Starting with Yourself: How Empathy Fosters Sustainable Change
- Meghan Waldron
- Jul 20
- 7 min read
Dr. Jacqueline Kumar, Ph.D., Founding Member, Women in Change U.S.A.
“Empathy gets dismissed as a soft skill because people confuse it with kindness or with putting themselves in someone else's shoes. That is not wrong. It is incomplete,” Dr. Jacqueline Kumar shared with Women in Change U.S.A.
The power of empathy came in a light bulb moment for Kumar.
“Early in my Ph.D., I attended a conference on empathy. Neuroscientist Dr. James Doty said something that changed my direction, ‘The brain cannot tell truth from untruth. When you tell yourself you are not enough or you cannot change, your brain believes you. That belief becomes your reality.’”
This new understanding led Kumar to study empathy in a way that elicited real change “not just academic theory.”
Building a three-stage process, Kumar began to understand that empathy is not an emotion. Instead “it is a process: self-awareness, perspective-taking, and action-oriented response.”
The intentionality of empathizing is something we can utilize in our homes, our offices, and our daily thoughts. It’s also something CEOs are paying close attention to… and for good reason.
Headlines remind us that the Empathy Gap is costing companies trillions. Forbes recently reported that the “ 2025 State of Workplace Empathy Report links $180 billion in annual attrition costs to the gap between how empathetic leaders think they are and how supported employees actually feel.”
The disconnect often arises when leaders assume empathy exists, but their employees note otherwise.
“Performative empathy looks like acknowledging someone's experience without letting that understanding change anything that follows. A leader says, ‘I hear your concerns,’ or ‘I understand this has been difficult.’ Then they move forward without asking questions, exploring the concern, or considering whether any response is needed. The words are there. The engagement is not,” Kumar explained.
Employees feel that difference.
Forbes reports that over half of employees would leave their current jobs to work somewhere more empathetic.
“The difference between performative and genuine empathy is what happens after the acknowledgement. Genuine empathy does not mean agreeing with everyone, accommodating every request, or removing accountability. It means making a real effort to understand someone's experience and perspective, then letting that understanding inform your response.
That response might change your approach, add support, or lead to a different decision. Sometimes the original decision stays the same. Even then, genuine empathy shows up in how you communicate that decision and whether you actually considered the other person's perspective first,” she said.
Because assumption and reality are not always a close match, leaders are getting intentional about how empathy plays out in their companies by bringing in experts like Kumar to lead the way.
“Empathy is a process with structure: self-awareness, perspective-taking, and action-oriented response. Each stage is a skill you build, not a trait you either have or do not,” Kumar explained.
“Before we push to build more empathy, I think we need to first understand what empathy is, how it works, and how to apply it.” -Dr. Jacqueline Kumar |
In her leadership training programs, Kumar measures this directly. Participants complete an assessment before and after each program, tracking self-awareness, perspective-taking, action-oriented response, and team impact.
“Across cohorts, we see consistent improvement, with the clearest gains in self-awareness and perspective-taking, and a measurable drop in reactive behavior patterns. That is not a soft outcome. That is a trainable skill with a measurable before and after,” she reiterated.
However, this process can create reluctance and friction.
“[What] I hear most is that empathy slows people down, that there is no time for it under pressure. I push back on that. Most conflict in high pressure environments, healthcare, sports, corporate teams, does not come from a lack of technical skill. It comes from people reacting to a story their brain created in a split second instead of what actually happened. Empathy is not slower. It is the discipline that stops a small misread from becoming a bigger problem,” she shared.
Working through this process takes time, as it is iterative.
“Performative empathy stops at the words. Genuine empathy changes what you do next,” Kumar shared.
For leaders attempting to make sustainable change, taking their time to work through the process pays huge dividends.
“Take a workplace rolling out a new policy. If leaders announce the change and expect immediate compliance, they get resistance. If they understand employee concerns first, explain the reasons clearly, and respond to real barriers, people feel included in the process. This does not mean every concern gets accommodated or that empathy removes accountability. It means the change is built on a real understanding of the people living through it. That is what gives change durability,” she explained.
“Empathy moves you past surface fixes into the human reasons that decide whether change sticks or fades.” -Dr. Jacqueline Kumar |
She reminded us that this practice works in many environments.
