaction being the context for empathy.

Because empathy implies personal growth and change, it is different from either sympathy or compassion. These are kindnesses that have the flavor of empathy but do not require us to lead on a journey as a guide and educator.

Plato wrote that “the highest form of knowledge is empathy”; George Eliot added that empathy requires us to “suspend our egos and live in another’s world”. John Steinbeck held that “you can only understand people if you feel them in yourself”. The psychologist Edward Titchener advised that empathy “is best lived, embodied, chosen throughout the thousands of tiny decisions we all make every day”. Carl Rogers, another psychologist, tells us that “being empathic is a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being.” Barack Obama proclaimed that “empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.”

Empathy, then, is knowledge, feeling, a choice, a way of being, a quality of character. I argue that it is a power we are born with and that we share with nature. Through its energy, the world gives itself to us, and we give ourselves to the world. We do not build this dynamic: we experience it. Empathy is the bearer of gifts.

Leaders are being called to transmit it in a transactional environment. By learning how they can direct their power to inspire others to believe in themselves and to act with good intentions.

I believe it is time for the pigeonholing of leadership empathy as a “soft skill” to give way to a truer perception.

Changing perceptions of Empathy.

We can see how by looking at two articles. The Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) in November 2020, puts empathy in the “soft skill” category:

“Empathetic leadership means having the ability to understand the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. We analyzed data from 6,731 managers in 38 countries. We found that managers who practice empathetic leadership toward direct reports are viewed as better performers in their jobs by their bosses.”

I argue that this describes sympathy rather than empathy. Sympathy is more case-specific, while empathy is a way of being. While CCL puts sympathy in the toolbox of skills that improve performance, I argue that empathy is power, and if it is allowed to radiate, improved performance may result as the outcome of a change in leadership attitude. Writers like Yuval Harari and Frederic Laloux have shown that human consciousness is evolving towards a new awareness of what we are, and what leaders can (should?) become.

A more recent CEO Publication post supports this approach: “It’s evident that COVID-19’s lockdowns tore down walls among [leaders] and their employees.

Empathy is knowledge, a feeling, a choice, a way of being, and a quality of character. It is a power we are born with and that we share with nature.

When we look at the origin of the word “leading,” we notice a slightly different interpretation than the one we’ve come to accept over time, one that is more akin to being a guide and an educator in a flow. This definition places a great emphasis on the relationship between oneself and others. It’s less about accomplishing something and more about becoming, a certain way of moving forward on a journey.”

The practice of empathy reduces the dehumanizing effects of incrementalism and transaction.

The CEO Publication in 2022 is saying something very different to what CCL said in 2020: that leading means becoming; it is a “certain way of moving forward on a journey”, in which empathy enables a leader to become “a guide and an educator in a flow”. This journey,

I propose, is towards organizations whose leaders create a culture where the balance of empathy and transaction is re-positioned in favor of empathy. The practice of empathy reduces the dehumanizing effects of incrementalism and transaction.

Dr. Amy Bradley, of the Hult Ashridge Business School, concurs though her emphasis is on compassion:

compassion is the hidden key to business performance in the 21st century. We live in a world in crisis. Societies are becoming fractured, opinions polarized, and people are increasingly isolated. Many people spend more time at work than they do with family members. Yet few of us have someone at work who we trust enough to share our vulnerabilities or worries with.

Yet, is Dr Bradley’s “hidden key” of compassion empathy, or sympathy? The Neuro Leadership Institute posts that “while you might feel sorry for someone you can’t understand how it feels from their perspective.” Empathy implies personal change.

Leading with empathy means letting go of ego, and making room for vulnerability that enables real conversations to happen.

The original Greek “sympathy” means “fellow feeling”. The empathy that comprises “a certain way of moving forward” is different from fellow feeling, or suffering with, or indeed, standing in someone else’s shoes. These are metaphors for noble actions, but they do not define empathy as the original Greek word empathetic does: as “In-feeling”

 Fellow-feeling and In-feeling: one implies kindness, the other implies a dissolving of borders between my self and yours, a diminishing of my ego to the point where I “become” able to move forward with you and you with me as an educator and guide whom you can trust at the level of vulnerability, on a journey to a repositioned corporate culture.

This means that leaders who wish to lead a journey to a culture of empathy must first become vulnerable to empathy, to let it infuse their followers.

Finding the Power of Empathy

The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson held that leaders must nourish their authentic, vulnerable selves, alone, before releasing them to others as an inspiration to them to follow a path. Once leaders and followers enter into their existing relationship with the world and each other, they can together make the journey that the CEO Publication describes. Frederic Laloux, in 2014, talked about a “shift in human consciousness a breakthrough in our ability to collaborate, bringing about a new organizational model.”

The value of empathy-vulnerability in leadership

In a session with the Leadership Vanguard Exchange in 2018, Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman of the UK online supermarket Ocado, asked participants if the program was helping them. They answered: “Yes, but we’re all doing incremental stuff. That’s what we have to focus on.” The enemy, as Dr. Bradley points out, is busyness.

Haythornthwaite replied that “To transform, you have to be vulnerable. You need to get into really human conversations and become entirely comfortable with who you are. Transformation can do a lot with technology, but it’s leaders who must declare that it will happen; there will be new patterns of organizations that will self-resolve. If leaders don’t declare how this will happen, they will be slaves to years of incrementalism. And the organizations will fail.”

