“The fire is in the garage. This way out. Follow me!”

The condo behind me had a fire a week or so ago. It’s scary because there are 400 wood-frame townhouses here, built in 4-6 unit clusters. We all have a front door and garage access adjacent to it, and a slider to a deck in the back. Most have no stairs from the deck, which are between four and twelve feet off the ground.

My neighbors followed the firemen to the deck and were lifted down from the five foot high deck. Everyone got out without injury. It is still a traumatic nightmare; it will probably take eighteen months to get back in the condo.

The words the fireman said are the summary definition of how I define leadership:

• In abnormal circumstances (emergency, war, change),
• Describe the circumstances (compelling case for change, fire),
• Provide direction (“this way out”),
• Attract followers (“Follow me!”).

In organizational change, leaders may require more words, but the categories remain the same.

“See – no empathy required,” one friend who denies the existence of empathy might have said. “you’ll notice he didn’t say, “Your house is burning. How do you feel about that?”

Another friend might respond, “Either you have the empathy gene or you don’t.”

If this argument were happening around my picnic table, I would change the subject, “Sooo, is it going to rain tomorrow?”, hoping to refocus everyone on their phones. Sports is the usual conflict avoidance conversation changer.  “How ‘bout them Steelers?” I couldn’t contribute anything to that conversation, so my fallback is the weather, which as my mother said, “everyone talks about, but no one does anything about it.”

For the record, I believe that empathy is a requirement for change leadership. I believe that empathy attracts followers, and connects them to each other and to the direction of the change.

I understand that not everyone agrees with me.

Is empathy real? Is it a good thing?

In 2022, one of my LinkedIn connections, Trent Selbrede wrote The Myth of Empathy: Why Your Empathy Has No Clothes. I absolutely hated the title and the premise, but Trent had been very helpful as I thought about self-publishing, so I read his book. I was surprised that I agreed with a lot of what he wrote.

One of the points he made was there were a lot of people who described themselves as empathetic, who said things like, “I know just how you feel,” then told stories of their own life demonstrating a lack of sensitivity or compassion, e.g., “I know you just lost a child. That’s awful. I know. When I lost my dog . . .”

“We should not be eager to pour our scars into the open wounds of others. They are not a bandage for trauma.”

Selbrede described how these boors then presumed to give advice that essentially denied what someone was actually feeling and told them to “look at the bright side and get on with your life.”

Brené Brown, author of Dare to Lead, calls this “silverlining” (using the word as a verb). “No empathetic response ever started with, ‘At least…’”

‘I just had a miscarriage.’ ‘At least, you know you can get pregnant.’”

Trent also talked about the sudden popularity of the term “empath,” on the LinkedIn profiles of life coaches. He traced the term to a particular character in a DC comic book, an alien who comes to earth and feels everyone’s feelings to disastrous result. “It’s not a real thing.”

Empathy is often described as “feeling with,” and compared to sympathy defined as “feeling for.” It is a simple semantic difference that describes the connection of an empathetic response, being on the same side, at the same relative power level as the other person.

A sympathetic response might show compassion, “Oh man, it sucks to be you,” but there is a power differential and implication of “better you than me.”

Do we need two words, for equal and unequal compassion? Maybe not, but most of us can feel the difference in connection.

Leaders and Empathy

Often, when we say leader, we are talking about the CEO, or person at the top. These individuals, may not be the most empathetic individuals on the planet.

About twenty-five years ago, I worked on a small post-merger integration project. A telco company had acquired several cable TV firms, the first actions of a new CEO brought in from a tech firm. I had some experience with one of the acquired companies and could see the differences in the industries. I did several interviews and analyzed some business processes. My findings were aggregated with others, and two partners went in to the new CEO’s office. One of the partners described the meeting.

“His desk was on a ten inch platform. He isn’t a small guy, so he completely towered over us. On the credenza behind his desk, on a holder just visible over his head were two antique samurai swords, katana, and wakizashi.

I joked, ‘What are those for presentations you don’t like?”

“He doesn’t need a sword, the senior partner said.”

“He never cracked a smile. He listened to us explain how the businesses were different and there were many people who were very nervous about the direction.”

“They’ll just have to get over it, won’t they?”

He was one of those people who was described internally as devoid of the “empathy gene.” The acquisitions were spun off a few years later at a huge loss, but this CEO had long since moved on. “He just never understood us,” our CHRO client told us. “It didn’t help that Bob who he replaced had worked here for 40 years – a real up from the bottom lifer.”

Not always, but often, empathy and absolute power do not coexist well.

Brené Brown quotes the nursing scholar, Theresa Wiseman, about how empathy works.

“First is ‘perspective taking.’ You must be able to admit that another perspective might exist.” It is easier if you have actually lived a similar experience, like the former telco CEO, but even Bob, would have to admit that perspectives other than his own exist.

The expression “walk a mile in their shoes” comes from a 1895 poem by Mary J. Lathrap. Lathrap was a Methodist minister very active in the Prohibition movement and served as what would today be called an addiction counselor. Here is one stanza:

Judge Softly by Mary Lathrap

Just walk a mile in his moccasins
Before you abuse, criticize and accuse.
If just for one hour, you could find a way
To see through his eyes, instead of your own muse.

Despite the fact that Brené Brown  and Trent Selbrede disagree on the existence of empathy, their prescriptions are similar. Both Brown and Selbrede agree that compassion, whatever word you use to describe it, requires that you withhold judgement. You can’t judge people and help them at the same time. Also,

• Listen, not to respond, but just to listen.
• Recognize emotion where you see it. Ask questions that allow the person to talk about their feelings.
• Respect how they are feeling. If you have had some similar feelings, ask if you might share them. Don’t be offended if the answer is “No, thanks.”

While this advice is useful for leaders confronting emotion brought about by organizational change, it just might make you a better human being in other areas.

Change Leader? Who Me? Hard Earned Wisdom for Those New to Leading Change is a collection of stories and essays about what it takes to lead organizational change. This is a fun read, written in an irreverent, anecdote-laden style. not a research or case-based academic text. There are stories about ordinary people who share insights about leadership and change. There are some unusual examples ( e.g., a Ritz Carleton shoe shiner, Genghis Khan, and Bruce Springsteen).

There are concept essays from my almost forty years “helping leaders make strategic change,” including descriptions of types of change: innovation, improvement, and integration, as well as change “levers,” tools, models, methodologies, and skills to help start or accelerate organizational change.