I’ve never fully bought into the way empathy is positioned today. It’s treated as a kind of moral high ground. The idea is simple: if you can understand what someone is going through and feel it with them, you’re doing something right. In leadership, in relationships, even in society, empathy is presented as the answer.
On the surface, it makes sense. People want to be heard. They want to feel understood. They want their struggles to be acknowledged.
But when I started looking at outcomes instead of intentions, something didn’t add up.
I’ve seen deeply empathetic conversations that changed nothing. I’ve seen leaders who were widely seen as “empathetic” but consistently made poor decisions. I’ve seen people feel understood for years without ever moving forward.
That’s when I started questioning the premise. Not whether empathy is useful. But whether it’s being overvalued for what it actually does.
The Gap Between Feeling and Change
The core problem is that empathy is often mistaken for impact.
You listen to someone’s story. You understand their context. You acknowledge their struggle. Maybe you even feel it with them. And then the conversation ends.
They leave feeling lighter. You leave feeling like you’ve done something meaningful. But their situation remains unchanged.
This is where empathy quietly becomes indulgent. It creates emotional relief without movement. It allows both sides to avoid the harder part, which is asking what actually needs to change.
In coaching, I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly. People come in with real constraints. Difficult bosses, cultural pressure, financial limits, family expectations. All of it is valid.
But if the conversation stays at the level of “this is hard,” it becomes a loop. The situation gets described more clearly each time, but it doesn’t get altered.
Empathy, in that sense, becomes a very sophisticated way of staying stuck.
When Empathy Starts to Distort Judgment
There’s another layer that’s less obvious but more dangerous.
The more emotionally invested you become in someone’s situation, the harder it is to evaluate it clearly. You start making allowances you wouldn’t normally make. You lower standards without realising it. You hesitate to challenge because it feels insensitive.
This is where what psychologists call empathy bias starts to show up. We favour people we relate to or feel for, often at the cost of objectivity.
In practical terms, this affects decisions everywhere. Hiring, promotions, performance evaluations, even how leaders allocate time and attention.
It doesn’t feel like bias in the moment. It feels like kindness. But the outcome is often poor judgment. And over time, that compounds.
The Scaling Problem in Leadership
This issue becomes more pronounced as responsibility increases.
If you’re leading a team of five, you can afford to be emotionally involved with each person. If you’re leading fifty or a hundred, that model breaks down. You simply cannot deeply feel for everyone.
Leaders who try to do this tend to move in one of two directions. Either they burn out from the emotional load, or they become selective about where they invest their empathy. Both create problems.
Burnout reduces effectiveness. Selectivity creates inconsistency, which people quickly pick up on.
So leaders are left with a tension they don’t quite know how to resolve. They’re told empathy is essential, but the more they lean into it emotionally, the harder it becomes to stay objective and consistent.
What the Research Actually Says
First, high emotional empathy is not always beneficial. Neuroscience and psychology research shows that excessive affective empathy can lead to emotional overwhelm and increase the risk of psychological distress. Instead of helping, it can destabilise the person who is trying to help.
Second, there is a strong and repeatedly observed link between empathy and burnout, especially in caregiving and leadership roles. Studies in healthcare consistently show that individuals who score high on emotional empathy are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and reduced effectiveness over time.
Third, empathy is not neutral in decision-making. It introduces bias. People tend to favour those they feel for or relate to, which leads to inconsistent and sometimes poor decisions. The mechanism behind this is often described as empathy bias, where emotional identification overrides objective evaluation.
Fourth, empathy does not reliably lead to better outcomes. In some situations it increases helping behaviour. In others, it leads to avoidance, fatigue, or paralysis. Under stress or cognitive load, both empathy and prosocial behaviour tend to drop.
Finally, research consistently distinguishes between two forms of empathy. Emotional empathy involves feeling what others feel and is linked to distress and burnout. Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person’s perspective and is associated with better regulation and clearer decision-making.
Once you see this distinction, a lot of real-world behaviour starts to make sense.
The Part Empathy Misses: Agency
The biggest limitation of empathy, in my experience, is what it tends to overlook.
Empathy focuses heavily on context. Background, constraints, past experiences, structural limitations. All of this matters.
But in emphasising context, it often underplays agency.
Agency is the ability to choose, to act, to respond differently within a given situation. When conversations stay anchored in “this is what I’m dealing with,” they rarely move to “this is what I can do about it.”
And that shift is critical.
If you remove agency from the equation, you reduce people to their circumstances. You explain behaviour instead of changing it. That may feel compassionate, but it’s not useful.
A More Useful Way to Think About Empathy
At some point, I stopped treating empathy as the goal and started treating it as a tool.
Its role is to help me understand the situation clearly. Nothing more.
Once that understanding is in place, the real work begins. The question is no longer about how someone feels. It is about what is actually happening and what can be done within it.
This changes the direction of the conversation. You still acknowledge the constraints. You don’t dismiss them or minimise them. But you also bring equal attention to choices, trade-offs, and actions.
That combination is far more powerful than empathy alone.
The Difference Between Feeling and Understanding
Part of the confusion comes from not distinguishing between two very different forms of empathy.
Emotional empathy pulls you into the experience. You feel the frustration, the anxiety, the helplessness. It creates connection, but it also clouds judgment and drains energy.
Cognitive empathy allows you to step back and map the situation. You understand the pressures, the incentives, and the constraints without absorbing the emotional weight.
For leadership and decision-making, this second form is far more useful. It allows you to remain human without becoming ineffective.
What This Means in Practice
In coaching conversations, this shift is very visible.
When someone describes their situation, I want to understand it fully. What are they dealing with? What pressures are they under? What incentives are shaping their behaviour?
But I don’t stop there.
I also want to understand what they are doing within that situation. What they are avoiding. What they are choosing not to see. What trade-offs they are unwilling to make.
That’s where the conversation becomes productive. You move from describing reality to interacting with it. And that’s where change starts.
Helping People See Both Sides
Most people lean too heavily in one direction.
Some jump straight to action and ignore the reality of constraints. They give advice that sounds good but doesn’t work in the person’s context. Others stay stuck in the reality of the situation and never move to action.
Both approaches are incomplete.
What works is holding both at the same time. Seeing the situation clearly, without distortion. And seeing the available choices just as clearly.
That balance is rare, but it’s what drives movement.
Why Empathy Still Matters
Despite all this, empathy is not something to be discarded.
Without it, you miss context. You misread situations. You push people in directions that may not be viable. Empathy builds trust. It signals that you’re paying attention. It creates the conditions for a deeper conversation.
But it only works if it leads somewhere. If it remains the end point, it becomes a dead end.
Where I’ve Landed
Empathy is useful, but limited.
It opens the door, but it doesn’t move people through it.
If your goal is connection, empathy may be enough. If your goal is change, it isn’t.
What actually works is a combination of clear understanding and a firm focus on agency. You see the situation for what it is, and you still push for what can be done within it.
That requires more precision and more honesty. It also creates discomfort, because it shifts the conversation from explanation to responsibility.
But it is the only thing that consistently creates movement.
So yes, empathy is overrated when it is treated as the destination. Used properly, it is just the starting point.
Empathy, to me, is simple.
See the situation clearly.
And still see the choices.