In the study, researchers analyzed conversations in which participants responded to emotionally charged scenarios and practiced writing empathetic replies. Some did so without any feedback, others were allowed to watch a video with suggestions from a communications expert, and others got personalized feedback from an AI coach.

The experiment involved 968 participants, producing over 2,900 conversations and over 30,000 messages exchanged. The conclusion highlighted a surprising but powerful insight:

The ability to feel empathy is different from the ability to express empathy.

Empathy is increasingly held up as the one leadership quality AI cannot replicate. The irony, then, is that new research from Stanford suggests it can be trained using AI — but doing so may produce leaders who communicate empathy without actually feeling it.

Empathy is Our Strategic Superpower
I’ve always been told empathy is a soft skill, but that’s the furthest from the truth. Empathy is our most potent strategic advantage. While the ‘half-life’of specialized technical skills1 has plummeted to just four years, foundational human strengths like ethical decision making, adaptability, and critical thinking endure.

Consider the “new work day” in HR: Sana agents can now cross-reference internal mobility data and flag flight risks, recommending a promotion and a new hire before a manager even starts their day. This creates space for leaders to have meaningful conversations about ambition and growth—the ones only humans can have.

“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” – Mohsin Hamid.

As conversations around mental health continue to grow, the importance of safe, supportive spaces has never been more evident.

Empathy Counselling & Psychotherapy, based in Portlaoise, has been quietly providing such a space for over two decades.

Founded by Siobhan Galvin, the practice has evolved into a team of experienced, accredited and pre-accredited psychotherapists. Located discreetly off Grattan Street, it offers a warm, comfortable, and private setting where individuals can feel at ease.

At the heart of the service is the belief that effective counselling begins with an empathic and safe relationship—built on trust, openness and understanding.

In this Pearl, Maria shares how leading with empathy can transform both student behavior and relationships within a school community. Reflecting on a challenging experience with a student, she explains how listening, building trust, and seeking the “why” behind behavior shifted her process from correction to understanding, and led to meaningful change. Her story highlights that true leadership is grounded in human connection, reminding us that “success isn't just about the standards and scores. It's about human connection.”

Allie Beth Stuckey's debate with David French shows a textbook example of toxic empathy at work.

His sit down with Allie Beth Stuckey on her podcast, “Relatable,” was civil, polite, and respectful from beginning to end. But maybe the most ironic aspect of the conversation, though, centered around their debate over “toxic empathy” – the name of Stuckey’s bestselling book, and a topic that clearly bothers David French.

According to Stuckey, “toxic empathy” is empathy that overrides truth or moral judgment and “encourages the affirmation of lies, sin, or destructive politics.” Empathy becomes harmful when it leads to someone affirming something that is harmful and wrong – especially sexual confusion.

Pressing David French on why he used the preferred pronoun “she” to describe a “he” he replied, “I don’t see the value in saying something that I know and they know is going to be hurtful to them. It’s just normal, complete politeness and manners.”

Much of the blowback against the book has twisted Stuckey’s argument to claim that she is against any sort of empathy. (In this sense, it’s something of a mirror image, perhaps deliberately, of the “toxic masculinity” debate.)

But Stuckey doesn’t argue against empathy; she simply contends that it’s a tool rather than a virtue in itself, which can lead us to bad ends as well as virtuous ones. French’s disagreement with her is less with the characterization of one-sided empathy than with his general view that we need more, rather than less, empathy in politics, while Stuckey argues that feelings-based politics tends to be dangerous. As she told Douthat,

“There are always going to be people on both sides of any story with real pain, with real stories that matter. And both people are made in the image of God. At the end of the day, that’s why you can’t be led by empathy, because if you allow yourself, you can feel really deep empathy for people with competing needs and interests.”

Allie sits down with New York Times columnist David French for a candid discussion on faith, culture, and politics. They debate over the definition of “toxic empathy” and how it is used to advance progressive causes on issues like gender, sexuality, and social justice.

Allie argues that compassion must be grounded in biblical truth rather than emotional manipulation. French says that the real problem is selective or incomplete empathy and that he’s seen an increase in “Christian cruelty.” The conversation explores where Christians should draw lines between mercy, justice, and cultural engagement in an increasingly polarized America. Nothing is off the table, including hot-button topics like Trump, Luigi Mangione, January 6, abortion, and pronouns. Allie and David find some fascinating points of agreement despite public disagreements online.

The video titled "Empathy Summit: Debrief: How Might We Build the Empathy Movement?" is a collaborative reflection session involving over a dozen participants who share their experiences from a recent Empathy Summit.  The group discusses the technical aspects of the practice, its emotional impact, and strategic ideas for scaling empathy into a global movement.

