Giving Negative Feedback Can Make Empathetic Leaders Less Effective

We all know how it feels to receive negative feedback — but how does giving negative feedback impact the person delivering it? The authors conducted a series of studies with nearly 500 leaders and found that the impact of delivering negative feedback depended on how empathetic the leaders were. They found that high-empathy leaders became less effective at core leadership tasks after giving negative feedback (especially if the recipient had a strong negative reaction), while low-empathy leaders actually became more effective. Based on these findings, the authors offer several strategies for organizations to better support both high- and low-empathy leaders, including encouraging more-empathetic leaders to take breaks after giving negative feedback and training less-empathetic leaders on techniques for delivering feedback more compassionately.