The sweetness and danger of ‘empathy’: 4 modes.

I believe empathy isn’t something you do, but what happens when you stop doing. Or trying to do. 

When a German philosopher coined the word that became ‘empathy’ (Einfühlung) in 1873, it’s unlikely he saw it as a leadership style.

Vischer described the capacity to ‘feel into’ a piece of art and experience what it evokes. In 1909, the word Einfühlung was translated into ‘empathy’ and only in the 1950s migrated into psychology, communication, and eventually leadership, describing our ability to resonate with or infer the experience of another.

Today, empathy is, at best, equated with active listening and understanding and, at worst, with enmeshed emotions with no boundaries. There’s hot and cold empathy, wet and dry empathy, cognitive and affective empathy. But the principle of being able to infer someone else’s experience, whether at the emotional or perspectival level, is the same. Compassionate empathy adds the Buddhist principle of also taking responsive action once you have empathised.

My clients often feel the tension between wanting to support others and staying focused on action. They generally have a clear sense of what’s needed and tend to jump in to solve the problem…which doesn’t always work for the other person. It can be frustrating for both.

Here are 4 types of empathy based on recent research by Thomas Fuchs and my own work around liberation and coherence - you can protect your energy (and sanity) while still being there for others:

1: Primary empathy: Feeling their world 

Widening your attention to resonate with the feelings of another and reflect them back like a mirror. The person experiences connection and reassurance that their pain is known. No need to dwell in the feeling. The benefit is helping restore a sense of calm clarity for the person to make their own decisions.

2: Extended empathy: Seeing their world

Widening your perspective to engage with another’s sense-making and meaning making. Understanding how they see the world and helping them bring forward beliefs, values, and needs to restore clarity.

3: Reiterated empathy: Seeing your role in their eyes

You might notice that you’re playing the role of an authority or persecuting figure that may or may not be accurate. If you catch this, you can respond with more awareness and discuss the relational dynamic itself. This cuts through rescuing or blame patterns and shifts the conversation towards relational clarity and power awareness. It centres what is between you, not just them as the distressed subject. It moves beyond conventional empathic leadership into what I call shared reality leadership.

4: Coherent empathy: They see themselves through your eyes 

If you are in a sense of coherence, others will experience themselves with acceptance (because you’re not being reactive or judging them). They will reconnect to what matters because you are in that orientation. A sense of trust deepens because you are in close contact with the complexity of what’s happening from multiple levels and perspectives while harmonising values and needs.

All modes can function independently. Coherent empathy makes coherence the organising principle, not your individual intervention, which can be liberating for everyone involved.

We can’t fix all the problems around us but we can create a sense of shared reality and coherence that guides what we do in the world.

Have a great week,

Amina