The debrief highlights a tension between the "rigid" structure of reflective listening and the desire for deeper, "heart-centered" connection. While some participants expressed concern that strictly repeating words can feel intellectual rather than emotional, others defended the structure as a necessary starting point for beginners, children, and non-native speakers. Strategic ideas for building the movement included renaming "empathy" to "listening" to avoid negative stigmas, developing a formal training curriculum, and high-visibility public actions like "Occupy Empathy" to encourage dialogue between opposing political groups.

Bio:   Bill Filler is retired special education teacher who has worked with at-risk children of all ages for over 30 years. He has been involved in the Empathy Circle since 2017. He co-created the Empathy Circle Facilitator training with Lou Zweier and Edwin Rutsch, and has been holding trainings since March 2020. He is a member of the Empathy Center Board of Directors.  (LinkedIn) (Facebook) 

Topic: Bringing the Empathy Movement Message to the California State Democratic Convention 

Abstract:  We brought the message of the Empathy Movement to the California State Democratic Convention. When we got to the convention in San Francisco we found that people were open to a new way of relating to each other, and when they were listened to, were happy they tried the Empathy Circle process. We listened to individuals, brought our message to politicians, and got our message out during a short interview on KPIX TV, a local San Francisco TV station.  

Bio: Edwin Rutsch is Founding Director of The Empathy Center, and a leading organizer in the global Empathy Movement. He is a creator and long-time advocate of the Empathy Circle practice—a simple yet powerful tool for building understanding and bridging divides.  (LinkedIn) (Facebook) (Website)

Topic:  An Invitation to Co-Create Our Shared Empathy Movement Training Curriculum

Abstract:  If we want to build a thriving Empathy Movement, we need an effective publicly available Empathy Movement Training Curriculum. Most empathy trainings today are private programs or proprietary courses. While many excellent trainings exist, there is no shared curriculum that is openly available for communities, educators, and organizers around the world.

This presentation proposes creating a public-domain Empathy Movement Training Curriculum that integrates the best existing approaches and makes them widely accessible. Participants are invited to join a collaborative effort to design, develop, and expand this curriculum for the global empathy movement. 

Bio:  Paramita Roy is an educator, filmmaker, and the founder of Global Empathy Conference and Virtual School Australia (VSA). VSA is internationally recognised for teaching empathy through action. Paramita integrates performing arts, storytelling, filmmaking, and reflective writing into education to help young people engage with real-world social issues. She is currently organising the 8th Global Empathy Conference.   (Website) (LinkedIn) (Facebook)

Topic:   From Understanding to Action: Why the Empathy Movement Must Prioritise Action-Oriented Pedagogies

Abstract:  Empathy is widely valued in education, yet it is often taught as a concept to be understood rather than a practice to be enacted. This presentation argues that the Empathy Movement must shift from awareness to action.

Drawing on contemporary research and a case study from Virtual School Australia, it demonstrates how action-oriented pedagogies—particularly arts-based and creative practices enable students to practice empathy through lived experience.

The word “empathy” carries a curious linguistic history in meaning that stretches across centuries and languages. It once existed in Greek as empathia (εμπάθεια), a term associated with emotion and inner movement. Today, English uses “empathy” to describe understanding and compassion, while in Modern Greek, empathia often conveys hostility or resentment.

From emotion to excess: The ancient roots of the Greek word “empathy”

Listening is a habit—and habits aren’t fixed
Graham Bodie, professor of communications at the University of Mississippi, describes listening as a habit-based behavior. Like other habits, he says, “listening becomes ingrained through repetition, often runs below conscious awareness, and remains malleable.”

That framing matters. If listening were a fixed trait—something you “have” or “don’t have”—we’d be stuck with our defaults. But if listening operates like a habit, we can strengthen it. We can notice our filters, experiment with new choices, and adapt our listening to what the moment requires.

Listening intelligence (LQ), a framework developed by Bodie and several colleagues, invites us to build three capacities:

Summary: What makes us human? For decades, scientists have debated whether our ability to speak and our ability to understand others’ feelings (Theory of Mind) grew from the same “mental soil.” A new study has finally settled the question.

Using fMRI to scan children as young as three, researchers found that these two sophisticated skills originate from completely separate, non-overlapping brain regions. This “discrete architecture” suggests that our brains evolved with specialized wiring for language and empathy from the very beginning, rather than these skills branching off from a single cognitive source as we grow.

