Giving transformative feedback: E = Empathetic
a series of articles on giving helpful feedback that's SMART
I have plenty of weaknesses as a leader. In particular, I struggle with giving feedback. My heart feels like a conflict is coming, and I dread it. While I understand that healthy disagreement in the workplace is essential, I spend way too much energy worrying about the conversation, so that I’m exhausted afterward for the rest of the day. But giving feedback of good quality is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader, so I’ve invested time in learning about feedback: receiving it, giving it, evaluating it. My conclusion—at least for now—is that developmental feedback, the type of feedback intended to help someone learn and grow, is really a goal in disguise. And if this is the case, then we have a great tool to help in setting high-quality goals and a plan to achieve them: the SMART framework. I added two more letters to the end (E = Empathetic and D = Direct) to capture important aspects of giving the feedback.
People can tell when we aren’t being genuine. Sometimes a leader has to hold back confidential information, but feedback about a student’s work, a child’s behavior, or an employee’s performance is not one of those times. A lack of genuine concern for someone can show up in ways we don’t intend and undermine the progress we hope to make. When giving feedback, we need to be genuine—authentically ourselves—and to demonstrate empathy in the conversation.
Inclusive leaders – and humans, frankly – need to reframe feedback from threat to tool, from confrontation to care.
Debi Skea, Humans Who Code
In this article, I continue my series introducing SMARTED as a framework for giving feedback that can lead to real growth and transformation, based on the SMART framework for goal-setting. In the previous article of the series, I started at the end with D = Direct. This article continues with a focus on E = Empathetic, and I will review what it means to be empathetic; propose strategies for empathizing without over-identifying; and describe using the Inner Tools of Paying Attention and Review and Reflect to expand your capacity for empathy. Let’s get started!
Empathy: What it is, and why it matters
Most of us are familiar with the word sympathy, which is an outward expression of care for another; when a friend experiences a death in the family, your sympathy says, “I know you’re hurting. I’m sad for you.” We tend to experience sympathy with people we don’t know well, or when we don’t really understand or relate to someone’s suffering.
Empathy is somewhat different. Empathy is an inward sharing and understanding of another’s feelings. Empathy seeks to understand another person’s emotions and to connect with that person. Empathy relies on your emotional intelligence, your ability to recognize and understand emotions and to truly understand another person’s perspective. Empathy is most often expressed and experienced in close and meaningful relationships.
Empathy matters because it fosters connection. Empathy focuses us on someone else’s perspective and experience. While “I know just how you feel” might sound nice, the truth is that you can’t know just how I feel, because you don’t have the same background I have. I’ve learned that a better way to express empathy is something like “I don’t know if I’ve been exactly where you are, but I’m familiar with the neighborhood.” Even with the power differential present in a leader/follower feedback conversation, displaying genuine empathy shows that you’re not just being an unreasonable asshole1, that you recognize there’s more to the picture. Empathy also opens your mind to see the whole person in front of you, the person who has an entire life outside the workplace or classroom that you’re not part of.
Empathy in feedback
In the D for Direct article, I discussed preparing for the feedback conversation, with a focus on the language you plan to use. The purpose isn’t to script the entire conversation, but to equip yourself in advance with helpful statements and phrases. I encouraged you to rehearse the feedback conversation a couple of times with your own leader or with trusted friends.
You can warm up your empathy muscles during your preparation by flipping one of those rehearsals around: ask your friend to role-play you, while you focus on listening to the feedback they give you, exploring the thoughts and feelings that come up within you as a result. Consider how your feedback recipient thinks and speaks and reacts. How do the words feel when they land on you? What reaction do you feel in your body?
You can’t—and shouldn’t—try to predict every possible reaction to your message. And you can’t—and shouldn’t—try to “prespond,” that is, respond in anticipation to the range of possible reactions. Instead, this rehearsal helps you judge whether the direct, specific feedback you’re giving feels too harsh or too weak. The flipped rehearsal lets you know if you need to tweak your plan and bring it into better balance. It also prepares you to handle disbelief, disagreement, or anger with grace. We created internal space in the Inner Tools for D = Direct, and this is a perfect application of your inner capacity: taking in something from the world with grace, without showing frustration or knee-jerk reactions. Empathy is what lets you do this.
