Definition of the issue
Empathetic leadership is the practice of focusing on the emotional relationship between a leader and the group they are leading. This enables the leader to better understand the mindsets and viewpoints of the people they work with and advocate for their needs. When leaders understand the emotional mindsets of their team members, they can use these insights to improve group decision making. This leads to more effective interventions that improve group cohesion and morale, and provide emotional security to members of the team. Effective empathetic leadership requires that a leader is attentive, understanding, and responsive to their team members’ state of mind and their personal and professional needs.
Current status and challenges
Leadership practices promoting empathy, humility and collaboration, as opposed to appeals to authority, have become more commonplace in security organizations as their benefits, especially in managing high stress situations, have become more apparent. However, despite efforts at professionalizing empathetic leadership practices, many defence professionals view them as risky or detrimental to mission success, and resistance to these practices remains widespread in security organizations and related fields.
Critics of empathetic leadership argue that practice of prioritizing empathy over traditional leadership methods may fail to instil effective discipline. Traditional military values of toughness and hierarchical leadership can also conflict with ideas of empathetic leadership, and some leaders may perceive empathy as a feminine trait that conflicts with masculine ideals of leadership. However, failure or refusal to implement empathetic leadership practices often means missing opportunities to improve team dynamics and effectiveness, may unintentionally foster internal distrust and can create conditions that diminish their team’s cohesion and morale.
Evolution of the issue in a Canadian context
The Canadian Armed Forces have taken steps to better integrate empathetic leadership into their leadership structures as part of an ongoing reviews of leadership doctrine. Trusted to Serve, the current leadership doctrine of the Canadian Armed Forces, emphasizes empathy as an essential attribute of leadership in the CAF, alongside leadership attributes such as humility, equality, and compassion. Trusted to Serve describes empathy as both an ethical principle and a military value. Moreover, it is a key leadership enabler that can strengthen relationships and deepens understanding between CAF leaders and those they lead. Recent research reviewing leadership practices in the CAF echoes the idea that empathy is an essential part of effective leadership (citation). However, that research also notes that there is still a long way to go to ensure empathetic leadership filters through all echelons of the CAF.
While the CAF has made significant progress in implementing empathetic leadership initiatives, cultural change will only succeed if empathetic behaviors are consistently modelled and reinforced across all levels of the organization. This requires that leaders must recognize the harm caused by failures of empathy, and recognize the need for moral courage in leadership to foster a positive and resilient leadership culture that embraces alternative approaches to team-building .
Potential developments in the next 15 years
Military and security leaders will increasingly treat empathetic leadership as a central pillar of command. NATO and allied organizations are already moving to embed emotional intelligence and human-centred approaches into leadership training and assessment. Leaders will need to develop and apply empathy to strengthen cohesion, sustain morale, and guide ethical decision-making under high-stress conditions. Academic and professional communities continue to push for trauma-informed practices, inclusive leadership, and emotional intelligence to become standard features of professional development frameworks. As armed forces grow more diverse in gender and culture, and attract younger generations, leaders will need to demonstrate empathy as a core skill rather than an optional trait. The long-term success of this shift will depend on commanders modeling empathetic behavior, reinforcing it through policy and training, and driving deliberate cultural change at every level of command.
Further reading
1. Trusted to Serve
2. A Review of Authentic, Inclusive, Character-Based Leadership