Summary: New Zety research shows managers score below the general population in emotional sensitivity. Whilst lower empathy may support objectivity and calm decision-making, it can create risks when employees experience leadership as distant or unapproachable. HR can help managers build emotional awareness and skills through structured check-ins, active listening training, clear feedback frameworks and leadership coaching.
Empathy has become one of the most talked-about leadership skills in the workplace. Managers are now encouraged to lead with emotional intelligence, create psychological safety, and build stronger relationships with their teams. While empathy is increasingly seen as a core requirement of effective leadership, new research suggests that managers may not naturally lead this way.
Zety’s Empathy in Management Report analysed nearly two decades of SIGMA’s proprietary JPI-R assessments across more than 4,000 managers. The study found that managers score below the general population in emotional sensitivity, which includes empathy, anxiety, and cooperativeness. In fact, emotional sensitivity is the only JPI-R cluster where managers consistently score lower than the broader population.
For HR leaders, this raises interesting questions. If empathy is such an important leadership skill today, why do so many managers score lower on it? And more importantly, what should organisations do about it?
Why managers may score lower on empathy
These findings might seem concerning, since empathy is closely tied to employee engagement, trust, and psychological safety. But leadership roles also require the ability to make difficult decisions, with managers regularly navigating emotionally complex and sometimes uncomfortable situations. They deliver critical feedback, manage team conflicts, adjust workloads, and occasionally make choices that affect someone’s role or future within the organisation.
In many cases, these lower scores may reflect traits that actually help managers lead effectively, including staying calm under pressure, making independent judgments, and maintaining clarity when situations become difficult.
In fast-moving environments, those qualities allow leaders to move quickly and keep teams moving forward. While emotional distance can support objectivity, it can also create challenges in the workplace.
Where the empathy gap can create risk
When managers naturally operate with lower emotional sensitivity, employees often experience that leadership style very differently from how the manager intends it. What feels like objectivity or efficiency to a leader can come across as distance or unapproachability to a team.
Leadership approaches such as compassionate leadership emphasise the importance of balancing accountability with empathy so employees feel supported and comfortable speaking up. Early signs of burnout or frustration may go unnoticed, and employees may hesitate to raise concerns if they feel their manager isn’t receptive to those conversations.
Over time, this gap between leadership style and employee expectations can affect trust, communication, and overall engagement.
For HR leaders, this doesn’t mean trying to change the personalities of managers. Instead, it points to an opportunity to help managers strengthen the skills that allow them to make tough decisions while still building meaningful connections with their teams.
The role HR can play
One of the most important roles HR can play is helping managers better understand how they show up for their teams. Rather than expecting leaders to become emotionally involved in every interaction, HR can encourage habits that keep managers connected to their teams and aware of what employees are experiencing. For example, HR can support managers by encouraging practices such as:
- Structured check-ins with team members. Regular one-on-one conversations create space for employees to share concerns before they escalate.
- Active listening training. Many managers simply haven’t been taught how to listen for underlying issues or emotions during conversations.
- Clear feedback frameworks. Teaching managers to deliver honest feedback while maintaining respect and transparency can reduce the tension many leaders feel during difficult conversations. When leaders lack these skills, it breeds mistrust – in fact, many employees cite a manager’s inability to provide constructive feedback as a primary driver of quiet firing.
- Leadership coaching. Coaching can help managers better understand how their communication style impacts others and where small adjustments can make a meaningful difference.
These strategies don’t require managers to change who they are. Instead, they help leaders build the awareness and skills needed to support their teams while maintaining the decisiveness their roles demand.
A leadership balance HR should support
Empathy remains a critical part of effective leadership. Employees want to feel heard, respected, and understood at work. At the same time, leadership requires clarity, accountability, and the ability to make hard decisions.
The data from this research highlights something HR leaders have likely observed firsthand: effective managers often need to balance both. Too much emotional distance can create disengaged teams, while leadership driven entirely by emotional sensitivity can make it harder to navigate challenging workplace realities.
The goal is to help managers build the balance that modern leadership requires, where empathy informs decisions without preventing them. For HR leaders focused on developing strong managers, cultivating that balance may be one of the most important leadership priorities.
Key takeaways:
If you’re developing leaders who need to balance empathy with decisiveness, consider these research-informed approaches:
- Understand that lower empathy scores aren’t always a problem. These traits often help managers stay calm under pressure and make independent judgements. The real question is whether your managers are aware of how their leadership style lands with their teams.
- Watch for the gap between intention and experience. What feels like objectivity to a manager can come across as distance to employees. When early signs of burnout go unnoticed or people hesitate to raise concerns, trust erodes. Do your managers recognise how their communication impacts others?
- Build skills that allow connection without compromising decisiveness. Focus on structured one-on-ones, active listening training and clear feedback frameworks. These practical habits strengthen how managers lead without changing who they are.
- Recognise that balance matters more than scores. Too much distance creates disengagement, whilst leadership driven entirely by emotion struggles with hard decisions. Help managers find the balance where empathy informs decisions without preventing them.
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