What does ‘woke’ mean to you? Fixation on a disproportionately narrow range of concerns? Or conscious commitment to compassion?

While the term’s meaning is much debated, that is has been weaponised is not in question. This is the aspect I’m concerned with in this piece. Why? Because one of the main reasons the debate ruffles feathers is that it boils down to an age-old dynamic that is super relevant to leadership: empathy versus sympathy.

Let’s define the two terms as I see them. Empathy is being able imaginatively to walk in the shoes of another person in order to understand what’s going on for them. Sympathy is when we go from this psychological understanding to emotional communion with the other.

For some, the ‘woke’ are wallowing self-indulgently in overdone sympathy. Worse, say their critics, they reserve this sympathy for a select minority of ‘fashionable’ causes. 

For others, ‘woke’ means empathising with those who have historically been excluded from society’s compassion. Yes, it undoubtedly has a touch of sympathy about it, but this sympathy is appropriate.

As leaders, I don’t think that we can ever have too much empathy. It’s insight, after all. Can someone have too much insight? I think not.

Sympathy is trickier. Keenly feeling every difficult emotion of those we work with is going to make things difficult for us. It’s so easy to come across as weak, overfamiliar or saccharine – or some combination of all three. It also risks making us ineffectual.

But empathy? Lashings of that, please! And with an increasingly diverse workforce, perfecting empathy is ever more important, while being a trickier skill to acquire.

My top tip here is listening: really listening. Listening as if your life depended on it, as if there’s a secret message encoded in what your employee or colleague or shareholder is saying – because there is! The surface level of what people say to us never captures everything they have in their heads – language is an incredibly difficult tool to wield.

Body language, hesitation, what’s left unsaid – all these are part of the message an empathetic leader must tune into.

Doing this has a threefold effect. One, you understand. Two, the other person feels something powerful: they feel understood, they feel held, they feel seen. Three – the sum of one and two – you and the other person have an exponentially improved prospect of fruitful collaboration.

After listening comes truth-telling. When the other person knows you’ve listened to them with everything you’ve got, they’re more able to handle any hard truths you might offer them – and hard truths can trigger growth.

So let’s go all in for empathy, people!