Empathy as a High-Performance Competency

Abstract

This chapter explores the history, definition, use and importance of Empathy as a High-Performance Competency (H-PC). Empathy is perceived to be a people-related capability that forms part of a Developmental H-PC factor, which operationalises the democratic style of leadership. It is argued that Empathy contributes to leadership effectiveness through multi-dimensional thinking, win-win alliance formation, high-performance team working and the creation of organic organisational structures. It is suggested that four major challenges, including the resolution of humanity’s greatest challenges, require leaders to have Empathy as a strength. Data are presented that indicate Empathy, and other key H-PC, are underdeveloped in modern leaders, which suggests a significant reorientation of leadership development is required.

1. Introduction

What characteristics do good leaders have? The question has been debated throughout human history as Xenophon’s “The Education of Cyrus” [1] and Suetonius’ “How to be a Bad Emperor” [2] testify. In modernity, particularly since World War Two, the question has been addressed empirically. One strand of international research has focused on learnable leadership behaviours that raise organisational performance. This strand has identified 11 High-Performance Competencies (H-PC) that are classified into four factors: Thinking, Achieving, Developmental, and Directional. The Thinking and Achieving clusters are seen as task-oriented behaviours, while the Developmental and Directional clusters are considered people-oriented (see Tables 1 and 2). Empathy, which has had several labels including ‘Interpersonal Search’ and ‘Perceptual Objectivity’, is one of three behaviours in the Developmental cluster. The chapter explores the history, definition, use and importance of Empathy as a H-PC.

Domain	Factor	Competency
Task	Thinking	Information Search
		Concept Formation
		Conceptual Flexibility
	Achieving	Proactive Orientation
		Achievement Orientation
People	Developmental	Empathy
		Managing Interaction
		Developmental Orientation
	Directional	Impact
		Self-confidence
		Presentation

Table 1.

H-PC domains, factors and competencies.

Factor	H-PC	Definition
Thinking	Information search	Gathers many kinds of information and uses a wide variety of sources to build a rich informational environment in preparation for decision making in the organisation.
	Concept formation	Builds frameworks or models or forms concepts, hypotheses or ideas based on information; becomes aware of patterns, trends and cause/effect relations by linking disparate information.
	Conceptual flexibility	Identifies feasible alternatives or multiple options in planning and decision making; holds different options in focus simultaneously and evaluates their pros and cons.
Achieving	Proactive orientation	Structures the task for the team; implements plans and ideas; takes responsibility for all aspects of the situation even beyond ordinary boundaries – and for the success and failure of the group.
	Achievement orientation	Possesses high internal work standards and sets ambitious, risky and yet attainable goals; wants to do things better, to improve, to be more effective and efficient; measures progress against targets.
Developmental	Empathy	Uses open and probing questions, summaries, paraphrasing etc. to understand the ideas, concepts and feelings of another; can comprehend events, issues, problems, opportunities from viewpoint of others.
	Managing interaction	Involves others and builds cooperative teams in which group members feel valued and empowered and have shared goals.
	Developmental orientation	Creates a positive climate where staff increase the accuracy of their awareness of their strengths and limitations; provides coaching, training & developmental resources to improve performance.
Directional	Impact	Uses various methods (e.g., persuasive arguments, modelling behaviour, inventing symbols, forming alliances & appealing to others’ interests) to gain support for ideas, strategies & values.
	Self-confidence	States own ‘stand’ or position on issues; unhesitatingly takes decisions when required and commits self and others; expresses confidence in the future success of the actions to be taken.
	Presentation	Presents ideas clearly with ease and interest so that the other person (or audience) understands what is being communicated; uses technical, symbolic, non-verbal and visual aids effectively.

Table 2.

Definitions of the H-PC.

