Getting better at empathy: Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence

Executive overview

Most leaders conflate empathy with niceness — but empathy has three distinct forms, only one of which drives genuine leadership. Cognitive and emotional empathy let you understand and feel what others experience; empathic concern adds the crucial ingredient of actually caring and acting in their interest. Without empathic concern, empathy can be weaponised for manipulation.

The blind spot: over-empathising leads to avoiding hard feedback, which is itself a failure of care. Real empathic concern means setting limits, coaching, and delivering honest feedback — just as good parents do.

The best leaders are not the nicest leaders; they are the ones who combine care with the courage to act on it.

The three types of empathy

• Cognitive empathy: understanding how someone thinks and sees the world; enables effective communication
• Emotional empathy: sensing what someone is feeling in real time via brain-to-brain social circuitry
• Empathic concern: caring about the other person and acting in their interest — the parental caretaking instinct applied to leadership
• Cognitive and emotional empathy without concern can be used manipulatively
• Empathic concern is what makes people want to be led by you

Building empathic concern

• If you have it at home but not at work, ask why you leave it at the door
• Start with anyone you already care about and extend the mindset outward
• Mindfulness builds the foundation: observe and name your own emotions regularly
• Naming an emotion strengthens the neural circuitry for recognising it — in yourself and others
• The wider your emotional vocabulary, the more emotional information you can receive from others
• Leaders set emotional norms for their teams; a broader repertoire means more data in

Too much empathy is a real problem

• Over-empathetic leaders avoid giving constructive feedback, surface simmering tensions, or confronting underperformance
• This is not empathy — it is discomfort with conflict, misread as kindness
• Delivering negative feedback well is a fine art: frame it as useful information, not a put-down
• Empathic concern requires the courage to guide and set limits, not just to affirm

Developing emotional intelligence: where to start

• Don't target your weakest competency first — it's a hard lift with slow payoff
• Start with a mid-range competency you care about that will give the biggest improvement in your performance
• Secure easy wins first; momentum matters
• EI is learned and learnable at any point in life — unlike IQ

Assessing EI in hiring

• Self-tests and interviews are easily gamed; don't rely on them
• Ask behavioural questions: "Tell me about a time you did superbly" and "Tell me about a time you failed — what did you learn?"
• Listen for self-awareness and capacity to learn, not the story itself
• The most reliable method: a genuine probationary period with real feedback and real stakes

Vulnerability in leadership

• Productive vulnerability: "I'm working on X and want your help" — growth mindset, specific, actionable
• Counterproductive vulnerability: visible personal distress or rumination — makes teams anxious
• Emotions are most contagious from the leader outward; the social brain amplifies the leader's emotional signal
• Lead with a positive, energetic outlook — that is what people will catch

Self-doubt and anxiety

• Healthy self-doubt leads to a concrete next step; unhealthy self-doubt loops without resolution
• Rumination — the same worry with no action — is the problem, not doubt itself
• "High vs. low EI" oversimplifies; EI is a profile of 12 competencies, not a single score