When empathy is integrated into healthcare innovation, it changes the way solutions are designed from the ground up. Instead of focusing solely on efficiency or performance, developers begin to consider how patients experience care in real life. A system may be highly advanced, but if it creates confusion or anxiety, its effectiveness is limited. For example, a digital health platform might offer powerful features, but if patients struggle to navigate it during stressful moments, the technology fails to achieve its purpose. Empathy helps ensure that innovation is not only intelligent but also intuitive and supportive.

The gap persists through three recognizable and reinforcing patterns.

The first is the empathy ceiling, in which empathy comes to function as an endpoint rather than a baseline for leadership. Once a leader expresses awareness through language, identity, or stated intent, scrutiny recedes. Leaders perceived as “getting it” are questioned less, even when hiring and promotion outcomes for women remain unchanged.

The second is intent inflation. Organizations routinely over-credit leaders for intent while under-pricing the cost of inaction. Leaders earn credit for expressing the right values even when advancement outcomes remain flat. When intent is rewarded without regard to outcome, intervention becomes optional.

The third and most operationally consequential pattern is ambiguity transfer: when unclear ownership gets converted into invisible cleanup labor and pushed onto those without the formal authority to assign, decline, or be rewarded for it. I

Empathy sits at the heart of effective helping relationships. This eBook explores the difference between innate empathy and the learnable skill of accurate empathy, showing how reflective listening deepens understanding, strengthens connection, and supports meaningful client change.

In this eBook, discover how to:

• Understand empathy as both a natural trait and a clinical skill
• Use reflective listening to clarify meaning and build trust
• Recognize common barriers to empathic communication
• Develop accurate empathy that fosters real therapeutic progress

Bio: I am a dual PhD student in social psychology and cognitive science studying moral psychology, viewpoint diversity, and empathy.  (LinkedIn) (Facebook)  (Website)

Topic: Exercising Empathy and Strengthening the Empathy Movement

Abstract: The empathy movement is facing a growing challenge as scholars increasingly highlight its “dark sides,” from bias and burnout to what some call harmful or even toxic forms of empathy. This talk argues that the problem is not empathy itself, but how we understand and use it—proposing a new framework that treats empathy as a moral muscle that can be underdeveloped, overextended, or well-trained. By shifting the goal from “more empathy” to “better-calibrated empathy,” this model offers a path forward for building an empathy movement that is both effective and sustainable.   

Bio: Susan Christy has designed and facilitated professional LISTENING trainings/programs for thousands of people in corporations, universities, medical schools, and hospitals all over the country. Of c ourse, teaching empathy is an important part of this.  (Website) (LinkedIn)

Topic:   My Experience Building an Empathy/Listening Movement 

Abstract:   Beginning in academia as a psychology professor, I taught empathy and communication to empower students to be more effective in their professional and personal lives. I later expanded this into a successful consulting practice, integrating empathy into listening, customer service, leadership, conflict resolution, and team-building programs. I will share my strategies for attracting paid and unpaid clients and getting lots of follow-up business.

Bio:  Martin Golder is a Retired Mediator and Architect just finished a book Journey To Empathy about my personal discovery of the power of empathy.  (Website) (LinkedIn) (Facebook)

Topic:  How to convince the gangster class to join the Empathy Movement.   

Abstract:   Empathy is so often thought of as a touchy feely lefty kind of thing. Hence Musk’s famous quote. However to build an empathy movement it has to find a place amongst hard nosed business types and even gangsters and neer-do-wells. It is a hard skill that can be learned and put into practice by people in all walks to make their lives better. Even a completely fake version of what Carl Rogers espoused is surprisingly effective. And perhaps the most surprising thing is that when selfish people use Mechanical Empathy to get what they want there is a spin off effect that gradually rewires their brains and turns them into better people. The Empathy movement is for everyone.

Bio:  Dr Stuart Nolan is an Empathy Trainer, Keynote Speaker, Stage Performer, and author of How To Train An Empath: Lessons From A Professional Mindreader, with a PhD in the Cultural History of Theatrical and Scientific Mindreading and over 35 years of experience unlocking empathy through science, performance, and play.  (Website) (LinkedIn) (Facebook)

Topic:   Building Cultures of Empathy Practice, Research, and Innovation in the UK. 

Abstract:   The talk will report on my work embedding empathy into leadership programmes at UK national organisations, including the BBC and the National Health Service (NHS). It will focus on the use of techniques from theatrical performance to train physical and collaborative empathy. It will also describe the use of a Threefold Model of Empathy that challenges prevailing ideas of what empathy is and suggests ways for the Empathy Movement to tackle the challenges of emerging technology and divisive politics.