Wise empathy isn’t about feeling more. It’s about feeling smarter.

Most leaders know they should be empathetic.
But nobody teaches you how to actually do it.

Harvard Business Review just published research that basically told me I'd been empathizing wrong for years.

There's a term that reframes this perfectly: Wise Empathy.

It's not about absorbing everyone's emotions like a sponge — wringing yourself out in the parking lot after every 1:1, wondering why you're exhausted by Tuesday.
And it's not about faking compassion while silently spiraling.

Wise empathy is about discernment...knowing when to share in someone's feelings and when to simply care without drowning in them.

Because not every moment calls for the same response.

Someone shares a win? Share it. Catch their excitement. Feel it with them.
Someone shares a struggle? Care, don't carry. Offer compassion without collapsing under the weight of it.

In my book, I talk about creating psychological safety as the "perfect simmer." Wise empathy is the heat control knob.

Turn it too high on negative emotions? You burn out. Turn it too low on positive ones? Your team stops sharing wins with you altogether.

Most leaders I know are exhausted from caring too much about the wrong things and not enough about the right ones.

They'll absorb every complaint, every frustration, every bad day — then completely miss the moment someone lands a win because they're too drained to show up for it.

That’s not empathy.
That’s just poorly distributed emotional labor.

Wise empathy isn’t about feeling more.
It’s about feeling smarter.