Professor Jeremy Howick Of The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare: 5 Ways Empathy Will Affect Your Leadership
The cost of leading without empathy is now measurable, and it is not small.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Jeremy Howick.
Jeremy Howick is Professor of Empathic Healthcare and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester. His work focuses on empathy in healthcare, including how compassionate leadership and system design can improve patient outcomes, staff wellbeing, and resilience. Previously based at the University of Oxford, he has published more than 150 peer reviewed papers and is the author of the bestselling book Doctor You. Howick is widely recognised for translating evidence-based healthcare research into public and policy discussions.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about empathy, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I came into empathy research sideways. I grew up in Montreal, studied engineering at Dartmouth, and later did graduate work at the LSE and Oxford. Along the way, I also rowed for Canada at the World Championships, won silver at the Commonwealth Games, and rowed for Oxford in the Boat Race.
The turning point came through illness rather than academia. As a young athlete, I developed a debilitating allergy that conventional treatments were not helping. A herbal practitioner eased it with little more than ginger tea, warmth, and careful attention. What struck me was not just the treatment, but the relationship around it.
That experience left me with a question that has shaped my career ever since: how much of healing comes from the treatment itself, and how much comes from the human connection surrounding it?
That question pulled me into evidence-based medicine, then placebo research, and eventually empathy. I later co-founded the Oxford Empathy Programme with Sir Muir Gray, founded the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, and in 2022 became the founding director of the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
When I first gathered hard evidence that empathy was effective, I wanted to start a Centre at Oxford. However, to do that the official way, I had to raise a great deal of money, which I had not yet done, and I was not patient. I spoke with one of my mentors Professor Sir Muir Gray, and he told me to simply make a Centre using a free website. I worried that I might be breaking a rule of some sort. “Don’t worry,” Muir insisted. I did it, and soon after the money was raised and it all became official. Getting tied up in institutional bureaucracy can be crippling and you need to find a friendly way around it to succeed.
What do you think makes your institution stand out? Can you share a story?
At the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, what makes us stand out is that we put what many people consider to be a “soft skill” (namely empathy) in the same category as conventional medical treatments like drugs or surgery. That means we measure their effects using rigorous randomised trials, conduct economic analyses, and so on.
We have also introduced real changes to the medical school curriculum, by introducing a new curriculum stream. We evaluate our curriculum rigorously as well. Part of this involves giving students experiences they would not normally encounter, for example by having them visit medical practices that treat homeless people.
We also work internationally through the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, which I founded with Catherine Eyres, helping these ideas spread well beyond Leicester. The network brings together clinicians, researchers, educators, and healthcare leaders from around the world who are working to make empathic healthcare measurable, teachable, and practical. Readers can learn more at Global Empathy in Healthcare Network.
For me, the most exciting part is seeing empathy move from being treated as a “soft skill” to something evidence-based, measurable, and teachable.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I’m more of an academic leader than business leader. There are three things that have helped me succeed.
First, a personal connection to research. I’ve never opted to go what was most easily funded or fashionable, and instead opted for things that I’ve noticed in my personal experience or the experiences of those close to me to be important. Most of my career began with a question rather than a plan. Why did one practitioner help me more than sophisticated treatments had? Why do some clinicians consistently get better outcomes than others? Curiosity kept opening doors I did not initially expect to walk through.
Second, persistence. Building a research field around empathy was not always fashionable. Earlier in my career, some people viewed empathy research as woolly or unscientific. Staying with the evidence long enough for the evidence to mature was essential.
Third, humility. Healthcare constantly reminds you how much you do not know. Some of the best ideas at the Stoneygate Centre have come from students, patients, or junior colleagues who saw something senior people missed. Leadership becomes dangerous when curiosity disappears.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.
At several points, I have had to make decisions that disappointed people I respected, whether around priorities, funding, or strategic direction. Earlier in my career I found that uncomfortable because I associated empathy with keeping everyone happy. Over time I realised those are very different things.
Empathy means listening carefully enough to understand the impact of a decision before making it. But leadership still requires making the decision. I think I became a better leader once I stopped seeing empathy and decisiveness as opposites.
Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define empathy in a leadership context, and why do you believe it’s a vital trait for leaders to possess in today’s work environment?
My definition is deliberately practical. Empathy is understanding another person’s situation, communicating that understanding back, and acting on it. The action matters as much as the feeling. A leader who senses what their team is going through but does nothing about it has not really shown empathy.
In leadership, that means curiosity-driven perspective-taking, not emotional merging. The leader’s job is not to absorb every emotion in the room but to genuinely understand what is happening, then make decisions that reflect it. The distinction protects leaders from the fatigue of over-identifying with their teams while keeping them genuinely connected to them.
Why is it vital now? Because organisations are running on burnt-out people. In healthcare, poor mental health is the main cause of NHS staff absenteeism, costing around £600m a year [8]. Major NHS inquiries, including the Francis, Ockenden and Kirkup reports, identified failures of empathic leadership as contributing factors in hundreds of avoidable patient deaths [7]. The cost of leading without empathy is now measurable, and it is not small.
Can you share a personal experience where showing empathy as a leader significantly impacted a situation or relationship in your organization?
One example involved a colleague whose performance had noticeably changed over several months. My first instinct was to focus on productivity and deadlines. Instead, I decided to start with curiosity rather than correction.
After a long conversation, it became clear they were carrying a level of personal strain I had completely underestimated. What helped was not lowering standards or avoiding difficult conversations. It was making enough space for honesty that we could solve the actual problem rather than react to its symptoms.
The relationship improved, the work improved, and it reminded me that leaders often misdiagnose performance issues because they are listening too quickly for answers rather than understanding.
How would you differentiate between empathy and sympathy in leadership? Why is it important for leaders to distinguish between the two?
I actually think the more important distinction for leaders is not empathy versus sympathy, but empathy versus emotional over-identification.
Sympathy can remain distant: “I feel sorry for you.” Emotional over-identification is the opposite problem, where leaders absorb everyone else’s distress and lose perspective themselves.
Empathy sits in the middle. It means genuinely understanding another person’s experience, communicating that understanding, and responding appropriately, without losing your own grounding.
That distinction matters because many leaders fear empathy will burn them out. Interestingly, the evidence suggests the opposite. Greater empathy is often associated with lower burnout, because empathic professionals stay connected to the meaning and purpose of their work.
Empathy, properly understood, is sustaining. Emotional overload is exhausting.
What are some practical strategies or exercises that leaders can employ to cultivate and enhance their empathetic skills?
Empathy can be taught, and the evidence supporting that is now strong. Our recent work with healthcare leaders, in collaboration with UC Berkeley, generated practical rules of thumb (“heuristics”) for empathic leadership that leaders can apply immediately.
Five stand out to me:
- “Listen First, Speak Last.” Understand before directing.
- “Walk the Shop Floor.” Leaders need direct exposure to reality rather than filtered summaries.
- “Be Vulnerable.” Teams are rarely honest with leaders who present themselves as permanently invulnerable.
- “Look for Undisclosed Brilliance.” Most teams contain abilities and perspectives nobody has properly asked for yet.
- “Be Prepared to Make Unpopular Decisions.” Empathy is not avoidance.
On a personal level, anything that strengthens perspective-taking helps. Ask more open questions. Resist the urge to fix immediately. And find practices that quiet your own reactivity. I have practiced yoga and meditation for more than twenty-five years for exactly that reason.
How can empathy help leaders navigate the complexities of leading diverse teams and ensure inclusivity?
Research from other areas shows that sometimes simple rules are the best way to navigate complexity. Gerd Gigerenzer showed this in some famous cases where very simple prediction rules (that ignored lots of information) outperformed complex prediction rules that used all the information. The reason simple rules can do so well is that they ignore noise so are better at picking up signals.
In leadership it can be the same thing. Trying to remember what long acronyms mean, how to implement complex theories, or what chapter of a leadership book is most relevant to a situation is not realistic. By contrast, simple rules of thumb (“listen first”, “walk the shop floor”) are memorable and if taught the right way can be imbibed and effective.
Regarding diversity, you cannot lead diverse teams well if you quietly assume everyone shares your background, reference points, or route into the work.
