An Absolutely Universal Rule of Life in this Galaxy (?)
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,” and, “This is an absolutely universal rule of life in this galaxy.”[4],[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 advocates. That fateful Friday afternoon taught me 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, ed. Margaret M. Treadwell and Edward W. Beal, rev. ed. 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
7 responses to “An Absolutely Universal Rule of Life in this Galaxy (?)”
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Rich, you had me laughing out loud with “By 4:20, I had mentally gone through my finances and realized I needed to stay and take it.” I can relate to those moments from my career!
The current discourse around empathy in the business literature is something I also find interesting. Opinions are mixed regarding the extent of its value. Have you found anything that surprised you as you’ve read?
Surprise is a strong word.
Some of discourse is as much about defining terms as it is about caring for those who you lead. Since empathy falls under the umbrella of EQ, of course a modern, relevant leader values it. I’m sitting with the cool kids wearing our designer EQ clothes, throwing hate at this guy Friedman for talking trash about empathy. The more I read, the more I agreed. If my response is to feel the emotions of others, no more and no less, then I can see how that eventually rings hollow: words without meaning. Using Friedman’s definition of empathy, how weird is it for a leader to join in the anxiety experienced by others? A better response is to care while continuing to provide leadership toward an improved outcome.
Is compassion vs. empathy an exercise in semantics? Perhaps. The first article that Copilot suggested was the Harvard reference. I was surprised to see the author say that empathy wasn’t enough. Once I got on board with the terminology, I’m not so surprised.
I have no desire to see our CEO wring his hands over the pending job cuts. That’s empathy. I’d rather hear conviction behind the change–otherwise the layoff feels arbitrary–and see him humanely provide time, tools, and resources to help those affected by the transition. That’s compassion.
Thank you Rich.
I enjoyed your study on empathy and compassion. I would suggest that both emotionally cost us, because we have to be courageous enough to feel what we don’t want to feel of another’s pain, but compassion moves us into action but empathy can overwhelm us into denial, distress or an inability to process the feelings of another. This is turn can cause an unfinished process of not being moved into action.
Do you think Friedman has an emphasis on emotional processes for leadership or is he merely articulating that we cannot lead without acknowledgement of the current climate of a dysregulated, self obsessed society, and therefore we have to be emotionally mature enough to remain calm and self regulate through the challenges? Maybe I am a psychotherapist and so emotionally focused is normal for me! But I agree we need both emotional maturity and mature thinking processes and actually an integration of them.
He comes across as more observational rather than process oriented. I think it is a writing style and I am likely tripping over jagged edges. When I searched, I did find evidence of a caring rabbi.
You highlight the contrast. A society of self-obsessed and anxious people benefits from a steady presence, not gasoline for the fire. Pastors from the previous generation did not talk about their counselors. It is now commonplace to here these references. It is both healthy and necessary for leaders to have a focus on their own emotional health and maturity. Otherwise, the failure of nerve will have widespread implications.
Rich –
I’m so sorry that you had that experience. Yours is such a strong picture of how a leader’s “failure of nerve” has real, human consequences. I’m curious how that experience informed your own leadership of others—were you more prone to lead differently or to repeat those modeled patterns? How did you choose a different path?
I was a little put off by Friedman at first, too, until I was reminded of the need for us to genuinely *care* for others, but we don’t need to *carry* their needs and circumstances. I’m not sure yet if that’s just what Friedman means in his focus on compassion vs. empathy, but it’s a bit of how I’m processing his perspective. What would you re-frame for me in that?
I spent 6-1/2 years with mom and pop, 4 of which were after I had sufficient finances to walk out. I stayed because it was where I wanted to be. Most of the learnings were very positive. I would not have scaled the technical ladder without that foundation. Pop put me in the room with the most influential industry leaders. I will always be grateful.
I also carry the negative lessons with care. Those are the hard-fought ones. My goal became one of learning as much technically without being influenced socially. Pop would say that he knew a quarter of the people that knew him. It was more like 5-10%. I got in the habit of reminding him “you are meeting with Denny” as we walked through the door. Respect goes both ways.
Upon reflection, I realize I struggled with Friedman’s book because the introduction was pop’s style. Both men were highly insightful. Neither gave an opening to a different possibility. I had to get past the facade to let the wisdom sink in, like care vs. carry.
I have a feeling that our final essays will be processing and reframing all of this. Friedman cannot always be right. Neither can Camacho. Neither can Rich. Hopefully they all have some contribution of general benefit. I have walked away from Friedman a bit better for the journey.
Thank you, Rich. I appreciate your humility here. I am grateful for the approach in our program to expose us to many perspectives even as we are learning and re-learning how to think critically; I think that highlights what you’re saying here—even the voices we might disagree with (or have a hard time engaging with because of their tone/perspective) have value if we’re willing to listen and discern wisely.