Why Your Workplace Feels Colder (And What Leaders Need to Do About It)

59% of executives now treat empathy as optional. That number should alarm you. In this episode, we're naming what's really happening in workplaces right now: an empathy recession. We're breaking down why it keeps happening, what it's actually costing organizations, and what real empathetic leadership looks like in practice. Spoiler: it's not soft. It's strategic.

Transcript

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Welcome back to We Lead Anyway. I'm Noelle, senior leader, career coach, and your host. A couple of weeks ago, I hosted my first office hours. I just posted on LinkedIn that I'd be answering career questions for like 40 minutes and people showed up. One of the messages that I received later from one of the attendees said that being on the call moved her to tears because it made her recognize that she wanted more from her career, more from her leader. And I was so happy to hear that because that's why I do this the coaching, the podcast is to bring clarity to others. So if you want clarity, have questions, or just want to show up and listen, find me on LinkedIn, Noel Ramsey, R-A-N-Z-Y. I'll always post a time, a date, and a link for you to ask questions. Now, today I'm here to warn you about the recession. Oh, no, no, no, not that recession. We are in an empathy recession. And no, I'm not being dramatic. Well, I'm a little dramatic, but I'm also right. See, we spend years talking about psychological safety, about bringing your whole self to work, about leaders who lead with their heart. And somewhere between the return to office mandates, the mass layoffs, and the AI panic, a whole lot of executives quietly decided that empathy was optional. And today we're going to talk about what that decision is actually costing, why it keeps happening, and what real empathy and leadership looks like, because it's not what most people think. So let me give you a number that stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw it. Kind of didn't surprise me though. 59% of executives now view empathy as a nice to have, not an essential, not a core competency to work with people, humans. A nice to have, like a snack bar or free coffee in the break room. 59%. And if you think that attitude is staying in the C-suite, it's not. It's trickling down and quickly because culture doesn't come from the poster on the wall. No, it comes from the behavior of the most powerful person in the room. And what's wild is that this shift is happening at exactly the wrong time. Because right now, employees are navigating AI-driven restructuring, layoffs, uncertainty about their roles and their futures, and a geopolitical climate that makes every morning news feel like a bad reaction to silly mushrooms. People are not okay. And leaders are increasingly responding to that by telling people to toughen up and hit their numbers. How's that working out for you? Let me check the engagement data. Oh, oh. Only 23% of people worldwide say that they are engaged at work. 23% worldwide. That tracks. So how did we get here? Because it wasn't always like this. Or at least it wasn't always this openly like this. So here's what I think happened. The last few years were chaotic. The pandemic, the great resignation, quiet quitting, loud quitting, the pendulum swinging, hard-toward employee-centered workplaces. And then some leaders honestly overcorrected. They confused empathy with permissiveness. They thought caring about people meant no accountability. And when performance started to slip, they blamed the empathy. So the response was an overcorrection in the other direction. We got a wave of what I call accountability theater. Return to office policies delivered via memo at 5 p.m. on a Friday. CEO going on record saying remote workers are not performing. Performance improvement plans rolling out with all the warmth of a prostate exam. And I need to be very clear about this. Accountability and empathy are not opposites. That is a false choice that leaders make when they don't know how to do both at the same time. The best leaders I've seen in my career, they hold the line and they hold your hand. They tell you the truth and they do it in a way that doesn't make you feel like trash. They expect a lot and then they show up for you. That's not soft. That's a leader. And it's actually harder to do than either extreme. So before we talk about what empathy looks like in leadership, we need to clear up some misconceptions because they think a lot of resistance comes from people misunderstanding what empathy is actually asking of them. So empathy is not agreeing with everyone. Empathy is not absorbing everyone's emotions until you are now burned out. I've seen a lot of leaders do this and then they burn out spectacularly. That's not empathy. That's a boundaries conversation. And empathy is not letting people off the hook for poor performance. You can absolutely hold someone accountable while also acknowledging that this is a hard conversation for the both of you. And empathy is not a weakness. I know we've been over this as a culture, but clearly we need to revisit it because people are still out here conflating care with incompetence. Here's what empathy actually is in a leadership context. It's the ability to understand someone's experience well enough to communicate with them in a way that lands. That's it. It's not rocket science. It's not about feeling their feelings for them. It's just about understanding their perspective well enough to meet them where they are instead of where you wish they were. And when you can do that, you make better decisions. You retain better people and you have harder conversations that actually go somewhere. And then you build teams that trust you enough to tell you the truth. That is a competitive advantage. Now let me tell you what actually happens when empathy makes like Elvis and leaves the building. Your best people leave first. Not the ones who are just coasting. They don't care. The ones who have options, the ones who are talented enough to go somewhere else. They leave quietly, they take their institutional tribal knowledge with them, and then they post about it somewhere later. And the people who stay, they stay because they have to, not because they want to. And people who have to be somewhere versus people who want to be somewhere are not the same workers. They're not the same employee, not even close. You also lose the truth. When leaders create environments where people feel like their experience doesn't matter, they just stop being honest. They tell you what you want to hear. They nod in meetings, they vent in parking lots. And then one day something blows up and you should have caught it six months ago, but you didn't because no one felt safe enough to raise it. And here's the crapper, okay? Leaders who check out on empathy often think they're being strong. They're forced to be reckoned with. They think they're focused on results. They're not. They're just less informed. And then you're running on data that's been filtered through a culture of fear. Real strength is being able to hear hard things and do something productive about them. That requires a kind of relationship where people believe you actually care what they're going through. Okay, so we've diagnosed the problem. Let's talk about what you can actually do. There are a few things. First, make empathy a performance skill, not a personality trait. If you lead with empathy when you feel like it, it's just a mood. There's your inconsistency. You need to treat it the same way you treat any other leadership capability. Something you practice, improve, and get measured on. Second, get comfortable with the phrase, that sounds hard. Not as a way to dismiss someone, but as a genuine acknowledgement before you pivot to problem solving. Most leaders skip straight to fixing. This is what we do. We we resolve things. The three seconds it takes you to acknowledge someone's experience first, it changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. Third, separate understanding from agreement. You don't have to agree with someone to demonstrate they understand their perspective. In fact, understanding their perspective makes you significantly better at making the case for why things need to be different. You're not validating the problem, you're equipping yourself to solve it. Four, create systems, not just moments in time. One-on-ones only work if people believe you actually want to hear the truth. That trust is built over dozens of small moments where you respond to honesty with curiosity instead of defensiveness. Or we've already gone through this, or this is the way we've always done it. The empathy recession is real, but it's also reversible. And leaders who figure that out, the ones who understand that caring and expecting excellence are not mutually exclusive, they're the ones whose teams will actually follow them through what's coming next. I genuinely believe that most leaders don't want to be disconnected from their people. They just got lost somewhere between the pressure and the strategy and the quarterly business review. So if this hits home for you today, not because you're on the receiving end, but because you recognized it in yourself, maybe reflect on that. That awareness, that's the beginning of something. And if you are on the receiving end and you're interested in how to navigate that, visit leadwithnoel.com. And if you have a question or a topic you'd like me to discuss, email me at noelleadsanyway at gmail.com. And until then, go take up space. Empathetically.