Shot of a young businessman experiencing stress during a late night at work
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Empathy is essential for leadership—but constant caregiving can extract a heavy toll on leaders. We even see such leaders within our own teams who struggle to watch them burn themselves out. So how can they best be supported? And how can leaders best support themselves?
Compassion fatigue, the emotional and physical exhaustion from continually supporting others, is often subtle: decision fog, slipping patience, and the nagging sense of falling short. A 2025 study found 71% of UK doctors experience compassion fatigue. Healthcare is just one example; leaders in every industry encounter the same quiet drain. Balancing performance metrics, team well-being, and organizational pressures without addressing emotional fatigue is a recipe for burnout.
In 2025, a significant leadership crisis is unfolding. An LHH study of thousands of global execs revealed that 56% of leaders experienced burnout in 2024, and 43% of companies lost at least half their leadership teams during the same period. This alarming trend points to the urgent need to address compassion fatigue—a form of emotional exhaustion resulting from the constant demands of caregiving and support.
Since compassion is empathy in action, one needs to look at how to encourage empathy to reap all the organizational ROI while still protecting leader from burning out when they overindex and lose themselves.
What is Compassion Fatigue?
Compassion fatigue manifests as emotional and physical exhaustion when people are overexposed to the trauma of others, leading to:
- Emotional Numbness or Detachment: Difficulty empathizing with others.
- Irritability and Impatience: Increased frustration over minor issues.
- Poor Concentration and Productivity: Mental fog and reduced efficiency.
- Physical Exhaustion: Persistent fatigue affecting daily activities.
- Withdrawing: Avoidance of interactions or responsibilities.
These symptoms can impair decision-making, weaken relationships, and elevate turnover risk. No one thrives under a frazzled, burned-out leader.
How Compassion Fatigue Impacts the Organization
- Decreased Employee Engagement: Leaders struggling with empathy may fail to inspire their teams. When leaders are maxxed out, the team can feel rudderless and unmotivated.
- Increased Turnover: Emotional exhaustion can lead to higher attrition rates. Caring without boundaries can lead to mental and physical distress that could send your best leaders packing to save themselves.
- Impaired Performance: When the brain is under stress, oxygen flow is limited, and cognitive abilities, such as decision-making and prioritization, shut down. Leaders who have given everything for others have less capacity to make smart business decisions.
A report highlighted that employees who perceive their workplace as unempathetic are three times more likely to experience workplace toxicity and 1.3 times more likely to face mental health issues
That is a lot of lost productivity, innovation, and engagement. Talk about leakage when teams need to be firing on all cylinders in order to stay competitive these days.
How to Avoid Compassion Fatigue
To combat compassion fatigue, leaders can implement the following strategies:
- Set Boundaries: Establish clear limits to protect emotional energy. No manager or exec is required or always equipped to be a professional therapist. Learn how to listen, support, and also triage or refer to corporate resources as necessary.
- Prioritize Self-Care: Engage in activities that promote physical and mental well-being. Fill up the tank to maintain capacity and keep an eye on those direct reports that lead others to ensure they do the same.
- Seek Support: Build networks with peers and mentors for guidance and encouragement. Masterminds and formal or ad hoc support groups enable leaders to process, share, and find best practices.
- Foster a Compassionate Culture: Encourage empathy and mutual support within teams. It’s not all on the leader. Ensure the tone is set to ensure empathy flows in all directions.
- Clarify Communication: Implement frameworks to manage difficult conversations effectively. Clarify cultural norms, invest time to prepare for meetings, set guidelines for both sharing and active listening, with mediation if needed.
These approaches can help sustain leadership effectiveness and well-being.
The Strategic Advantage of Sustainable Empathy and Compassion
Empathetic and compassionate leadership is a competitive advantage only when it is sustainable. Leaders who neglect themselves can do more harm than good by suffering from impaired judgment, short tempers, and overwhelm that impacts the team at large. Sustainable empathy is deliberate and strategic: it protects emotional bandwidth while allowing leaders to model care, hold people accountable, and drive results.
Organizations can only benefit when compassion meets resilience. That’s where the ROI can be found. Leaders who take care of themselves and refuse to dip into people-pleasing can model how to operate effectively at the intersection of humanity and performance.
