In the last couple of decades, there’s been a noticeable shift towards a style of leadership that is softer and more emotionally sensitive. Plenty of evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, supports the shift: Businesses do better (because people do better) when leaders provide genuine emotional support. People have come to expect it, too. Employees who don’t feel supported are more likely to leave. According to one report, unempathetic organizations risk losing $180 billion a year in attrition costs. Left in the wake of this new style of leadership are overwhelmed and confused leaders who know they need to practice empathy but struggle to find the best way to respond in the moment. They might be wondering: Is it my place to check in with employees emotionally? When employees share negative feelings with me, is the best thing to do just listen, or do I offer a solution of some kind? From this confusion arises the very outcome that these leaders want to avoid: Their employees feel unseen instead of supported. The reason for the confusion is because there’s no single right approach when it comes to responding to others’ emotions. Emotions are complex, and context matters—which is why we recently set out to study how leaders respond to employees’ feelings, and what kinds of responses work best. Building on our decade-long research agenda in the psychology of emotions, and hundreds of observed workplace interactions, we developed a validated situational judgment task (SJT) to assess how leaders engage with follower emotions. And in using it we came to a surprising conclusion: Empathy isn’t always a good thing, and in fact can be exercised incorrectly. What matters most, we found, is whether leaders choose to deploy their empathy in the right way. Being appropriately empathetic is one of the hardest tasks leaders face. It requires more than good intentions. It demands skill, discernment, and the ability to engage with the emotional lives of others without losing your own footing. To support that challenge, we’ve developed a practical framework grounded in this latest research. We want to be clear: Our goal is not simply to help you “be more empathetic.” It’s to help you cultivate a more discerning form of empathy—what we call wise empathy. In this article, we introduce the concept of wise empathy born out of the latest research, explain why it matters for effective leadership, and outline how you can practice it in a way that is beneficial for yourself, your followers, and the wider organization. Different Emotional Moments Call for Different Responses When a leader shows up with empathy, they typically do so in one of two ways. The first involves sharing (taking on what others are feeling), and the second involves caring (expressing compassion for what they’re feeling, followed by an action-oriented stance to solving the issue). The problem is that when most leaders respond to employees’ emotions in day-to-day work, they default to one mode or the other, unaware that what works in some contexts doesn’t work in others. Most people think of empathy as a response to only negative feelings, and they feel that responding to those emotions empathetically requires actively sharing in those feelings. That is, they focus on sharing over caring. But what we’ve found in our work is clear: Empathetic sharing can heighten personal strain and accelerate burnout. By contrast, empathetic caring, expressing compassion without over-identifying emotionally, helps employees and protects leaders. In our research, we’ve found that leaders who tend to care rather than share in response to employees’ negative emotions reported less burnout, lower intent to quit, and higher leader efficacy. Further, when employees reported having leaders who practice a caring rather than a sharing style of empathy, they found their leaders to be more effective, and they themselves were more engaged and more committed to their organization. Simply put, if you’re responding to negative emotions, it will serve everybody best if you focus on caring rather than sharing. We’re not alone in suggesting this sort of approach: Recently, in “How to Sustain Your Empathy in Difficult Times” (HBR, January-February 2024), the Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki made a similar case. But what about situations in which employees are experiencing positive emotions such as joy, excitement, or pride? That’s a topic that’s received very little attention, even though our research has shown that 75% of opportunities to practice empathy in daily life actually involve such situations. Focusing on noticing positive emotions at work can help leaders build stronger bonds with their employees and lift morale for their teams. Sharing in positive emotions means leaders will “catch” the feeling, so they can respond more enthusiastically to their employees’ good news. What matters most across these two use cases is not just showing empathy but choosing the right form of empathy for the emotional moment. That’s the mark of wisdom. And it’s what separates interactions that lift up employees from those that leave them feeling unseen or uncelebrated. How to Practice Wise Empathy Practicing wise empathy means exercising judgment in times charged with emotion. It requires moral sensitivity, self-regulation, and the ability to adapt to the emotional moment in a way that supports employees while protecting your own well-being. Here are five steps that can help you do that. 1. Understand the context. Before reacting, pause to read the situation. What has this person recently experienced? Are they