The chapter suggests that Empathy contributes to leadership effectiveness through multi-dimensional thinking, win-win alliance formation, high performance teamworking and the creation of organic organisational structures. It is suggested that four major challenges, including the resolution of humanity’s greatest challenges, require leaders to have strengths in Empathy. Finally, data is presented that indicate Empathy, and other key H-PC, are underdeveloped in leaders, which suggests a significant reorientation of leadership development is required.

The chapter proceeds in six sections. First, the origins of Empathy in modern leadership behaviour research are traced; this results in a definition of Empathy and its detailed specification via a five-point behaviourally anchored rating scale. Second, H-PC assumptions about Empathy are explored. The third section considers Empathy’s interaction with other H-PC’s, while the fourth explores Empathy’s role in high performance team development. Fifthly, Empathy’s current and future importance is considered. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

2. The origins, definition, and specification of empathy as a H-PC

Empathy has been explored by four streams of leadership research into learnable behaviours that may be associated with superior organisational performance: (i) Initiating Structure and Consideration; (ii) Transformational Leadership Theory; (iii) Behavioral Complexity Theory; and (iv) Managerial Competencies. The findings of these four streams in relation to Empathy are summarized below.

1. Initiating structure and consideration researchers in this stream include Bales [3], Hemphill [4], Likert [5], Stodgill [6] and, Fleishman et al. [7]. The Consideration dimension encompasses several empathetic behaviours including: (a) listening to and understanding the ideas, feelings, needs and goals of subordinates; (b) using summaries to test own understanding of others’ ideas; (c) giving group members ample opportunity to express their own perspective; and (d) leaders asking for opinions and suggestions. The meta-analysis of Judge et al. [8] found a significant positive relationship between Consideration and leadership performance indices.

2. Transformational leadership theory has been widely propounded and discussed—most especially by House [9], Burns [10] and, Bass [11]. The ‘Individualized Consideration’ dimension of this theory describes leaders using empathetic behaviours like ‘discovering and understanding the specific needs of and ideas of individual staff members’. The criterion validity of this dimension was supported by the meta-analysis of Judge and Piccolo [12].

3. Behavioral complexity theory catalyzed the leadership behaviour studies of Schroder et al. [13], Streufert & Swezey [14], Streufert et al. [15], Tetlock et al. [16] and, Suedfeld & Tetlock [17]. One validated competency in this research stream—Interpersonal Differentiation—is strongly empathetic in nature; it is defined as ‘understanding the integrations and dimensions used by others in making judgments’.

4. Managerial Competency research includes the seminal studies of Boyatzis [18] and Schroder [19]. The Perceptual Objectivity and Interpersonal Search dimensions of Boyatzis and Schroder respectively focus on Empathy. The former competency is defined as ‘understanding another person’s point of view’ and the latter as ‘discovering, understanding and verbalizing the concepts and ideas of others’. Validation studies by Schroder [13] and Cockerill [20] indicate that Empathy is associated with superior leadership effectiveness.

In summary, research to identify competencies that are significantly and positively correlated with organizational performance have explored behaviours that can be regarded as empathetic in nature. These include listening, asking questions to understand another’s point of view, asking clarificatory questions and summarizing the perspective of another. Based on these findings, H-PC researchers have formally defined Empathy as follows:

‘A set of learnable behaviours (including the use of open and probing questions, summaries and paraphrasing) that enable an individual to accurately and non-judgmentally understand the ideas, feelings, motives, goals, perspectives and mind-sets of others.’

To accurately and reliably measure the observed empathetic skill of individuals, H-PC researchers devised a five-point behaviorally anchored rating scale for Empathy—see Table 3. Training and certification programmes show that the Empathy Rating Scale, like those for the other 10 H-PC, enables assessors to achieve very high levels of reliability; to pass the H-PC accreditation test, a trainee’s ratings must show a minimum of 80% concordance with verified expert ratings.

