Sympathy vs Empathy in Leadership: Whats The Difference?
Sympathy and empathy are words thrown around a lot in discussions around leadership, usually in an abstract way to get some sense of what they are and are not. However, I’ve rarely experienced anyone provide real-world context to demonstrate what empathy is and how it differs from sympathy, especially as they are often used synonymously. Which of the two manifest in a leader determines how much they will either support or undermine their team members efforts, influence their team culture and affect business outcomes.
Let’s explore this now.
Sympathy vs Empathy
The model below is based on a decision matrix the US Navy SEALs use for leadership selection. For the purpose of this article I have swapped Low Trust for Sympathy, defined as: Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune, and High Trust with Empathy, defined as: The ability to understand someone else’s feelings. In the interest of remaining fact based, both definitions have been taken from the Oxford English Dictionary. With them we can demonstrate their relationship with Performance, defined as: A demonstration of technical skills. Four leadership archetypes emerge to offer a sense of who might manifest in each area:
These four archetypes correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual:
Parent: Overwhelmed, does too much of teams work, some of own, solves too many problems for others.
Slave: Drowning, does everyone else’s work, none of their own, first to solve other peoples problems.
Counsellor: Overly supportive, endlessly talks things through, crusading inertia, nothing gets done.
Coach: Own work is balanced with teams, facilitates team to be independent and solve own problems.
To put some context around this let me give you an example:
Quite a few years ago I was supporting a CEO to grow their company, part of that included supporting other senior leaders to enhance their leadership skills and become more efficient & effective. One senior leader in particular was very much in the parent category. As noble as their intentions were they repeatedly fell in to the trap of doing too much of their teams work. This meant that projects they were responsible for leading or contributing to were either late or stalled completely due to the perception of being overwhelmed with too much to do.
Impact on Organisation
If we stay with the modified Navy SEAL’s leadership selection model and apply it to a collective we can demonstrate how each leadership archetype affects their team culture. Four organisational states emerge:
These four cultures correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in the culture of any team or organisation:
Directed: Under developed strategic thinking, some resilience, likely have problems solved for them.
Dependent: Absence of strategic thinking, learned helplessness, expect problems to be solved for them.
Assuaged: Overly supported, likely to think they are performing well, absence of objective metrics.
Autonomous: Pro-active, experimental, personally responsible, accountable, resilient and tenacious.
To continue with our example: During coaching sessions with this senior leader I discovered their reason for stepping in so often was they didn’t want their team to become overwhelmed in their roles. For many of them this was their first full-time job and the senior leader wanted each team member to have a great first experience, indeed an honourable intention.
What they had failed to consider was the symptomatic by-product of inadvertently training the team to repeatedly ask their line manager to overcome their challenges for them, thus stunting professional development, decreasing their market value and affecting their career prospects long term should they choose to move on. Once this was pointed out they were genuinely horrified, so we set a course to move from Parent to Coach and move the team from Directed to Autonomous.
Impact on Business
If we continue to stay with the model from the Navy SEAL’s and change the Y-axis to Effectiveness, defined as: Degree of mission success, and X-axis to Efficiency, defined as: Best use of resources, we can correlate the impact of organisational state on business outcomes:
High Cost/High Yield: Exhausts resources to achieve a great result, expensive and short lived.
High Cost/Low Yield: Exhausts resources to achieve a poor result, which is just expensive.
Low Cost/Low Yield: Barely moves the needle, useless if you want progress or change.
Low Cost/High Yield: Optimises available resources to achieve sustainable results.
The team in our example operated a Helpdesk whose sole focus was query resolution. While in the Directed quadrant a bottle neck had formed, created by the line manager attempting to solve too many queries on behalf of their team, rather than facilitating their resolution via intended distribution. Once they had all moved in to the Autonomous quadrant the rate of query resolution measurably shot up. In fact, the entire Helpdesk triage system was reworked to create more capacity within the same headcount, significantly reducing the cost of query resolution, increasing customer uptime and customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
This is the impact one hire in a position of authority can have on a team, department or entire organisation, for better or worse. I’m sure as you read through you placed people you know in different quadrants. Now that you’ve assessed everyone else, might it be worth assessing yourself against these models?
Determine when and how you tip in and out of the 4 different styles.
Ask those around you for feedback.
Take note of what you are doing well.
Take note of what needs work.
Set some next steps to up your game accordingly.
If you want to learn about other Leadership archetypes, such as the Bully, Micromanager, Puppet and Leader, and chart their impact on culture and business outcomes then do read: Leadership: Styles Cause and Effect.
If you are interested in learning about the effect an absence of empathy can have on an organisation then do read: Leadership: Narcissists, Sociopaths & Psychopaths.
If you would benefit from support to develop your leadership style and lead your existing team more effectively, or prepare for your next role, ensuring you take a strategic approach, then please do schedule a call with me by putting a 60mins in my diary at a time that suits you. We can discuss your situation and options over an eCoffee.
Best Wishes
Kenny