“The women I coach are usually high achievers already. Their challenge is never a skills gap. It is a Self-Worth Intelligence gap. They know how to lead a team. They are still learning to lead themselves with the same clarity. Women understand everyone else. They read every room, every mood, every need around them. They stop reading their own,” Kumar reiterated.
“I had a client who had it all from the outside. Successful career, involved mom, always smiling. Inside, she was exhausted and resentful. She stopped to ask herself two questions: What am I feeling? What do I actually want? She found the truth. She was not just tired. She was angry. She always put herself last.
That awareness changed everything. She saw her own pattern for the first time. She learned to take perspective on that pattern without judging herself. Then she took action. She said no to a request for the first time in years. She expected people to be upset. They respected her more,” Kumar explained.
Unlike some training in empathy, Kumar teaches women to turn that same skill inward first. In this case, the Empathy Gap is not a lack of empathy. In fact, most women have too much of it– pointed in the wrong direction.
“You learn to read everyone around you. Your partner, your kids, your team, your boss. You give empathy outward without limit. Somewhere in that, you stop giving it to yourself,” she said.
This can present in a few ways:
Burnout. You give your time and attention to everyone else until there is nothing left for your own work or health.
Imposter syndrome. You see everyone else's competence clearly, but you rarely turn that same clarity on yourself. You doubt your own value even when your results prove it.
Trouble with boundaries. You feel what everyone else needs and say yes to all of it. Saying no still feels like letting someone down.
People pleasing. You avoid conflict. You over explain your decisions. You shape your choices around what keeps others comfortable, not what you actually need.
Kumar once worked with a leader running a mid-size team through a merger. Her department was being blended with another and layoffs were imminent. Tension rose. Trust decayed. Meetings grew silent, and senior staff scoured job pages. With just thirty days to work with her team, Kumar’s client started with herself. She acknowledged her own fear, and she recognized her propensity to over-promise and over-explain.
“She moved to perspective-taking. Instead of assuming silence meant apathy, she asked each team member one question in private: ‘What are you most worried about right now?’ She heard real answers. Some feared losing their title. Some feared relocating. One feared being blamed for missed targets that were never her fault,” Kumar shared.
Equipped with this new information, she took action. She knew some elements were beyond her control, but she could control how she communicated with her team. She provided real, timely updates. She stopped misinformation. She built a collaborative transition plan including the diverse voices of her team.
“The result? Nobody left during the thirty days. Trust in leadership, measured before and after, went up. More than a year later, her team still credits that period as the reason they stayed through a harder transition later. The change lasted because she never went back to managing by information control. She kept asking, kept listening, kept acting on what she heard,” Kumar shared.
For women in leadership creating sustainable change– empathy is the foundation.
“It is not doing something differently [one time]. It is building the awareness to respond differently when old pressures and patterns return.
Empathy makes that possible. Empathy is not kindness or compassion. It means recognizing what is happening, considering perspectives beyond your own, and letting that understanding guide action. When people feel understood, they open up to reflection, trust, and real participation in change. Applied inward, empathy helps you see your own patterns and barriers instead of judging yourself for not changing fast enough,” Kumar said.
Putting it to PracticeWhen asked how members of Women in Change USA can build empathy, Kumar shared some tangible deliverables: I describe empathy as a muscle. You may have a natural capacity for it, but that capacity grows through intentional practice. I recommend three daily practices.
These three work together. Get curious enough to gather information. Take perspective to deepen your understanding. Reflect on whether that understanding changed your response. That last step matters most. You can say you understand someone, but if that understanding never changes how you respond, empathy is not doing anything. Strengthening the empathy muscle is not about feeling more. It is about becoming more disciplined in how you understand, interpret, and respond to people. |
Dr. Kumar reminds WIC USA members, “A quick fix creates a temporary shift in behavior. Sustainable change means you understand, respond, and make decisions differently over time.”
This is empathy in action.
To learn more about Dr. Jacqueline Kumar, visit Empathos Coaching, and follow her on LinkedIn.
We asked Joseph Cope, The Empathy Guy, to reflect on Dr. Kumar's work. Check it out!
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