Rating	Descriptor	Observed behaviour	Outcome
5	Strategic strength	Encourages others to speak freely and openly without judgement, rebuke or punishment. For example: (i) Uses self-disclosure to encourage others to speak out; (ii) Supports other when they express their innermost thoughts and feelings; (iii) Uses surveys to systematically understand the viewpoint of others; and (iv) Gathers the thoughts and feelings of others through workshops and events.	Perpetuates high performance
4	Strength	Tests own understanding of another’s viewpoint. For example: (i) Uses paraphrasing to validate understanding; (ii) Summarizes a perspective and confirms it is accurate; (iii) Precisely describes a situation from another’s viewpoint; and (iv) Explains and verifies how another is thinking and feeling at a given moment.	High performance
3	Adequacy	Uses non-judgemental behaviour to elicit another’s viewpoint. For example: (i) Asks open questions; (ii) Asks for an elaboration or example; (iii) Probes neutrally in depth to understand another’s schema and/or mindset; and (iv) Body language is non-evaluatory when another is expressing her/his views.	Average performance
2	Undeveloped	Does not actively elicit the viewpoint of others. For example: (i) Listens passively without trying to elicit the inner world of others; (ii) Expresses interest when others volunteer their views but does not actively explore or validate them; (iii) Does not ask others how they are thinking or feeling; and (iv) Ignores others when they are agitated or upset.	No effect on performance
1	Limitation	Inhibits the free and open expression of viewpoints. For example: (i) Regularly interrupts and overtalks others; (ii) Reacts judgementally (either verbally or non-verbally) when others express their ideas or views; (iii) Has difficulty summarizing the perspective of another without introducing own ideas; and (iv) Inaccurately assumes others share own perspective.	Reduces performance

Table 3.

Empathy rating scale.

Having described the origins of Empathy as a H-PC and presented the definition and rating scale used by researchers in this field, the next section explores the assumptions this research stream makes about the nature of Empathy.

3. H-PC assumptions about the nature of empathy

In H-PC research, Empathy is considered an interpersonal skill that enables individuals to comprehend accurately the conceptions of others; to see the inner and outer worlds of another, or some aspect of them, ‘through that person’s eyes’. The perceptions of others, it is assumed, may be very different to one’s own, so comprehension requires considerable empathetic skill. That skill includes being non-evaluative for two reasons at least. First, evaluation involves the imposition of one’s own judgements on the perceptions of another, which makes accurately understanding those perceptions extremely difficult, if not impossible. Second, when people experience evaluation, whether it be verbal or non-verbal, they tend to stop sharing their perceptions, which defeats the purpose of using Empathy.

Underpinning Empathy is a second H-PC research assumption: that individuals perceive themselves and their environment through the conceptual schemata they have created using cognitive processes that may function unconsciously. H-PC research is grounded in Behavioral Complexity Theory (Cockerill & Satish [21]), so it emphasizes two structural cognitive processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to the number of conceptual dimensions a person uses, whilst integration refers to the way dimensions are brought together to produce an outcome (such as an attitude, vision, goal, decision or plan). Whilst cultural socialization results in shared constructs, the distinctive cognitive processing (and experience) of every individual gives them unique conceptualisations, which must be elicited using Empathy if they are to be understood by another.

Lastly, H-PC research assumes that the unique perceptions of others may be valuable; for example, they may provide new solutions, stimulate creativity and innovation, enable better forecasting, or help mutually beneficial alliances to be forged. In essence, the use of Empathy expands the cognitive space and resources leaders are using, which provides a greater potential for synergistic value creation. By leveraging this value potential, empathetic leaders increase organisational performance. In essence, Empathy is an H-PC because it creates superior outcomes by expanding the cognitive space and resources used by leaders.

4. Empathy’s interaction with the other H-PC’s

Whilst the confirmatory factor analyses of Chorvat [22] and Guenole et al. [23] indicate the 11 H-PC are independent behavioural dimensions, exploratory factor analysis and real-world experience show that structural and valuable relationships exist between the HP-C. This section explores the relations most applicable to Empathy.

