Can Leaders Fake Empathy?

It's practically gospel now that, counter to the attitude of the go-go 80s, an effective leader is one who demonstrates empathy. There are good reasons for that: The professional workforce is less tolerant of being treated like a fungible widget, workplace environments are more attuned to who we are as people as well as job roles, and social media can rapidly identify leaders who are distressingly hard-charging, if not outright toxic jerks.

But the insistence that leaders be more "empathetic" isn't always effectively paired with what that looks like in a work environment. And the demand for empathy can cause a lot of needless anxiety in leaders who fear they're not demonstrating enough emotion, or the right kind of emotion.

The solution isn’t to replace empathy with ruthlessness. It’s to fake empathy. 

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