Empathy: What I Got Wrong.
A 6-minute investment to make you a better leader - In role. In life.
Hi, I’m Jason. If you want to be a leader in life, I've created The Prime Movement for you. I'm here to help you thrive mentally, physically, and emotionally.
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What’s coming up:
Prime Performance: This Week’s Best News, Views & Life-Hacks
The Prime Perspective: I Thought Empathy Was One of My Greatest Strengths. I Was Wrong.
Lessons from the Arena: How to Save a Cooling Relationship
Be a Prime Mover: 1 Quote to Spark Change
Prime Performance: this week’s news, views and life hacks
🎞️ WATCH 60-Seconds On Why You Don’t Need to Prove You’re in Charge
Leadership expert and author Simon Sinek and former Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink tackle one of leadership's most common pitfalls - why do accomplished leaders still feel compelled to prove themselves after earning their position? Their conversation draws powerful parallels between military leadership and the business world, offering insights that will resonate whether you're leading a team of 5 or 500.
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📻 LISTEN The Hardest Lesson About Success That No-one Tells You
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The Prime Perspective: Thoughts on Leadership and Growth
I thought empathy was one of my greatest strengths. Why I was wrong.
I had one harsh leadership lesson more than 20 years ago that taught me about the importance of empathy. Yet even though it led to me transforming my leadership style, I still went on to make one major mistake.
Back in 2002 I was Group Editor at a magazine publishing company in Dubai and overseeing a very diverse team. I was relatively new to management at this scale and had come up through the newspaper industry in the UK, the proverbial ‘school of hard knocks’.
I badged myself on the ‘hard but fair’ approach and thought I had a good relationship with all my team, so it came as a major shock when one of my direct reports told me that she found the way I spoke to her belittling and humiliating… and as she explained this, she began to cry. It was the equivalent of a short, sharp shock that was the wake-up call I needed.
It held up a mirror to the ignorant assumptions I had of what constituted leadership and I vowed to go back to the drawing board, as this was not the leader I wanted to be.
For that point onwards, I preached empathy as a leadership cornerstone. "Walk a mile in their shoes," I'd say, convinced I was practicing what I advocated.
Yet I was making a fundamental error that limited my effectiveness as a leader: I was walking in others' shoes, but still with my own feet, seeing through my own eyes, and interpreting through my own experiences.
What I was practicing wasn't true empathy, but a projection of how I thought I would feel in someone else's situation. This is a common leadership blindspot that neuroscience and psychology now help us understand.
As Brené Brown powerfully distinguishes:
"Empathy is not walking in someone else's shoes. Rather, it's the ability to recognize that someone else is in pain without trying to fix it, make it better, or make it go away. It's the ability to be with someone in their darkness."
This distinction illuminates where I went wrong. I intellectually considered others' circumstances (cognitive empathy) but failed to connect with their emotional experience (affective empathy) on their terms, not mine. True empathy requires us to temporarily suspend our own perspective - something far harder than it sounds.
It was only when I became part of INSEAD’s first-ever executive coaching cohort that I realised I’d got it wrong. And so from my journey of unlearning and relearning empathy, here are 4 practical steps I’m sharing with you in the hope they help you:
1. Ask rather than assume
Rather than projecting how you would feel, ask open questions like "What's this experience like for you?" or "What would be most helpful right now?" Then listen without formulating your response.
2. Distinguish between fixing and understanding
Before jumping to solutions, confirm understanding with phrases like "What I'm hearing is..." to ensure you've truly grasped their perspective.As Adam Grant notes: “Empathy isn't about having all the answers. Sometimes it's about having the patience to ask the right questions and the humility to listen to the answers.”
3. Practice the ‘empty chair’ technique
In decision-making, leave an empty chair to represent stakeholders not in the room. Ask: "How would this decision impact them?" This creates space for unrepresented perspectives.
4. Recognize emotional contagion
Daniel Goleman's research on emotional intelligence shows that emotions are literally contagious through something called 'neural mirroring'. This means that when we observe someone experiencing an emotion, our brain activates the same neural patterns, causing us to unconsciously 'catch' their emotional state. As a leader, your emotions are particularly contagious because of your position. If you're stressed, anxious, or frustrated, your team will likely absorb those feelings, even without you explicitly expressing them. Similarly, your calm confidence can stabilize a team during uncertainty. This awareness gives you a powerful tool: recognize that your emotional state has tangible impacts on your team's performance and wellbeing - that self-awareness is also empathy at work.
By incorporating these four practices into your leadership approach, you'll move beyond superficial empathy to create deeper connections that benefit both your team members and your organization's performance. True empathy requires ongoing practice and self-awareness, but the investment pays remarkable dividends in trust, engagement, and collaboration.
If you want to unlock your full leadership potential, message me at jason@theprimemovement.com
THE PRIME PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
Building Better Leaders. In Role. In Life.
Lessons from the Arena: Real Life Leadership Challenges
Every week, I'll share real challenges from coaching experiences, offering practical insights you can apply to your own leadership journey.
CHALLENGE:
“I'm leading a client services team at a consultancy. We're technically delivering everything in our contracts - meeting deadlines, hitting KPIs, solving the problems we were hired to address. Yet we're seeing concerning signs: the client is being very distant and the feedback is lukewarm at best. Gut instinct tells me we’re going to lose the business unless I can turn it around. I’m frustrated as we’re doing everything we promised when we won the business. What can I do?"
MY GUIDANCE:
What you're experiencing is what can be termed an ‘empathy gap’ - the space between technically meeting requirements and truly connecting with your client’s deeper concerns and contexts.
Shift from problem-focused to context-focused: Instead of jumping straight to solutions, have your team spend more time understanding the ecosystem around the problem. What pressures is your client contact personally facing? How will your work impact their standing in their organization? What happens after you deliver your solution?
Meet before you need to meet: Consider a device like ‘no-agenda check-ins’ - brief, proactive touchpoints with the client that aren't tied to deliverables or problems. By creating space for conversation without a transactional purpose, you'll learn about concerns they don't think to mention in formal meetings. Be curious about what is happening in their world, even if it doesn’t directly involve you.
Feel their pressure: Have your team members experience your client's pressures first-hand. For instance, try presenting your findings to your client's bosses alongside them, rather than just handing over reports. This will help you feel the stakes they're facing.
Normalize vulnerability: Create space for your team to share when they don't understand something about the client's world. Counterintuitively, admitting knowledge gaps builds more trust than projecting perfect expertise. Phrases like "Help me understand more about..." signal genuine interest in their context.
The results of this approach can be remarkable - deep empathy isn't just about being nice and easy to get on iwth, it's about understanding that every business problem exists within a human context. When clients feel that you genuinely understand their world - not just their stated requirements - they stop seeing you as a vendor and start seeing you as a partner.
Ready to take your leadership to the next level? Book a call by messaging me at jason@theprimemovement.com.
Be A Prime Mover: 1 Quote to Spark Change
“Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. True leadership begins with this understanding.”
— Alfred Adler
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing this with a friend. We are stronger together.
Your thoughts are the fuel that keeps us moving forward, so message me at jason@theprimemovement.com.