4.1 Empathy’s relationship with the Developmental and Directional factors

At the highest level, as discussed above, the 11 H-PC can be separated into the Task and People domains; the former includes 5 H-PC that subdivide into Thinking and Achieving factors, whilst the latter contains 6 H-PC that split into the Developmental and Directional factors – see Table 1. Empathy, alongside Managing Interaction and Developmental Orientation, loads on the Developmental factor in the People domain. Analysis and experience suggest the Developmental and Directional factors constitute two different and fundamental styles of interpersonal interaction that build leadership effectiveness in distinctive ways.

The Developmental factor enables leaders to function in a democratic and nurturing way. Using this factor leaders build teams, help people to learn and grow and expand the cognitive space being utilized by encouraging others to share and understand each other’s perspectives. The Developmental behaviours are highly demanded in organically designed organizations that require high levels of lateral integration and co-operation (Burns and Stalker [24]) and in participative situations that seek to foster imagination, creativity and innovation. When used in combination, the Developmental H-PC operationalize the democratic style of leadership.

Using the Directional factor leaders can function in a top-down, charismatic way that uses persuasion, decisiveness, confidence and high-impact presentations to inspire people and align them with pre-determined visions, policies, decisions and plans. The Directional behaviours are highly demanded in mechanistic organizations that require vertical integration and in crisis/emergency situations where clarity, confidence and rapid action are vital. When leaders use the Directional H-PC in combination, they operationalize the autocratic style of leadership.

In sum, Empathy loads on the Developmental H-PC factor, which contrasts with the Directional H-PC factor. These two people-oriented H-PC factors give behavioural expression to the democratic and autocratic leadership styles that have consumed so much attention throughout history and that vie for ascendancy in democracies and dictatorships across the globe today. The former style builds lateral integration in organisations and the former builds vertical integration.

Besides exploring H-PC relationships within factors, it is also useful to consider interactions across factors. For Empathy, the linkages it has with both Conceptual Flexibility and Impact are worth highlighting, as the next section discusses.

4.2 Empathy and conceptual flexibility

Conceptual Flexibility is the skill of keeping different perspectives or options in mind simultaneously and evaluating their pros and cons in a balanced, unbiased way. In complex situations that incorporate multiple, different perspectives, leaders must use Empathy to comprehend those viewpoints and Conceptual Flexibility to keep them in focus simultaneously. Hence, the use of these 2 H-PC in combination enables leaders to grasp the complexity of multifaceted situations and take decisions that address them holistically. Such decisions have a high probability of success. Leaders who fail to use Empathy and Conceptual Flexibility in combination make incomplete, one-sided analyses and take narrow decisions that are not based on all the viable options. Such decisions can be derailed quickly during the implementation phase when negative, unanticipated factors kick-in; this is particularly the case when neither Empathy nor Conceptual Flexibility have been used. Hence, in real-life, there is normally a stark difference in performance outcomes between using Empathy and Conceptual Flexibility in tandem and not doing so, especially when the stakes are high.

The prevalence of the non-combined approach was highlighted by unpublished research conducted by the author at London Business School. 180 individuals, who held middle management positions in a variety of British-based businesses, participated in a two-hour, six-person, group decision making exercise. The 30 groups attended over a six-month period. In the exercise, the six participants adopted the role of different functional directors in a simulated firm; they were tasked with creating an agreed strategy that would significantly improve firm performance. Having each read a different two-page brief that described issues and potential solutions from the perspective of the function they were representing, the participants interacted as a leadership group for 90 minutes. Interdependencies between functions in the simulated firm meant participants needed to share the salient information contained in their functional perspectives to create optimal solutions. Researchers recorded how much salient information was shared by participants during the group meeting. On average, participants shared just over 20% of the salient information – the range being five to 36%. On no occasion was sufficient information elicited by participants via Empathy for them to build a holistic, optimal solution. Instead of using Empathy and Conceptual Flexibility in combination, participants used the Directional H-PC; they presented and confidently made a persuasive case for their own solution; the lack of conceptual integration meant voting was used in most cases to decide the way forward.

