How to ensure empathy benefits your leadership

I have seen empathy used as a shield, a sword, and sometimes as a smokescreen. The intention is almost always good. You want to be the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons. You want your team to feel safe telling the truth. You want to be human. Then hiring slows, performance conversations drift, and decisions spend weeks in calendar purgatory. What started as care begins to calcify into avoidance. The culture feels warm, but delivery runs cold.

In my first company, I prided myself on being the leader who could sit with anyone for as long as it took. A salesperson who kept missing quota needed to talk about family stress. A product manager who blocked a release needed more context. A senior engineer who resisted code reviews felt unseen. I opened more time, added more one to ones, and framed every expectation as support. I believed I was building trust. I was actually building ambiguity.

The situation was not unique to Malaysia or Singapore. I saw the same pattern with women founders I mentored in Riyadh. Empathy had become the primary tool for every problem. When delivery wobbled, we held space. When a hire underperformed, we reframed goals. When a cofounder went silent, we trusted the process. The team felt cared for, yet the business lost its edge. People felt heard, but not led.

Here is where it started to unravel. Empathy without boundaries distorts time. You start measuring progress by how understood people feel rather than by what gets done. Your calendar fills with restorative conversations that never convert into decisions. You protect morale by absorbing hard truths yourself. You become the emotional shock absorber for the entire company. That looks noble on the outside and feels heavy on the inside. The cost is clarity.

It also warps standards. When I delayed a performance plan for a senior hire because she was navigating a personal crisis, I told myself I was being humane. The team read it as a quiet lowering of the bar. They saw me change the rules for one person and wondered if the rules meant anything at all. Culture does not break in a dramatic moment. It frays where leaders make compassionate exceptions without naming the tradeoff.

The moment of clarity came from a blunt conversation with a finance lead I trusted. He said the quiet thing. He told me the business had become emotionally centric in a way that hid risk. He pointed at our hiring funnel and noted that roles remained open for months because I could not bring myself to make hard calls on fit. He showed me the budget impact of nice to have headcount I kept “holding space” for. He asked if I wanted to be a sanctuary or a company. It landed. Not because I lacked heart, but because I finally saw the pattern through numbers, not feelings.

Here is what changed. I stopped using empathy as a default approach and started treating it as an input to better decisions. I created a simple rule for myself. I would use empathy to understand context, not to modify standards. Context shaped how I delivered a message, not whether I delivered it. If someone was late because of caregiving, I could offer flexibility on hours. I did not change the delivery date unless we changed scope or resourcing. Feelings were acknowledged. Commitments remained intact.

I also separated listening from problem solving. In Malaysia and Singapore, many teams still expect leaders to fix things during the meeting. That pressure nudges you to soften edges on the spot. Instead, I set an explicit two step rhythm. First meeting for story and specifics. Second meeting for decision and plan. I kept the gap tight, usually twenty four to forty eight hours. People felt respected in the first step. They felt led in the second.

Hiring got a new rule as well. No more empathy led extensions for closing candidates who dragged their feet. If a role was critical, the deadline was public, and we kept pipeline heat high. If a candidate needed more time, we asked for a clear signal, not a vague assurance. A yes meant references and a start plan within a week. A no meant we moved on. Being kind to the candidate could not be unkind to the team.

Performance conversations became cleaner once I separated human care from business outcomes in the language itself. I began with what would not change. The target, the timeline, the quality bar. Then I addressed what could change. Support, scope, or sequencing. People stopped guessing what I might secretly flex. They knew exactly where empathy would show up, and where it would not.

This is the part founders skip because it feels cold. Write decisions down. Not just for governance in a Saudi accelerator or a Singapore grant. Write them so the team knows the conversation is complete. A two paragraph decision note beats a thousand friendly check ins. It states the commitment, the rationale, the support offered, and the date for the next review. People cannot align around vibes. They align around words they can revisit when the week gets loud.

There is also a cultural nuance that matters across Southeast Asia and the Gulf. Respect often reads as silence. When someone is quiet in a meeting after a difficult message, it might be deference, not agreement. Empathy here is not to fill the silence with reassurance. It is to make the next step unmissable. Ask the person to restate their part of the plan in their own words before the meeting ends. Not to test them. To close the loop.

You can keep your heart open without making yourself the system. If you are the only person who can de escalate conflict, your team has not learned conflict. If you are the only person who can hold a high standard without drama, your team will keep bringing you drama so you can do the holding. The most compassionate thing you can do is to make sure the company does not rely on your presence to behave well.

Here is a simple way to pressure test your approach without turning into a different person. Before a hard conversation, write two lines. The first line is the standard that cannot move. The second line is the support you will offer. Read both out loud. If you cannot say the first line clearly, you are about to negotiate your boundary in the room. If you cannot say the second line sincerely, you are about to posture. Both break trust.

One more calibration is useful when you feel yourself over giving. Look for reciprocity, not relief. Relief is what people feel when you say they can miss the deadline. Reciprocity is what they do next to earn back the trust. Relief fades and often invites a repeat. Reciprocity compounds. It can be a weekend catch up, a scope cut they propose, or a teammate they mentor so the bus factor improves. You are not keeping score. You are building a culture where care flows both ways.

This is where the phrase empathy in leadership belongs. It belongs at the start to ensure you see the person in front of you with clarity. It belongs at the end to make sure your decision lands with dignity. It does not belong in the middle where standards live. Middle sections are for facts, tradeoffs, and choices. When you place empathy in the right positions, it stops being a soft filter and becomes a sharp lens.

If you need a quick morning check, ask yourself three questions. What is the decision I owe my team today. Where might I confuse context with standards. What support will make the standard achievable without me becoming the system. Keep the answers short. If they take a page, you are already drifting into justification.

What I would do differently if I were starting again in Kuala Lumpur with a small seed round and a team of eight. I would set the cultural rule on day one that kindness and high performance are a pair. I would model it by giving direct feedback early, using simple language, and then giving generous support without rescuing. I would train managers to write decision notes that feel human, not legal. I would make it normal to ask for help before quality drops, and I would make it just as normal to hold the line when commitments are at risk. I would remember that people flourish when they trust that the ground is firm. Your job is to make that ground visible.

Empathy is not a strategy and it is not a weakness. It is a tool. Use it to understand people deeply, decide cleanly, and act in ways your team can repeat without you. That is how you keep your company humane and strong at the same time. That is how care becomes culture instead of a tax on delivery. And that is how your leadership grows up.