Why leaders need empathy more than any other skill

If we have been led by great leaders in the past and have an emotional response when remembering them, it is likely that they were leaders with high empathy and that’s the reason why we felt a connection with them. If we want to be inspirational leaders, then we also need to develop empathy, or to put it more accurately, nurture the empathy within us, which is more repressed in some people than others – as I am sure you have noticed.

Generally, those individuals who are more emotionally free themselves are able to feel the pain, suffering and desires of others. In Western culture, men tend to suppress their emotions more than women and may therefore need to work harder on developing their empathy than women. Just as, say, competitiveness is often viewed as a more masculine quality, empathy is definitely seen to be a more feminine one; that, of course, is not to say that women can leave all the competing to the men in their leadership teams and nor can men leave all the empathy to the women. Hopefully, we are all inspired to develop all these leadership qualities in balance.

I’ve found it interesting to look at two events that made global news headlines and which occurred in countries with female prime ministers at the time, but where there was a complete difference in the way that empathy was expressed: in one, very little empathy was shown and in the other, an extraordinary amount. The first example took place in 2017 when a terrible fire in a tower block in West London exposed Theresa May as someone who had very little emotional connection with the local residents, who had suffered terribly.

The day after the Grenfell Tower fire, Theresa May visited the site but stood apart with the firefighters and her security guards, and extraordinarily did not ask to meet the locals. (Even if she had no empathy, surely this would have been a good PR move – if only to show people she was on their side.) She later regretted her action because she was criticised by others and admitted she had made a huge mistake, saying: ‘But the residents of Grenfell Tower needed to know that those in power recognised and understood their despair. And I will always regret that by not meeting them that day, it seemed as though I didn’t care.’

I would suggest that while in a cerebral sense May knew she should care, she hadn’t over the years developed the degree of empathy that meant her natural reaction to others’ suffering would be to comfort them. Empathy would have put that reaction first and all other reactions well down the list.

Contrast that with what happened two years later, when Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister, hugged and comforted Muslim men and women after the Christchurch shootings while identifying with them by wearing the hijab. The fact that this created so many newspaper headlines across the world, all describing how amazing it was that a leader could show so much empathy, indicates just how low the bar is. It troubles me that her response is so unusual for leaders of state.

However, her leadership was not just about symbolic empathetic gestures; she later asked the bereaved for advice on the next steps for her government, involving them in the process beyond the immediate tragedy. Ardern’s leadership was tested again in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, when New Zealand had one of the lowest death rates in the world due to a very early lockdown, once again showing her empathy followed by swift action.

In fact, countries with leaders generally acknowledged as having empathetic leadership, including Canada and Ireland, have had far lower death rates than countries generally acknowledged to have leaders with little empathy, such a the UK, USA and Brazil. I don’t think that is a coincidence.

However, the truth – that empathy is essential to good leadership – is not just subjective conjecture: there is good scientific evidence that empathy in the workplace is essential for those developing successful companies and organisations. In a 2007 paper, Gentry, Weber and Sadri analysed data from 6,731 managers from 38 different countries and found that empathy is positively related to job performance and is more important in some cultures than others.

Managers who showed more empathy towards their direct reports are viewed as better performers in their job by their bosses. And the performance improvements demonstrated by greater empathy were more significant in cultures with greater power distance, i.e. more hierarchical cultures. Interestingly, the comparison the authors use in a graph in the study is between Columbia (low power-distance culture) and New Zealand (high power distance), indicating that Jacinda Ardern’s empathy has more impact in New Zealand than it would do in Columbia.

They conclude the study by saying: This study found that the ability to understand what others are feeling is a skill that clearly contributes to effective leadership. In some cultures, the connection between empathy and performance is particularly striking, placing an even greater value on empathy as a leadership skill.

The good news for those of us who didn’t develop much empathy as children is that it can be learned as an adult leader, or preferably before you become a leader. I came to understand the importance of empathy later in my leadership journey, but how I wish I had understood this earlier. So, how do we grow in empathy?

First, it is about slowing down and not purely focusing on the goal or cause, but on the people who are going to take you there. Many entrepreneurs are very goal-focused and sometimes lose touch with the feelings of their people. So slowing down and taking time to actively listen is vital, and I mean really listening which means turning your phone off.

Second, encouraging other managers to show empathy is important and sitting in a room together not ‘being productive’ is perfectly OK in order to connect properly with your team members. Third, it is also important to learn to hear the meaning behind people’s words, who may not always directly say what they are feeling.

Finally, increasing our ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes by reflection
and meditation will make us better leaders, as those people will feel respected, listened to, trusted and safe. Empathy is in short supply these days, as more meetings and relationships happen through screens rather than face to face. Those leaders who can embrace empathy will not only be the more successful leaders but also those who, in Barack Obama’s words, ‘can change the world’.

Paul Hargreaves is a B-Corp Ambassador, speaker and author of The Fourth Bottom Line: – reviewed here

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