Work shadowing of managers and executives by H-PC researchers and practitioners indicate the simulated results are not unrepresentative of real-life – a conclusion that is supported by the summary H-PC profile presented in Table 4. These findings suggests that sizable performance improvements are widely available if leaders learn to use Empathy and Conceptual Flexibility together.

Domain	Factor	Competency	Mean	Std Dev
Task	Thinking	Information Search	3.44	0.38
		Concept Formation	3.44	0.38
		Conceptual Flexibility	2.53	0.39
	Achieving	Proactive Orientation	2.87	0.40
		Achievement Orientation	2.39	0.43
People	Developmental	Empathy	2.73	0.63
		Managing Interaction	2.65	0.51
		Developmental Orientation	2.68	0.43
	Directional	Impact	2.81	0.43
		Self-confidence	2.87	0.31
		Presentation	3.11	0.40

Table 4.

H-PC averages (n = 1632).

4.3 Empathy and Impact

Impact encompasses skills like the use of persuasive arguments, behaviour modelling, symbols and storytelling to influence others and gain support for ideas, decisions, strategies, plans, visions and values. Leaders skilled in Impact attract resources, build momentum and gain political traction. The use of Empathy with Impact takes leaders to a higher plane of effectiveness. Empathy enables leaders to understand the needs, desires, goals and visions of others; when leaders combine this information with the use of Impact, they forge mutually beneficial win-win alliances that significantly boost organisational performance. Hence, Empathy is vitally important to the many leaders who have Directional strengths because it shifts them away from a narrow, top-down autocratic style to a Socialized Directional style that incorporates multi-faceted coalitions and is better suited to the modern world.

In summary, this section has discussed Empathy’s location in the H-PC Developmental factor and suggested that this democratically oriented factor contrasts with the autocratically oriented Directional factor. It has been argued that the Developmental and Directional factors provide leaders with two different styles of interpersonal interaction that both have situational benefits and drawbacks. Furthermore, the section has explored how leaders can synergistically use Empathy in combination with other H-PCs to achieve performance gains and to reduce the unilateral, one-sided character of the Directional factor. The next section explores the role Empathy plays in high-performance team development.

5. Empathy’s role in high-performance team development

The modern world is increasingly characterized by innovation, complexity and dynamism, which raises the need for flexible, organic organisational designs and makes traditional mechanistic designs less relevant. Organic structures require some top-down vertical integration, but they rely most on lateral integration, which occurs within and between organizations. Besides individuals and systems, teams of various sorts (e.g., project, cross-boundary, strategy, quality control, crisis, leadership) build both lateral and vertical integration and their effectiveness contributes significantly to the performance of organic designs. As the previous section described, H-PC research in simulated and real-life organisations indicate that many teams function sub-optimally. To help address this need, Professor H M Schroder and the author designed a high-performance team development (H-PTD) methodology, which trains participants to use a cluster of the H-PC that includes Empathy. Since its creation, H-PTD has been applied in multiple, diverse organisations across the world. This section outlines H-PTD methodology and focuses on the role played by Empathy.

The origins of H-PTD can be traced to Conceptual Systems Theory (see Harvey et al. [25]), which was a forerunner of Behavioral Complexity Theory. In H-PTD, six participants attend a two-day, simulation-based workshop; a trainer describes the H-PTD process and coaches the participants in the structured use of 4 H-PC: Empathy, Conceptual Flexibility, Managing Interaction and Developmental Orientation (hereafter, these four are called the ‘team H-PC cluster’).

As Figure 1 portrays, H-PTD is based on a six-stage process of progression: Externalizing, Sharing, Comprehending, Strategizing, Deciding and Perpetuating. Progression occurs sequentially through the stages because each one is a necessary foundation for the next. In real-life, teams can, and often do, become ‘arrested’ at a stage, which halts progression, or they can regress from a higher to a lower stage. Progression enhances the collective cognitive and interpersonal functioning of participants. After a review of Stage 1 (Externalizing), this section concentrates on Stage 2 (Sharing) because it heavily demands the use of Empathy.

