Empathy, Accountability, and The New Standard For Leadership

For a long time, leadership playbooks rewarded control, certainty, and sheer output. If a leader delivered numbers, few people asked how it felt to work for them. The cost of that old model is finally visible. Disengagement, quiet exits, and cultures that burn people out are not personality issues. They are design issues.

Research now shows that employees who report to highly empathetic senior leaders are dramatically more engaged and more innovative than those who do not. At the same time, companies that are perceived as unempathetic are putting enormous amounts of money at risk in avoidable turnover and lost potential.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Christopher M. Steer, Founder and CEO of Steer LLC, an organizational advisory firm that helps leaders, boards, and teams build better organizations through leadership development, strategic planning, and performance systems. Drawing on more than thirty years as an entrepreneur, attorney, and operator, Chris shared how empathy, humility, and accountability can become an operating system for modern leadership, not just a set of soft skills on the side.

Empathy As Performance, Not Personality

One of the clearest themes in our conversation was how far empathy has traveled in the leadership vocabulary. Chris pointed out that fifteen years ago, he barely used the word. Today, it sits at the center of every serious conversation about performance.

He defines empathy in practical terms. It is the ability to see, understand, and live in someone else’s perspective, especially the people whose work you are responsible for. If your role requires getting results through others, then empathy is not optional. It is the mechanism that allows you to:

• See what your people see, including the friction that you are blind to.

• Make better decisions because you are not limited to a single vantage point.

• Build the trust that keeps people engaged and willing to give their best energy.

Without empathy, you may still get compliance for a while, but you will never fully optimize the performance of an organization that depends on human beings.

When Empathy Gets Misunderstood

Empathy is often confused with being nice, agreeable, or endlessly accommodating. Chris sees this misunderstanding all the time. Leaders learn that empathy matters, then swing too far and treat it as permission to avoid hard calls.

That is not empathy. That is avoidance.

Real empathy does not ask leaders to dilute standards or accept every idea that is presented. It asks them to:

• Seek to understand the perspective behind the idea.

• Listen fully before evaluating.

• Weigh that perspective against mission, strategy, and values.

When leaders equate empathy with niceness, they lose clarity. When they view empathy as perspective taking in service of the mission, they gain better data and stronger relationships without compromising direction.

Where Empathy Matters Most In A Leader’s Day

Empathy is easiest to talk about in theory. It becomes real in specific moments. Chris highlighted two places where the presence or absence of empathy does the most damage.

One on ones.
A one on one meeting is a powerful, often underused opportunity to shape an employee’s trajectory. It can be a space for listening, coaching, and aligning around what matters. Or it can be a lost chance if the leader treats it as broadcast time, filling the agenda with their own updates and leaving no room for the other person’s voice.

Team settings.
In group settings, everyone is watching how the leader behaves. Do they create space for others to speak, ask curious questions, and respond with interest rather than defensiveness. Or do they dominate the conversation and shut down ideas with subtle cues in their tone and body language.

In both cases, empathy is expressed less through inspirational speeches and more through listening, questions, and the willingness to slow down long enough to hear what is really going on.

Systems That Keep Empathy From Depending On Heroes

Many companies rely on one naturally empathetic leader to hold the culture together. When that person leaves, the tone shifts overnight. Chris argues that this is a systems problem, not a personality problem.

You do not scale empathy by hoping more kind people show up. You scale it by building it into how the organization operates. That includes:

• Leadership and management development that treats empathy as a core skill, not a side topic.

• One on one structures that prioritize listening, feedback, and recognition.

• Performance reviews and three hundred sixty degree assessments that ask very specific questions about whether managers listen, value ideas, and create psychological safety.

• Clear feedback loops that bring insights from the front line back to decision makers.

Chris often uses an athletic metaphor. You build the muscle by getting reps. Empathetic leadership becomes part of the culture when there are rituals, practices, and expectations that require leaders at every level to practice it regularly, not just when they feel inspired.

Scaling Empathy Across Layers And Generations

As organizations grow, empathy can get lost in the complexity. Chris describes a “sandwich” dynamic.

• Executives need to embed empathy into the mission, values, and strategic priorities, then keep returning conversations to that plan.

• The middle layer must be equipped and supported to translate those intentions into daily management. This is often where things break.

• Teams on the ground need to see empathy rewarded, not penalized, in how people are recognized, promoted, and trusted with responsibility.

Generational differences do show up, but not in the way stereotypes suggest. Chris sees empathy as an intrinsic trait that can appear in any age group. What has changed is that younger generations are more accustomed to talking about culture, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety explicitly, which can accelerate adoption if leaders are willing to listen.

Accountability As An Expression Of Love

One of the most powerful reframes in the conversation was Chris’s belief that “accountability is love.”

If you do not care about someone, you will not invest the time and energy required to hold them accountable. You will avoid hard feedback, leave them in the dark about their impact, and allow performance issues to fester. That may feel easier in the moment, but it is not loving.

Accountability, practiced with empathy, looks very different from punishment. It means:

• Being honest about where someone is falling short and why it matters.

• Tying feedback back to their potential and the mission you share.

• Refusing to let short term comfort override long term growth.

When accountability is rooted in care, people experience it as investment rather than attack. It becomes a mechanism for belonging, not exclusion.

Listening As A Daily Discipline

If there is one habit Chris recommends leaders adopt immediately, it is this: aim to be the best listener in every room you enter.

Listening is how you learn your people’s stories.
Listening is how you catch early signals that something is off.
Listening is how you turn empathy from an idea into a felt reality.

That does not mean abandoning your perspective. It means expanding it. The more complex the world becomes, the more priceless that expanded perspective is for any leader who wants to build resilient, high performance teams.

Key Takeaways

• Empathy Is A Performance Lever
  Empathy is not about being nice. It is the practical ability to see from another’s perspective so you can lead more effectively.

• Misapplied Empathy Creates Confusion
  When leaders equate empathy with avoiding hard calls, they lose clarity and undercut performance. Empathy must remain anchored in mission and results.

• Systems Help Empathy Scale
  Rituals, feedback loops, and leadership development are what turn empathy from a personality trait into a cultural norm.

• Accountability And Love Belong Together
  Holding people accountable is one of the clearest expressions of care. Avoidance is what damages trust over time.

• Listening Is The Daily Practice
  The simplest path to more empathetic leadership is choosing, again and again, to listen more deeply than you speak.

Final Thoughts

Empathy in leadership is not a passing trend. It is the natural next step in how organizations evolve when they realize that people are not interchangeable parts in a machine. They are the source of every breakthrough, every customer experience, and every culture that endures.

Leaders who combine empathy, humility, and accountability are not softer. They are stronger. They build organizations where people can grow, challenge each other, and deliver results without losing their humanity in the process.

Check out our full conversation with Chris Steer on The Bliss Business Podcast.