showing up stressed, proud, discouraged, or excited? A basic understanding of whether employees are feeling positive or negative can be helpful in guiding wise empathy. A simple self-prompt can sharpen your judgment and help you select the correct focus. Keep in mind that the emotional context is not always obvious. Research has shown that followers don’t always name what they’re feeling, and leaders often misread what’s actually going on. Wise empathy begins with slowing down enough to notice the small signals, such as changes in tone, pacing, or energy. Those cues are easy to miss, especially under pressure, but they carry important information about what emotions are most present. It’s also wise to recognize that emotions show up differently for different people. For some of your team, negative emotions are loud and visible, for others, they surface quietly through withdrawal. You need to adjust your perception to the individual. When you understand how each person tends to express emotion, you become far more accurate in discerning the situation and, therefore, more effective in choosing the right form of empathy. Sally Clark, a former chief auditor at Barclays and current board member at Citi Bank, talks about spending time with her direct reports, flexing a regular “leadership muscle” to understand people’s ongoing needs. “I make sure I spend time with my direct reports to talk about not just elements of work,” she says, “but also about their longer-term plans and developments.” Regular check-ins beyond the immediate tasks allow you to notice subtle changes. “I can spot quite quickly when there is something on a person’s mind,” Clark adds, “or when they aren’t happy about something. I’ve trained myself to read the emotional signals.” 2. Regulate your own response and focus on the other. When faced with the emotions of others, we often have a self-focused response. But this approach can overload leaders, causing burnout or defensiveness and denying them the space they need to regulate their emotions. The ability to regulate your emotions can help you move from caring about others to helping them. So if you find yourself confronted with a strong emotion, try to take a beat to steady yourself before responding: Regulate your breathing, note your own feelings, and remind yourself that your employees’ experiences are usually primarily about them, not about you. Mark Vineis, the vice president of Radio Medicine at Novartis, understands how much is at stake when it comes to his own emotional reactions, which can ripple out widely, given his status as a senior leader. “We as leaders are the chief energy givers,” Mark says, “And for every room you walk in, people will sense your own emotional reactions, which will impact their behaviors—and the behaviors of people they engage with.” 3. Decide to care or share. This is the heart of wise empathy: selecting the right mode of response. If the emotion you’re confronted with is negative, demonstrate compassion without becoming too deeply involved in sharing their negative feelings. You might get involved automatically, but they key is to learn to notice and accept those feelings in yourself and gently redirect your attention to compassion for the other. As Rami Fayed, a vice president and general manager of AbbVie Canada, puts it, practicing wise empathy involves bringing “self-awareness to emotionally loaded situations.” If the emotion you’re confronted with is positive, on the other hand, allow yourself to feel it. Celebrate with your employee, acknowledge their achievement with enthusiasm, and reinforce their positive energy without shifting the spotlight back to yourself. 4. Check perception, not just intention. In our research we found that 43% of employees rated their leaders as less compassion-focused than the leaders rated themselves to be. This gap in perceptions is a reminder that the impact of empathy on others is determined not by what you intend but by what others perceive. Research suggests that leaders may have a particularly difficult adopting their employees’ perspective and understanding how they feel. The way to combat that is to check in with employees and trusted colleagues about how your interactions are going. 5. Reflect and recalibrate. Wise empathy comes with practice. After an interaction with someone, ask yourself: Did I choose care or share appropriately? Did I keep the focus on the other person? Did they feel understood and supported? How did I feel afterward? Am I drained or replenished? Over time, these reflections strengthen discernment, reduce burnout, and build a culture of trust. For the leaders we spoke with, this is key final step in the process. It’s a personal practice as much a professional one. Sally Clark often takes this step by writing things down as if she were sending a letter. It’s a moment of reflection that allows her to slow down. “When I am triggered,” she says, “my first step is to create a moment of space, take a few deep breaths, and slow the tempo—reset the situational awareness in real time.” But she never actually sends her letter: By the time she has finished writing it, the reset has happened, and she can tear the letter up. . . . We’ve long known about the principles of emotional judgment. What’s changed is the context: Today’s leaders must apply them in a modern workplace marked by constant pressure. The challenge is doing this wisely. If you can manage that, the benefits will not only improve individual interactions, trust, engagement, and retention across your team—they’ll also extend to organizational performance and competitive advantage.