Figure 1.

The stages of high-performance team development.

Stage 1: Externalizing. When individuals join a newly formed team, in either simulated or real-life settings, they bring along a lifetime of experiences gained from their interaction with a variety of institutions (e.g., familial, commercial, governmental, religious and international). Hence, the character of team members has been shaped by the existence and enforcement of external institutional rules – both formal (laws, rules, precedents, procedures etc.) and informal (ethics, values, social norms etc.) (North [26]). H-PTD calls Stage 1 ‘Externalizing’ to reflect the effect environmental institutions have on individuals; to varying degrees, this effect manifests itself in in three ways. First, team members exhibit some degree of external dependency; having been moulded throughout their lives by external institutions, they are keen to discover how formal and informal authority structures affect the team; for example, they seek direction, guidance, advice and resources from authority figures. Second team members tend to be conformist; they veer away from ‘rocking the boat’ – from challenging or trying the change their institutional environment. Third, team members have hidden agendas; in life, they have learned it is better to keep some ambitions and goals private rather than share them openly with institutional figures. The global application of H-PTD shows externalizing behaviour to be strongest in people who are used to punitive, dictatorial regimes and weakest in people who live in supportive, democratic regimes. Typically, the former individuals find progression through the six stages of team development more challenging so, for them, achieving high team performance is more difficult. Stage 2 of H-PTD guides team members away from Externalizing behaviours and lays the foundations needed for complex analysis and action.

Stage 2: Sharing. In this stage, team members are coached in the use Empathy so they can share and understand each other’s perspectives. This requires them to work independently of external authority in a non-conformist way and to become less reliant on hidden agendas by interacting openly with each other.

Workshop participants begin Stage 2 with preparation. The trainer introduces a simulated, multi-functional business organisation; each participant adopts a different functional director role, and the trainer explains they must work together, without the involvement of their boss (the CEO), to devise a way of significantly raising firm performance. The brief of each participant describes problems, issues and potential solutions that are apparent from her/his function’s viewpoint. Hence, six functional perspectives exist, which each describe some functional interdependencies, but each participant only knows about the function s/he is representing. Ultimately, the functional interdependencies mean that each participant must understand all six perspectives if an optimal way forward for the firm is to be created. The trainer instructs participants to prepare a short 5-minute verbal presentation that summarizes their functional brief.

With the Stage 2 preparation phase complete, the trainer explains the following empathetic procedure that participants will use to share and comprehend all six functional viewpoints: (i) A team member, randomly selected by the trainer, will verbally present his/her functional viewpoint to the others, who will note the salient points and not interrupt the speaker; (ii) When the presentation is completed, team members can use open, probing and clarificatory questions to ensure they fully understand the presenter’s perspective; no evaluations, judgements and criticisms are to be made; (iii) Once the questioning is finished, the trainer will randomly choose one of the team members to summarize the presenter’s perspective; (iv) When the summary has been made, the presenter will verbally critique it to ensure it is totally accurate. The team members will modify their notes as necessary to ensure they are comprehensive; and (v) With the first team member’s viewpoint shared and accurately noted by all, the procedure will be repeated for the five remaining functional viewpoints.

Before Stage 2 interaction starts, the trainer gives examples of appropriate Empathetic language that participants can use:

• During the questioning phase:

  • Please repeat the first issue you see facing the firm.

  • What factors are causing that issue?

  • Could you elaborate on…

  • I don’t understand your point about…

  • Could you clarify…

  • Is there anything you could add about…?

  • When you say…What do you mean?

• During the validation phase:

  • So, what you’re saying is…?

  • In other words…?

  • In summary, you think…?

  • Let, me see if I’ve understood you properly…?

