Empathy is The Hidden Skill That will Improve Performance
What if the difference between an average team and a high-performing one wasn’t strategy, talent, or technology… but empathy?
Research from Businessolver’s Workplace Empathy Study found that over 90% of employees say empathy from leaders increases their loyalty, and organizations with higher emotional intelligence consistently report stronger collaboration, engagement, and performance.
Yet despite its clear impact, empathy is one of the least intentionally developed skills in most workplaces.
Teams attend meetings, manage deadlines, and complete projects together every day—but many colleagues rarely take time to understand how others are thinking, feeling, or experiencing their work.
The result?
Miscommunication, tension, and missed opportunities for collaboration.
The good news is that empathy isn’t just a personality trait – it’s a skill that can be strengthened through intentional team experiences.
Why Team Members Don’t Understand Each Other
Most workplace conflict doesn’t come from bad intentions. It comes from misunderstanding perspectives.
When team members fail to see situations through someone else’s lens, several costly problems emerge:
- Communication breaks down because people listen only to respond rather than understand.
- Collaboration weakens when departments blame each other instead of working together.
- Psychological safety declines, making employees hesitant to share ideas or admit mistakes.
- Conflict escalates, turning simple disagreements into lingering tension.
The consequences can be significant. Studies by Gallup consistently show that disengaged employees cost organizations billions of dollars annually in lost productivity.
When employees feel misunderstood, unheard, or disconnected from their colleagues, their motivation drops… and so does their performance.
But when people feel respected and understood, something powerful happens: they become more willing to contribute, collaborate, and support one another.
Why Traditional Empathy Approaches Often Fall Short
Many organizations recognize the importance of empathy and emotional intelligence. However, their solutions often miss the mark.
Common approaches include:
- Lectures or training sessions about communication skills
- Policy changes encouraging collaboration
- Leadership messaging about workplace culture
While these initiatives are well intentioned, they frequently fail because empathy cannot be developed through information alone.
Empathy is inspired by experience.
People don’t truly understand a colleague’s perspective by hearing a presentation about it. They develop empathy when they actively practice listening, perspective-taking, and shared reflection.
That’s why experiential learning (especially interactive team-building activities) is far more effective than passive instruction.
The most effective way to build stronger teams and improve workplace performance is to intentionally develop empathy through structured team-building activities that allow people to experience each other’s perspectives.
Why Interactive Empathy Activities Training Works
- Empathy Strengthens Communication
Empathy improves the quality of everyday conversations at work.
When people practice active listening, they give full attention, avoid interrupting, and reflect back what they hear. This simple shift dramatically reduces misunderstandings.
In many empathy workshops, participants practice listening exercises where one person shares an experience while the other focuses solely on understanding before responding. Teams often discover how rarely they truly listen without planning their reply.
When employees feel heard, trust grows… and communication becomes more productive.
- Perspective-Taking Reduces Conflict
Many workplace disagreements happen because people only see a situation from their own role.
Exercises like Perspective Swap Roleplay allow team members to step into each other’s shoes. For example, a manager may role-play an employee facing multiple deadlines, while the employee role-plays the manager balancing team performance expectations.
This simple role reversal often leads to powerful insights. Participants frequently realize that colleagues they previously felt frustrated with were dealing with pressures they never considered.
As psychologist Alfred Adler once said, “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.”
When people practice this skill intentionally, conflicts become easier to resolve because the goal shifts from winning an argument to understanding a perspective.
- Empathy Builds Psychological Safety
High-performing teams consistently share one critical trait: psychological safety.
Research from Google’s Project Aristotle, which studied hundreds of teams, found that psychological safety was the single most important factor in team effectiveness.
Empathy plays a major role in creating that safety.
Activities like Empathy Circles or Story Exchanges give team members an opportunity to share experiences while others listen without judgment. When colleagues learn more about each other’s challenges and perspectives, they begin to feel more comfortable speaking up.
That openness leads to better problem solving, stronger collaboration, and more innovation.
- Empathy Improves Collaboration Across Roles
In many organizations, tension exists between departments that rely on each other but rarely understand each other’s pressures.
Exercises like Empathy Mapping help teams explore how colleagues experience their work.
Participants consider what someone might be:
- Thinking
- Feeling
- Hearing
- Saying or doing
For example, mapping the experience of a customer service representative might reveal constant pressure from frustrated customers, time constraints, and expectations from management.
When teams recognize these realities, they become more willing to support each other instead of assigning blame.
- Small Empathy Habits Create Cultural Change
Empathy doesn’t always require large training initiatives. Small daily habits can reinforce it as part of workplace culture. And as I’ve written previously, empathy is the foundation of all personal accountability.
Simple practices include:
- Emotional check-ins at the beginning of meetings
- Gratitude journals recognizing positive interactions with colleagues
- Random acts of kindness that show appreciation
- Open questions that invite people to share their perspectives
Over time, these habits create a workplace where people naturally look for ways to understand and support each other.
Common Objections Against Empathy Training
Objection 1: “Empathy activities feel too soft for business.”
Some leaders worry that empathy training sounds like a “soft skill” that doesn’t directly impact results.
But the data tells a different story.
Organizations with strong emotional intelligence report higher engagement, better collaboration, and lower turnover. These outcomes directly influence productivity and profitability.
Empathy isn’t about being sentimental.
It’s about improving how people work together.
Objection 2: “We don’t have time for team-building exercises.”
Busy teams often feel they cannot spare time for activities that don’t seem directly related to work.
However, unresolved conflict, poor communication, and misunderstandings consume far more time than a structured team-building session.
Many empathy exercises take only 20–30 minutes but can significantly improve how teams communicate for months afterward.
In reality, investing time in empathy often saves time by preventing future problems.
What Happens on Teams That Inspire Empathy
When empathy becomes a core part of workplace culture, the impact extends across the entire organization.
Teams begin to experience:
- Clearer communication
- Stronger trust and collaboration
- More effective conflict resolution
- Greater inclusion and belonging
- Higher engagement and morale
- Improved innovation and problem solving
Most importantly, employees begin to feel seen, heard, and valued – which drives the motivation and commitment every organization needs to succeed.
Bring Empathy Activities to Your Organization
Reading about empathy is helpful, but experiencing it together as a team is far more powerful.
If you want to strengthen communication, build trust, and create a culture where people collaborate more effectively, consider bringing your team together to discover why team-building is important in the workplace.
Through engaging exercises designed to increase awareness, understanding, and connection, teams can develop the empathy and communication skills that lead to lasting performance improvements.
If you’re ready to transform your workplace culture and boost team effectiveness, contact Sean Glaze to learn more about his interactive programs designed to help teams build stronger relationships, greater awareness, and better results together.
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Sean Glaze is a sought-after leadership and workplace culture speaker, who gained valuable
insights on turning talent into teamwork as a successful basketball coach – and now he travels around the country to share those actionable lessons.
Sean’s engaging conference leadership keynotes and custom team building programs have helped clients like Cisco, John Deere, the CDC, and Emory University to increase collaboration, boost productivity, and build Sticky Cultures that inspire more profitable teamwork.
Sean’s books, Rapid Teamwork, What Effective Leaders DO, The 10 Commandments of Winning Teammates, and Staying Coachable are entertaining parables that accelerate the growth of leaders and teams!