By Aytekin Tank
It was a sunny day in April. The air was crisp and the walk ahead of us enjoyable.Then I shifted my gaze over to Tim, my walking mate for the afternoon. We were on one of many walking meetings we’d shared over the past year. But this time was different.
Tim, a normally talkative employee, was dragging his heels and appeared disgruntled whenever I asked for status updates. He kept his head down, answering only in curt replies.
Something was off.
Instead, I slowed my pace and asked him how things were going at home. “Is everything OK?”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry, that sounds very hard.”
“How can I support you?” I offered.
We spent some time talking over how to alleviate some of his load at work, and even scheduled some days off for him to be with his family.
After our conversation, it was as if a weight had been lifted. In our meeting afterward, he began eagerly participating, even offering feedback I hadn’t asked for.
One of the most overlooked skills in business
Empathy—the capacity to recognize and understand other people’s feelings, to “put oneself in someone else’s shoes” is a critical leadership skill. Common sense tells us that it’s a basic human quality most founders would have in their arsenal, but in fact, it’s one that many leaders often get wrong.“If we have optimism, but we don’t have empathy,” he said, “then it doesn’t matter how much we master the secrets of science. We’re not really solving problems; we’re just working on puzzles.”
I’ve had the privilege of growing our small startup to a business with over 250 employees and seven million users worldwide.
And what I’ve learned from being a founder all these years is that people, not software, matter most. Connecting with our team and our customers is the real vision that keeps us moving forward.
Beyond sympathy
Our culture admires a certain business stereotype: the die-hard leaders who push the envelope and only care about themselves. But at what price?How does this happen? Simple: by confusing empathy with sympathy.
Sympathizing—feeling sorry for an employee’s situation isn’t the same as understanding their feelings and needs, or building rapport.
Instead of becoming annoyed with their employees or commanding them to pick up the slack, effective leaders know how to express themselves by showing real concern and asking how they can improve the situation.
While valuable, sympathy is only a surface-level response that keeps you at a distance.
Empathy, on the other hand, is a perspective shift—it’s genuinely imagining yourself being in the other person’s shoes, and allows you to connect on a deeper level.
Empathy fuels productive conversations
“As a leader, you should always start with where people are before you try to take them where you want them to go.” – Jim Rohn, Entrepreneur and AuthorMany entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that empathy is something you’re either born with or not. But as CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, emphasizes, empathy is a muscle that needs to be exercised.
Nadella, who went through numerous personal challenges—trying to obtain a green card to come to the United States, building a new life for himself and his family, adjusting to his children’s disabilities—all of these struggles gave him the emotional insight and sensibility to create a collaborative company culture.
He didn’t just relate to employees and customers on an intellectual level, he understood that everyone needs to feel supported in one way or another.
Simply asking if someone is OK is enough to let them know you’re willing to show up when it counts.