Besides sharing his/her functional viewpoint, each team member, guided by the trainer, facilitates another participant through the Stage 2 process. In this way, each participant contributes a perspective and elicits one from a fellow team member. Facilitation involves giving feedback and coaching, so the Developmental Orientation H-PC is also used and enhanced in Stage 2.

When Stage 2 is complete, each participant understands all the functional perspectives and has used Empathy to strength level. In subsequent H-PTD stages, team members identify the deep, underlying issues that face the simulated firm before they devise and evaluate two holistic strategies to boost firm performance. They then decide the way forward and conduct a risk-reduction exercise to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of the chosen strategy.

At the end of Stage 2, team members perceive the full range of challenges facing the firm; this conceptually empowers them and reduces their dependence on external authority figures for advice and guidance. In addition, team members begin to realise that conformity will lock the firm into a cycle of underperformance – especially as external institutions and authority figures are acting as negative constraints on the firm. Furthermore, the sharing of functional viewpoints in a non-judgmental way encourages openness and trust, which reduces team members’ reliance on hidden agendas.

The movement of a Stage 2 team away from external dependency, conformity and hidden agendas can appear threatening to institutions and authority figures—especially if they are punitive and dictatorial. The threat level is heightened if Stage 2 team members are critical of external authority because they now appreciate the full scale of its constraining effect. For real-life teams, such circumstances mean Stage 2 can be fragile because authority figures are tempted to impose controls on the team to ‘get it back into line’. When this occurs, it usually has unintended negative consequences. On the one hand, the team can regress back to Stage 1, which reduces performance and makes any subsequent progression back to Stage 2 more difficult. On the other hand, team members can rebel and try to escape from or overturn external authority – possibly in a revolutionary way. For these counterproductive reasons, there is a strong onus on developmental agents and authority figures to accept, tolerate and support Stage 2 teams and encourage their progression through to the subsequent H-PTD stages where negativity declines and productivity soars.

In summary, the design and worldwide application of the H-PTD methodology has shown that Empathy has a vitally important role to play in building teams that consistently perform beyond normal expectations. Empathy is the bedrock of Stage 2 H-PTD and it plays a vital role in this methodology’s subsequent stages. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the use of Empathy has consequences that can appear negative and threatening to institutional regimes especially if they are punitive and/or dictatorial. This suggest that the worldwide development of high performing teams, which innovative, dynamic and complex environments require, would be fostered by a global shift towards supportive and democratic institutions of all types.

6. The importance of developing empathy now and in the future

Four major challenges mean the worldwide demand for Empathy and the other team H-PC is high. This section highlights those challenges and presents data to explore the capacity of leaders to meet them.

First, increasing global innovation, complexity and dynamism heighten the need for organically designed structures that incorporate high levels of lateral integration within and between organisations; this, in turn, challenges leaders to build high-performance teams by using Empathy and the other H-PC in the team cluster.

Heightening global demand for Empathy and the team H-PC cluster derives from another source—economic growth. The research of Schiffbauer and Shen [27] is of interest here. It found that poor but stable nations with dictatorial regimes experience higher economic growth than democratic. However, beyond a threshold income level, the benefits of democratic regimes become apparent, and they outgrow dictatorships. Hence, as global incomes rise, driven mainly by technological innovation (see Rosenberg [28]), the demand for democratic institutions rises, which encourages the spread of organic organisational designs, high-performance teamworking and the team H-PC cluster, which includes Empathy.

Thirdly, the success of the global movement towards realising human potential through greater diversity and inclusion depends, to a significant degree, on the development and use by leaders of Empathy and the other team H-PC behaviours. These H-PC enable diverse viewpoints and capabilities to be fully understood, appreciated and used in multifarious situations and settings. Hence, the diversity and inclusion movement is another worldwide factor increasing the demand for Empathy and the team H-PC.