At the Stoneygate Centre, our research is currently examining how characteristics including gender, race, and socioeconomic background shape how empathy is given and received. Empathy is not experienced identically by everyone, and leaders who assume otherwise will systematically under-serve the people least similar to themselves.
The practical move is simple but difficult: ask rather than assume, and create structures where quieter perspectives have a reliable way to be heard.
How do empathetic leaders strike a balance between understanding their team’s feelings and making tough decisions that might not be universally popular?
This has been really tough and I don’t always get this right.
Three rules of thumb from our recent leadership work help hold this tension. The first is “Listen First, Speak Last,” which forces a leader to genuinely understand the room before deciding. The second is “Be Prepared to Make Unpopular Decisions,” which acknowledges that real understanding sometimes leads you to a choice your team would rather you did not make. The third is clarity: clarity is a precondition for empathy. The key with clarity is that it needs to be expressed at the right time and in the right way.
You need all three. Skip the listening and you decide on bad information. Get trapped in the listening and you never decide. Skip the clarity and the message gets garbled or lost.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways Empathy Will Affect Your Leadership”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.
1. It Improves Wellbeing and Retention
People are more likely to stay in demanding jobs when they feel understood. In healthcare, poor mental health is now the leading cause of NHS absenteeism. Empathic leadership reduces that strain because people feel psychologically safer and more supported. The financial benefits follow the human ones.
2. It Reduces Burnout
One of the biggest misconceptions is that empathy drains leaders. What actually drains people is emotional overload without boundaries. Proper empathy creates connection and meaning, which tends to increase resilience rather than diminish it. Many clinicians tell us that reconnecting with patients as human beings restores the sense of purpose that bureaucracy erodes.
3. It Improves Performance
Teams perform better when information flows honestly upward. If people fear dismissal or humiliation, leaders receive filtered information. Empathic leaders hear problems earlier and solve them faster. In healthcare, that can directly affect patient outcomes. In any organisation, it affects performance.
4. It Reduces Mistakes and Complaints
In healthcare, empathy is associated with fewer complaints, fewer medical errors, less pain, reduced post-operative morphine use, and even better outcomes in chronic disease. The mechanism is surprisingly simple: people speak up earlier when they feel safe and respected.
5. It Improves Financial Outcomes
Belinda Parmar showed that more empathic organisations are more profitable. We have done our own research (not yet published) showing that healthcare organisations that are more empathic at a system level are also more financially sound.
Are there potential pitfalls or challenges associated with being an empathetic leader? How can these be addressed?
There are three major pitfalls.
The first is confusing empathy with emotional over-identification. A leader who absorbs every emotion around them will eventually burn out and make worse decisions. Empathy requires understanding, not emotional collapse.
The second is using empathy as an excuse to avoid difficult decisions. Listening first does not mean never deciding. In fact, some of the most empathic actions a leader can take are initially unpopular.
The third is performative empathy, where leaders learn the language of listening without the practice behind it. Teams recognise the gap very quickly, and credibility disappears fast.
The solution to all three is the same: keep empathy operational. Define it clearly, train for it, measure it, and treat it as a discipline rather than a personality trait.
Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?
What keeps me up most is ensuring that I am doing the best I can for my team. Overall this helps because it is a priority and most things can be learned to some degree when we focus on them.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would start a movement to make empathy measurable, teachable, and expected in every major institution, especially healthcare and education.
For too long, empathy has been treated as optional or “soft.” Yet the evidence increasingly shows it affects outcomes, performance, trust, wellbeing, and even mortality.
My hope would be to shift empathy from being viewed as a personality trait people either have or lack, to a practical discipline that organisations intentionally cultivate.
How can our readers further follow you online?
My work and writing are at jeremyhowick.com, which includes my books, publications, and free monthly newsletter.
Readers can learn more about the Stoneygate Centre at University of Leicester — Jeremy Howick.
The Global Empathy in Healthcare Network is at Global Empathy in Healthcare Network.
I’m also active on LinkedIn and on Instagram as @jeremyhowick.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Thank you, it has been a real pleasure.
Professor Jeremy Howick Of The Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare: 5 Ways Empathy Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.