Why your empathy can hurt you & how to turn it into compassionate leadership

So often, we hear leaders should be empathetic. But being empathetic doesn’t make you a good person. In fact, you could be very empathetic and a psychopath. Surprised? – Let’s have a closer look!

The following three statements should give us a good starting point:

1.       Empathy is an ability; compassion is an attitude.

2.       When your over-empathy hurts you, you must transform it into compassion.

3.       Being empathetic doesn’t automatically make you a better leader.

Let’s dissect them together:

1.       Empathy is an ability; compassion is an attitude.

According to Psychology Today, empathy is defined as “the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character.”

Verywellmind states that “empathy refers […] to the general ability to take another person’s perspective and feel the emotions of others.”

Yes, sure, we need empathy to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and understand them better. We want to understand where they are coming from so we can gain some common ground to resolve a conflict, find a basis for better collaboration, or support them in a more meaningful way.

Whatever the situation is, empathy certainly can help us build relationships, increase our potential for fruitful co-creation, and more.

But as the definition says, it’s simply the ability to do something beneficial with it. It’s not the attitude to get it done. And even less, the behavior to make it happen. For the beneficial behavior to take place, what we need is compassion.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There are definitely situations where empathy by itself has its place, where compassion isn’t required. These are the situations where it’s mostly just about understanding where the other person is coming from, understanding their feelings, being present with them through our empathic ability, conveying to them through active listening that we are willing to put ourselves in their shoes, to hear them out and to “feel with them.” That’s when we say we show empathy; we don’t just use it.

So what then is compassion? Merriam Webster says compassion is a “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Now, I personally would probably replace “distress” with a more general word, like “feelings about a specific situation” and “sympathetic consciousness” with “deep awareness,” but the important piece here is that it goes beyond a mere ability.

According to Verywellmind, “Compassion involves feeling another person's pain and wanting to take steps to help relieve their suffering.” Again, this means we go beyond the ability to feel; we feel compelled to do something about it.

Now, this “doing” doesn’t always mean we have to resolve the other person’s problems. Much rather, it means that we are there for them; that we signal our availability to support them (assuming they want that), that we are willing to listen. Being compassionate implies being mindful and using emotional intelligence.

2.       When your over-empathy hurts you, you must transform it into compassion.

On the flip side, highly empathic people, or empaths, as we call them, often suffer from their high levels of empathy. That’s because their over-empathy makes them extremely sensitive to other people’s pain.

Because when they don’t learn to transform their empathy into compassion, they take on other people’s suffering. They don’t only suffer when a cause for suffering shows up in their own lives. They also suffer for the homeless person they see on the sidewalk, a sick family member, a friend that’s going through a tough situation, or people they see suffering on TV. They take on other people’s pains, and that can become extremely stressful, debilitating and depressing. It can almost feel like a curse, and it can affect their health and wellbeing… unless they learn to transform their empathy into compassion.

Believe me, as a so-called “empath,” I know what I’m talking about. I have had to go through this transformation multiple times in my life to get to a point where I can effectively protect myself and call myself back to reason when I fall into the pity pain trap.

For example, I used to suffer tremendously with the homeless people I encountered along my way; until I understood that this doesn’t really help anybody, and that each person is responsible for their own life path and experience.

I can certainly offer support but suffering with them is not helping them or me. Bottomline, I had to learn to transform my empathy into compassion. This was a huge process for me, and it’s still ongoing…

The transformation was also necessary to become a good coach who can support her clients effectively and successfully. Just imagine if I’d suffer through each client’s situation! I’d be stressed out and depressed after each coaching session where a client shares a major challenge. I would not be able to support my clients the way they deserve to be supported. On the other hand, my empathic sensitivity allows me to work very intuitively and to make faster progress with and for my clients, especially when it comes to removing internal blocks.

3.       Being empathetic doesn’t automatically make you a better leader.

It’s important to consider that empathy can be used to the detriment of others; it can be easily abused to manipulate others. – How?

Well, when you can easily sense what others feel, how they internally react to specific behaviors or triggers, it becomes easier to trick them, to lead them on the path you want them go. You do this based on their feelings, concerns and fears, which you are able to receive. We see this happen in sales, in politics, in romantic relationships, etc. According to Psychopaths In Life, “Psychopaths do have an intellectual or ‘cold’ form of empathy, where they are very good at reading the emotional state of others in order to better manipulate them.”

Not only psychopaths employ this ability very successfully to catch their prey; many unethical, not-so-value-driven sales professionals do the same – as some of us know from our own experience. They use their prospects’ desperation, fear, or distress to sell them products or services even when those are not a good fit for the prospects. For these salespeople, money is the driving factor; they don’t care much about the service or product, and whether it will benefit the prospect or not.

When someone is highly empathic and their intentions are not pure, they could easily abuse their empathy to be invasive or controlling; to take advantage of others. – Not a behavior we want to see in leaders or partners of any kind.

I think we all can name some personalities who have high empathy and who very effectively use other people’s fears for their own interests; and they do not have an ounce of compassion.

In a nutshell, empathy can be used for positive or negative purposes (with good or bad intentions), while compassion is intrinsically well-intentioned.

An attitude of compassion often leads to an act of compassion.

So, as far as I’m concerned, what we need is compassionate friends, compassionate co-workers, compassionate business and life partners, and compassionate leaders,… not just empathic ones.

I hope you found these thoughts around empathy and compassion helpful.