Empathy and the team H-PC are important from further standpoint. Humanity today is faced with a variety of global, multifaceted and interconnected issues that include climate change, income inequalities within and between nations, pandemics, pollution, and war. These issues can only be resolved through long-term international co-operation which requires leaders to use high levels of Empathy, Conceptual Flexibility, Managing Interaction and Developmental Orientation.

With these four rising demands for the team H-PC cluster in mind, it is helpful to consider the H-PC strengths and limitations of contemporary leaders. Data gathered from a state-of-the-art leadership assessment centre (LAC) over a 20-year period provides an insight into this issue. Table 4 presents the summary H-PC profile of 1632 LAC participants who worked in a diverse range of public and private sector organisations in the US, Europe and Asia. The data show that Empathy (2.73), Developmental Orientation (2.68), Managing Interaction (2.65) and Conceptual Flexibility (2.53) all had mean ratings below 3.00 (the ‘Adequacy’ level) and were all rated significantly lower than the three strongest H-PC, which had ratings well above 3.00.

This data provides much food for thought. If representative, it suggests the H-PC that are probably the most needed in modernity are the least developed. Even if leaders are incentivised to build organic structures and tackle the world’s most pressing issues, they may underperform due a lack of competence. Capability rather than motivation may be the fundamental constraint, which implies there should be a fundamental reorientation of leadership development towards Empathy and the other underdeveloped H-PC.

In summary, the need for Empathy both today and in the future appears to be high. Yet LAC data indicate Empathy is underdeveloped, which probably means it is undervalued. Much greater investment in the development of Empathy amongst current and future leaders appears necessary. A policy change that applies equally to the other highly demanded yet underdeveloped team H-PC. Without such a shift in leadership development, leaders will remain ill-prepared for the major worldwide challenges they face.

7. Conclusions

Empathy has consistently been identified as an important leadership behaviour since systematic empirical studies began in the 1940’s. Two meta-analyses show that leaders who use Empathy are more effective. The H-PC research stream has contributed a definition of Empathy, a five-point behaviourally anchored rating scale, and a reliable assessor training methodology. State-of-the-art ratings of observed leadership behaviour by certified H-PC assessors show significant positive correlations between Empathy and criterion measures. All these efforts support a strong ongoing focus on Empathy in leadership research and development.

Empathy is one of several H-PC that help build and maintain lateral integration in organically designed organisational structures; these flatter and more participative structures are made essential by increasing environmental innovation, dynamism and complexity and they find most support in democratic regimes.

When used in combination with the other Developmental H-PC (Managing Interaction and Developmental Orientation), Empathy operationalizes a democratic leadership style that contrasts with the more autocratically oriented Directional H-PC factor. The Developmental and Directional clusters are the two fundamental ways that leaders interpersonally interact with others. The former are is demanded most by organic structures and situations requiring creativity, imagination and innovation; the latter by mechanistic structures and crises/emergencies.

Leaders can gain much by using Empathy in conjunction with H-PC from the other factors. When combined with Conceptual Flexibility, Empathy enables leaders to grasp the complexity of multifaceted situations and take holistic decisions. When combined with Impact, Empathy permits leaders to build win-win alliances and to socialize the Directional H-PC factor, so it has greater relevance to modernity.

Empathy is vital to high performing teams, which have never been in greater demand. In the H-PTD methodology, Empathy is the core Stage 2 behaviour; it enables participants to share and understand multiple perspectives, which provides an essential stepping-stone towards superior team effectiveness.

The rise of organic organisational designs, the growing importance of democratic institutions to global economic growth, the diversity and inclusion movement and the major challenges facing humanity all indicate that the team H-PC cluster in general, and Empathy in particular, should receive greater developmental investment—especially as those H-PC seem undervalued and underdeveloped at present. Unless a fundamental reorientation of leadership development occurs, there is a strong likelihood that leaders will remain ill-prepared, innovation and economic growth will stay sub-optimal, human potential will continue to be underpotentialised and humanity’s biggest challenges will remain unresolved.