February 2025
Empathy in the Workplace
Leading With Empathy Is the Most Undervalued Skill
By Jason Motes, EdD
A friend and colleague recently shared a video of a commencement speech, which resonated. The speaker described the power of empathy and implored the new graduates to exemplify it.
I grew up professionally in the Navy, an organization that prides itself on bringing people from all walks of life and from all corners of the world to unite for one purpose. In the Navy and the military, it doesn't matter where your fellow Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine comes from, what they look like, who raised them, how they were raised, or what their belief systems are. In the military, judgment of those kinds of things literally stops the moment you arrive at your indoctrination site (aka Bootcamp). If it doesn't, it will eventually be stopped for you. Why? Because there is no place for it. You're there for one common purpose: one team, one fight, all for one, and one for all. And because of the culture, when your fellow service members are hurting, you may be, too.
Empathy.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another. Great leaders get this and are, to a degree, empathetic leaders themselves. They stuff their teams with compassionate, team-oriented people who look out for one another and help each other rise. They create and sustain cultures where their people feel embraced and safely supported in challenging moments and protected from harmful, anti-empathetic behaviors that can cause dysfunction. Great leaders can also recognize when a lack of empathy exists, and the exceptionally great ones proactively and creatively find ways to combat it. And when the moment calls for it, they'll empathetically lead by example.
Several years ago, I interviewed a fantastic candidate for a vacancy on one of my teams in the Pacific Northwest. I'd flown across the country to meet with her for breakfast and a conversational interview, and I knew within the first five minutes of sitting down with her that I would offer her the job. Towards the end of our time together, I gave her a verbal offer, and she happily accepted. But as we began to wrap up the breakfast to go our separate ways, I noticed her body language change; I could tell something was distressing her, and she began to tear up. I asked her if she was ok and handed her some napkins. She said, "There's something I think you should know about me." I told her everything would be okay, and she could feel safe telling me. Then she told me she'd been arrested for driving under the influence a few years prior. It was hard for her to say that as the tears fell. Considering the job offer she'd just received, she likely feared that a previous DUI would derail her chances of being hired because of the upcoming background investigation. She probably thought she'd never hear from me again.
To her surprise, my initial response was to apologize. I told her I was sorry she'd experienced such a life-changing event, and then I stopped talking. It was all I could think of to say because, at that moment, I felt the pain of knowing how hard something like that is to deal with. Even though I did not realize or appreciate what I was doing, it was, to some extent, an act of empathy. Later in life, when I pursued my leadership coaching education, I learned the tremendous power of this attribute: taking a moment to respect the moment and acknowledging the weight of the feeling on the other side of the table.
Years later, after we'd both moved on from our roles, she contacted me to tell me that the interview changed her life, not because of the job offer, but because of how she was heard. She told me she felt like the weight of that life-changing event had been lifted off her shoulders. In reflection, I've often wondered how often she had to say, "There's something I think you should know about me" to other hiring managers during fantastic interviews where she was verbally offered the job. Consequently, I also can't help but wonder how they've responded to her when she told them.
Some of my peers disagreed with me for hiring her, and I've always respected that each hiring manager has to make the best decision for their teams, myself included. I wouldn't necessarily say their disagreement indicated a lack of empathy. But they didn't know my background, life's struggles, or comfort with looking past a job candidate's bad decisions when they could demonstrate learning and growth from overcoming significant obstacles. It was another peer, however, who said my handling of the circumstance inspired her hiring decision-making process. That peer is now one of my mentors and a senior executive and later told me, in a touching demonstration of empathy, that my actions with that hire and a few others helped her make better hiring decisions for her teams, too.
Demonstrating empathy does not mean things will always work out. But that's not the underlying point of acting with empathy in the workplace. You don't act with empathy to hope that everything will work out. As the examples above indicate, you act with empathy because being genuinely aware of and acknowledging the experiences of another's feelings is the right thing to do. But don't just take my word for it. Bestselling author Brené Brown is tremendously skilled at articulating the same types of messages. Finally, empathy in the workplace doesn't just start and stop during a job interview, either. It's an enduring trait because it should be prominent and prevalent before and after someone joins your team and organization. That's called culture.
And that's what this article is really all about: the culture of creating an empathetic environment for your people to work within. I've since adopted empathy as an underlying expectation in my personal leadership philosophy, and it doesn't stop with me, either. If you join my team, you will have proved to me that you can lead with empathy because to be the effective leader our teams need us to be, we must embody it. We must also expect it from ourselves, our peers, and our leaders.
Empathy in the workplace matters; the impactful character attribute distinguishes great cultures and could be one of the secret ingredients to long-term workplace harmony.
Jason Motes, EdD uses his extensive corporate and military leadership background to help executives and teams drive performance through organizational assessment, leadership coaching and consulting, and facilitating leadership development courses nationwide. He's led hundreds of sales and operations personnel in two Fortune 100 companies. He serves as a Captain in the U.S. Navy (Reserve), where he's led as a Commanding Officer, Task Group Commander, and U.S. Fleet Operations Officer.
