Written by: Rich on February 25, 2025

I worked for a mom-and-pop company. Pop was a pioneer in the industry who turned his experience and notoriety into a fledging business. Mom ran the business.

It was a Friday afternoon. Pop was diabetic and was two days into a severe blood sugar imbalance. About 4:00, the cussing began. By 4:02, I was down in his office, worried that this meltdown over a poorly written report might lead to his physical demise. By 4:10, the office had cleared out, leaving a handful of us to attempt to restore order. By 4:20, I had mentally gone through my finances and realized I needed to stay and take it.[1] I went home around 7:00 with a new understanding of verbal abuse.

Saturday, the company president called me to check on things. In the conversation, he said that we “kind of had it coming to us.” I didn’t have a response that day. Today, I’d say that the president had a failure of nerve.

Edwin Friedman defines a well-differentiated leader as “someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and . . . is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional process swirling about.[2] In contrast, our president was a peace-monger, a highly anxious risk-avoider “who functions as if [he] had been filleted of [his] backbone.”[3] Decades later, I remain on friendly terms with our former president, yet I don’t disagree with Friedman’s inciteful description.

I struggled to overcome Friedman’s style. It is difficult to take a book seriously with interjections such as “what will turn out to be true 100 percent of the time”[4] and, “This is an absolutely universal rule of life in this galaxy.”[5] He even had the audacity to tell me that a well-differentiated leader is decisive rather than data oriented!

He’s right, though. There will always be more data, more reasons to delay or second-guess a decision. He says that leadership is an emotional process rather than a cognitive phenomenon.[6] If the leader waits on perfect data before chartering a course, the ship will never sail.

I appreciated his characteristics of gridlocked systems.[7] It is a bit ironic that Pop helped me see the insight that trying harder will not overcome a conceptual error. He regularly commented, “Hey, guys, you’re asking the wrong question,” before heading off in a direction that nobody anticipated.

Yet, what does Friedman have against empathy? I’m checking the copyright date. Clearly, he didn’t see the cultural shift that has brought about so much anxiety.[8]

Search, Pause, Reflect

I began proof-citing business articles on empathy, which meant that I had to read them. Not all articles extolled the competitive advantage of leading with radical empathy.[9] For example, Michelle Bonterre writes that “empathy alone is not sufficient for effective leadership.”[10] In the continuum from pity to compassion, empathy falls short of action.

Empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”[11] Friedman aligns empathy with the herding force characteristic of an anxious society.[12] A leader vicariously experiencing the anxiety of others does not move the organization forward. Rather, a well-differentiated leader’s steady presence can lead others through their anxiety.

Compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”[13] Empathy shares the emotional experience. Compassion brings a plan of action. Friedman recognizes that caring for others is a “heartfelt, humanitarian, highly spiritual, and an essential component in a leader’s response repertoire.”[14] His experience is that sensitivity to others does not in itself lead to an improved condition.

I want to disagree with Friedman. I want to choose the cognitive leadership skills of Poole’s 17 Critical Incidents[15] over the emotional process that Friedman teaches. That fateful Friday afternoon taught me that leadership—or lack thereof—exists within the context of emotions. I value a calm, steady presence, filled with conviction and responsibility. Both books are valuable. I appreciate Poole’s thoroughness in describing what leaders do. I found Friedman to be eye-opening in how leaders lead.

[1] 6 months later, I had enough money in the bank such that I wouldn’t have to take it again. Years later, business school put a name to this go to hell money.

[2] Edwin H. Friedman. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Revised Edition. New York: Church Publishing, 2017, 15.

[3] Friedman, 14-15.

[4] Friedman, 14.

[5] Friedman, 147.

[6] Friedman, 14.

[7] Friedman, 38.

[8] Jonathan Haidt. “End the Phone-Based Childhood Now.” The Atlantic (blog), March 13, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/.

[9] Brian Williamson. “Unlocking Potential: The Leadership Imperative of Empathy” Psychology Today, February 25, 2025. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/achieving-the-objective/202502/unlocking-potential-the-leadership-imperative-of-empathy.

[10] Michelle Bonterre. “Empathetic Leadership: How to Go Beyond Lip Service.” Harvard Business Publishing, November 30, 2023. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/empathetic-leadership-how-to-go-beyond-lip-service/.

[11] Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “empathy,” accessed February 25, 2025, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy.

[12] Friedman, 145.

[13] Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “compassion,” accessed February 25, 2025, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compassion.

[14] Friedman, 145.

[15] Eve Poole. Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership. London New York, NY: Bloomsbury Business, 2017, 10-32.

About the Author

Rich