When Empathy Becomes the Whole Story

A “What Else Might Be True?” leadership reflection

In my work with senior leaders, I keep noticing the same pattern: the very qualities that helped someone succeed earlier in their career can begin to create friction as the context around them changes. This series looks closely at those moments. Each article uses a simple reframing question, “what else might be true?” to explore how identity, intention, and impact can quietly drift apart, and how leaders can widen their range without losing themselves in the process.

The reflections in this series are composites, drawn from recurring themes I see across multiple leaders and situations. Details have been intentionally blended and altered to preserve confidentiality, while keeping the underlying leadership dynamics intact.

What I See

Across very different organizations some growing quickly and constantly reprioritizing, others operating under heavier operational or regulatory pressure a similar challenge often surfaces for leaders who strongly identify as empathetic.  In these examples, the leader experiences empathy as central to how leadership is practiced. There is a genuine attentiveness to how work is landing on people: noticing when workloads are wearing teams down, when personal circumstances require flexibility, or when the pace of change begins to feel unsustainable. Responses are thoughtful. Listening comes easily. Caring about people isn’t a tactic to be deployed selectively; it sits at the core of how leadership is understood.

At the same time, the environments involved are demanding. Work is highly interdependent. Delays in one area create downstream effects elsewhere. Commitments are visible, timelines matter, and trade offs are constant. Leadership is experienced less through good intent and more through clarity, follow through, and forward movement.

For these leaders, evidence of a problem emerges through multiple signals over time. Feedback from their senior leaders emphasizes the need for greater urgency. Peers express uncertainty about timelines or decisions. Commitments drift. The message, while rarely stated directly, begins to land: empathy may be slowing execution.

From the leader’s point of view, this feedback is unsettling. It can feel as though something fundamental is being called into question. The quality that brings the most pride being attentive, understanding, and responsive is now being framed as a constraint. Empathy isn’t experienced as hesitation or avoidance. It feels like responsibility. The idea that it could be getting in the way is difficult to reconcile.

What Else Might be True?

What else might be true is that empathy doesn’t only show up as accommodation or flexibility. In complex organizations, empathy can also show up as clarity. Being explicit about priorities, timelines, and non negotiables may not be a departure from caring, but another expression of it. Prolonged ambiguity, delayed decisions, and extended trade offs can create just as much stress for teams as a difficult call made quickly and cleanly.

What else might be true is that senior leadership feedback isn’t a request to care less, but an invitation to express care differently. In environments with high interdependence, forward movement often reduces anxiety more effectively than continued deliberation.

And what else might be true is that the identity “I care deeply about my people” has quietly narrowed into something more specific: “I try not to be the source of discomfort.” Those two ideas are related, but they are not the same. Avoiding discomfort in the short term can sometimes create more of it later, particularly when teams are left waiting for direction or clarity.

None of this makes empathy wrong. It suggests that the expression of empathy may need to evolve as the demands of the role change. At this level of leadership, growth often isn’t about abandoning a core identity, but about expanding it to meet the realities of scale, pace, and consequence.  The real question isn’t whether to be more or less empathetic. It’s whether holding people to clear standards, making hard calls, and creating momentum might actually be consistent with the leader one already believes oneself to be.

A more generative reflection might be this:
If I were fully committed to my team’s long term success not just their immediate comfort what would that ask of me right now?  That question doesn’t negate identity. It stretches it. And often, that stretch is exactly where leadership growth happens. 

Reflection for the reader
As you read this, reflect on your own relationship with empathy as a leader:
• How do I typically express empathy with my team?
• Where might my empathy be helping people move forward and where might it be unintentionally slowing things down?
• How can I help my leader understand the intention behind my empathy while trying to understand where they may see it as an obstacle?
• What other ways could empathy show up in how I lead, beyond how I usually express it today? 

Using AI to go deeper
If you want to explore this more deeply, you could use AI as a reflective thought partner rather than a source of advice. You might try a prompt like this:

I’m a leader in a complex organization who strongly identifies as someone who cares deeply about my people. In a recent situation, that identity may have slowed decision making or execution. I don’t want advice yet. I want help thinking this through. Please act as a thought partner. Ask me reflective questions one at a time to help me explore what else might be true about how my empathy is shaping my behavior, how others might be experiencing it, and what alternative ways of expressing that same value could look like in this situation. Pause after each question and wait for my response before continuing.

If you’d like to receive future articles in this series, let me know here or email me at geoff@geoffbalzanocoaching.com.