The whole Industrial Revolution was driven by I-it. Nobody will deny its benefits, but its human and natural cost was terrible. Today, we cannot risk its limits, but we seem bent on doing so.

Leading with empathy, therefore, means more than sympathy or compassion. It means In-feeling: letting go of ego, making room for the vulnerability that enables real conversations to happen. AI will not, should not, replace this dynamic: ChatGPT itself affirms as much, and the advent of Agile working actively demands it. And Gerald Hinton’s recent warnings show how vital it is to strengthen our human qualities in the face of AI’s inherent dangers.

Making the personal change: I-It and I-Thou

How can we grow a culture shifted in empathy’s favor? How can empathy become visible enough for us to bring others on that journey of becoming? Can business transactions be reconciled with leadership empathy at all?

The philosopher Martin Buber can help us answer. He suggests that (1) empathy and transaction are attitudes, (2) you can separate them and deal with them differently, (3) and you must choose between them consciously.

Martin Buber names the attitude of transaction I-it and that of empathy I-Thou. Our choice of attitude defines our leadership stance at any one time, but each choice is complete and entire. If I want to improve the effect of my 1-1’s, I will choose I-Thou as wholly as vulnerability will allow the other person to displace my ego. I will open myself so that the real, potentially transformative, conversation can flower. I have seen I-Thou dissolve long-standing conflict almost instantly, as a leader with vulnerability told her opposition the real story of its effects on her life: empathy became the currency of the meeting, rather than a search for new processes. I-Thou can save a business unimaginable amounts of time, creating a more dynamic relationship culture as well.

The vulnerable leader brings empathy into a room, allowing it to shape her attitude; questioning, and probing creativity in the story she will share.

I-Thou is to let go of ego so that empathy can work its magic in the moment just as it often does when we awake to the world in the morning. I-it is I-Thou’s opposite. ‘It’ means measurements, driving towards targets (not leading on a journey), rewards and punishments, and value creation measured by investors and markets. It is easy to find whole businesses driven by I-it, often through a single individual. Arguably, the whole Industrial Revolution was driven by I-it. Nobody will deny its benefits, but its human and natural cost was terrible. Today, we cannot risk its limits, but we seem bent on doing so.

If I treat another person as an “it”, I become an “it”, and the people I lead will tend to become “Its”. If my attitude is I-Thou, the people I lead will tend to become the ”Thou’s” of empathy. Both outcomes begin with the leader’s choice of attitude at the moment.

Yet, the business wisdom is that empathy, being a late arrival, must fit into a transaction. The risk here is that the leadership the world needs will stick at the level of sympathy. Busyness will keep the comfort zone going, camouflaging the need for leaders to embrace vulnerability. The business will continue to operate at the expense of humanity’s humanity. The consequences are already easy to see.

The vulnerable leader brings empathy into a room and allows it to shape her attitude. The result is a questioning, probing creativity in the story she will share. It simplifies, accelerates, and deepens the humanizing of business that Alastair MacKintyre, the Scottish-American philosopher, showed was needed nearly a century ago. Vulnerable leaders, especially in large, powerful organizations, are the ones we need to take us on the journey.

Techniques for growing empathy

Buber emphasizes that we need the transaction of “It”, but if that’s all we end up with, we cannot be human. Humanity has for too long run the world through I-it, almost into the ground.

Choose I-Thou: Choosing I-Thou is not difficult.

• Ask yourself which attitude you are in – as often as you can.
• Say the words “I-Thou” to yourself as you look around you. This is your choice.
• Imagine light as the energy of empathy coming to you, and you alone.
• Be conscious that light’s empathy is giving you each object, person, and happening.
• Keep the words “I-Thou” speaking silently to your inner awareness.
• Avoid analysis and thinking: just observe what the light is bringing to you.
• Take breaths into your abdomen.
• With each breath, imagine you’re “breathing in” your experience.
• Let your experience take the place of your ego. Feel ego leaving your mind, body, and spirit.

Let your real self fill the space. Be present; tell the story you truly want to tell.

See, feel, care:

This technique is invaluable for communicators. You can do it while walking, looking out of the window - anywhere.

• Look out of the window: choose I-Thou say the words.
• Ask: what do I see? People, sky, street, landscape, vehicles, colors, buildings.
• Describe one of these to yourself as something that’s happening. Don’t just say “I see a car”.
• Describe its speed, color, direction, shadows, motion.
• Ask: how do I feel about what I’m seeing? Grateful, worried, curious, elated much is possible. Tell yourself how you feel. Ask: why do I care about what I’m seeing and feeling? Why does it matter to me? It might not matter, or it might repel you.
• Tell yourself why you care or not. You might NOT value something in your picture and want to change it. Let that be.

Actions, Places, People: APP: Creating inspiring strategic narrative.

Communicating a strategic vision can be a magnet for I-it. Corporate language flies in the face of what Shell’s head of strategy once said: that the leader in today’s world has to inspire collaboration across borders and silos, using a compelling narrative. It stands to reason that inspiring and compelling stories require the infusion of empathy.

Preparing Content

1. Think in the language you use at home.
2. Describe your strategy in stages: Situation, Action, and Yield.
3. Describe the Actions, Places, and People in each stage: What is happening/has happened/should happen and why; Where is it happening; Who is making it happen?
4. Describe these as active realities; as things that you see, not abstractions.
5. In each of these elements, say how you feel and why you care. Be vulnerable to the human content: people will grow, people will be let go; people will learn. What experiences can you describe here? How do you feel? Why do you care?