Empathy Is Not a Soft Skill. It’s a Strategic Leadership Asset

Why emotionally intelligent professionals are essential for modern leadership

We’re hearing the youngest generation of employees asking to feel cared for. In response, we’re hearing calls for leaders to be more caring, to be more human-centred.

How can a leader be more human-centred?

Successful leadership is underpinned by one competency: emotional intelligence. This is an umbrella term used to describe being able to recognise and regulate your own emotions, knowing what motivates you, being able to tune into others (empathy) and building healthy relationships.

Empathy as the core leadership skill

At its core, empathy is about understanding and relating to the experience of another person. There are two types of empathy:

Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s perspective: I know you are suffering.
Emotional empathy is the ability to feel what someone else is feeling: I feel your pain.

I explain the types of empathy in lots of detail in my award-winning book, The Super-Helper Syndrome: A Survival Guide for Compassionate People.

Empathy, as I use it in my work, refers to both types. Its role in successful business performance is phenomenal.

What does an Empathy-Powered Leader look like?

In practice, an empathic leader is inherently sensitive to others’ thoughts and feelings.

They support team cohesion and have a natural propensity to make everyone feel included and valued.

They’re agreeable, but have healthy boundaries, and are readily liked by colleagues and clients.

They manage difficult conversations with sensitivity and feel more comfortable than most people do in diverse teams and groups.

Because of all of this, they inherently reinforce wellbeing programmes and equality, diversity and inclusivity initiatives. In addition, their caring qualities make them a perfect leadership match for Gen Z employees.

They don’t just care about people, they care about the job.

They are typically experienced, knowledgeable, and already planning their leadership career path.

They are the most contentious person in any team – you won’t see them working after hours to make sure the project finishes on time; you won’t know that they support others in the background because they are not taking any credit. 

They are energised when given autonomy, and in turn are comfortable with delegating to others, especially when it improves efficiency and purposeful ways of working. 

Empathy is a Strategic Asset

The business case is clear too. Empathy-powered leaders lower rates of workforce sickness, absenteeism and burnout. Because they treat their teams with respect and because they care, employee engagement and commitment increases.

In addition, empathy-powered leaders enhance their organisation’s brand. When a company builds a reputation for being caring towards its employees, the best people will want to work there. And they won’t want to leave. The effect on customers is similar – when they feel cared for their satisfaction and brand loyalty also increases.

Without empathy, leadership quickly becomes transactional, detached, and even harmful.

That’s why empathy should be a prerequisite for anyone being placed in a managerial or leadership role.

Can I just train my managers to be more empathic?

In one word: no.

Sorry to be the barer of bad news. But it doesn’t work like that – and even though I’ve been in business for twenty years, it seems I am the only person to realise this and call it out: You can’t train someone to care.

Empathy is misunderstood. It is treated as if it is a technique or a “soft skill”. Even if you don’t describe yourself as empathic you could hire a trainer or management consultant who will try to teach you to act more caring, such as ask more open questions, apply ‘active listening’ techniques, to tweak your body language to make you seem more trustworthy… But you wouldn’t pass an authenticity test.

While you can teach someone to mimic empathic behaviours, you can’t teach them to feel genuine concern for others. When empathy is faked or formulaic, people sense it. It feels uncomfortable and performative, because it is.

Empathy is an inherent quality, and where you lack that inherent quality, it is a choice. And the hard truth is that most people who are not innately empathic do not choose to be more empathic.

No one ever said, “I’d like to be a kinder leader”, because it seems contradictory to being profit focused. Leaders worry that if they become ‘nice’ at work, they’ll lose the ability to make tough decisions. But this is short-sighted, just an excuse, and fundamentally ignores the facts.

How can I have Empathy-Powered Leaders?

In two words: Start looking.

Find the people in your organisation who are already empathic. develop them with the right type of support, and change your leadership pipeline so that it promotes those empathic people into leadership roles.

The good news is that you (hopefully) already have empathic people in your organisation. You might not notice them at first – they fly under the radar, keep out of the spotlight, they’re not into self-promoting. But they are the ones people turn to when there’s a problem.

They are usually…

• Trusted by colleagues
• Often take on others’ work or emotional load
• Frequently asked for advice or support
• Known for their ability to calm tense situations
• Consistently demonstrate thoughtfulness and care
• Build strong relationships with clients and stakeholders
• Give credit to others, downplay their own role

They are already leading; just without the title, recognition, or the support.

And these individuals do need development. Just not the kind you’ll find in ordinary leadership programmes.

They need support to…

• Build self-belief to overcome feeling like an imposter
• Dial up their personal qualities to maximise their impact
• Handle feedback without over-personalising
• Lead with influence, not over-functioning
• Balance empathy with self-preservation

This is not an exhaustive list. But this is exactly what I do inside Empathy-Powered Leadership®  – an evidence-based cost-effective leadership development programme that transforms empathic individuals into courageous, impactful leaders, with rapid and lasting results.

Because empathy is not a soft skill.
It’s a strategic asset.
And it’s time we treated it that way.

If this speaks to you, leave a comment below, follow or connect with me.

Empathy-Powered Leadership®

That’s exactly what I do inside Empathy-Powered Leadership® – an evidence-based coaching programme that transforms empathic individuals into courageous impactful leaders.

If you’re ready to talk about that, I’d love to hear from you.

By developing the right people with the right skills, you’ll build a leadership pipeline ready to meet the needs of tomorrow’s workforce.

If this speaks to you, leave a comment below.

And if you’ve only just found me… Hello! I’m Jess Baker, Chartered Psychologist and founder of Empathy-Powered Leadership®. I transform empathic individuals into courageous, impactful leaders. Their leadership elevates people, drives performance, and strengthens the culture that connects them.