Sympathy is essentially telling someone, ‘I know how you feel,’ whereas empathy is saying, ‘I feel how you feel.’
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc. Simply Psychology.
Inner Tools: Paying Attention
The inner tools I have for you today aren’t the sort that you can do in a single 20-minute session. It may take only about 30 minutes, but it will be scattered throughout the day. For Steps 1 and 2, the Paying Attention steps, you’ll need a notebook and pencil or your favorite note-taking app. You may also need to set a special intention on two separate days. For the Review and Reflect step, you’ll need your notebook or note-taking app and a timer.
Step 1: Pay attention to your emotions.
Set aside one full day for paying attention to your emotions. It should be a fairly typical day, with work or school, family, hobbies—all the things you might do on a typical day. The night before, before you go to sleep, think, “Tomorrow I’ll notice my feelings.” When you wake up that morning, think, “Today I’m paying attention to my emotions. I want to notice them as they arise.” Set aside a page in your notebook for jotting down the emotions that come up for you during the day: energized, happy, cheerful, pissed off, pissed the heck off, grieving, frustrated, helpless, enraged, hopeful, loving, loved. Even if you’re not quite sure if it’s truly an emotion, write it down. If you notice the way the emotion feels physically, in your body, write that down, too. If your jaw clenches, or your heart races, or your stomach feels ill, those often indicate emotions we may be trying not to feel. This isn’t the time to analyze, simply to observe. You are collecting data to review later.
When I set aside a day for this, I set myself a reminder every hour on the :50, and I mentally review the last hour for feelings. I find that I may miss some of the fleeting feelings, but that I capture the important stuff without as much disruption to my day. Don’t forget to record the feelings that come up after you get home from work or school, because your family deserves empathy, too. You may find you have similar feelings at home, or you may find that they’re very different. Neither is wrong (or right). It’s simply what is.
Step 2: Pay attention to other people’s emotions.
One or two days after you observe your own emotions, it’s time to expand the scope of your observations. Again, set the intention the night before and the morning of: “Today I’ll be paying attention to the feelings of the people around me. I want to notice them as they arise.” Again, this is a day for observation, not for analysis. You’re collecting data to review later.
I recommend setting hourly alerts for this day’s work. It makes people uncomfortable if you tell them you’re collecting observations of them. Not that you have any nefarious goals—in fact, strengthening your empathy will benefit everyone around you. Write down what you think the emotion is that others are experiencing, even if you aren’t sure what their feeling is. In the moment, try to notice what you feel in response to the other person’s emotion. Your note might look like “11:30 team meeting - Jackson H. - think he’s frustrated, which made me feel irritated.” The goal isn’t to write a journal entry of beautiful prose, but to take down observations.
Again, don’t stop your observations when you get home from school or work. What is your roommate feeling? your family members?
Step 3: Review and Reflect
After another day or two, it’s time to review the data you collected and reflect on it. You will need a timer, the notes from your two Paying Attention days, and notebook/pen or note-taking app.
We’ll use three timers to keep this step to no more than 20 to 30 minutes. You can repeat it on another day if you want to spend more time with any of the questions.
Set timer for 5 minutes. Review the list of emotions you noticed in yourself. Do you remember the situations that caused the most intense feelings? Do you notice any patterns, such as writing down only the emotions that felt good… or only the ones that didn’t? What do you feel in your body right now, as you recall that day? Were you honest with yourself when you wrote down the feelings?
Now stand up and shake your hands, then your wrists, then your whole arms. Shake one foot and then the other. Stretch your arms straight up, and then jump, if you’re able. Just a hop. Now back to reviewing.
Set your timer for 5 minutes again. Review the list of emotions you noticed in other people. Do you notice any parallels between the list of your emotions and the list of other people’s emotions? Do you remember what led up to people expressing feelings with intensity? What emotions do you feel as you review this list? What do you feel in your body right now?
Now stand up, if you can. Turn your whole body to your left (90 degrees) and observe 5 things with any of your senses. Turn to the left again and observe 4 new things through any senses. Turn to the left once more and observe 3 new things. Turn left one more time and notice 2 new things. Now it’s time to reflect.
Set your timer for 10 minutes. For your reflection, you can start with my questions or with your own. The only way to do reflection “wrong” is to do it dishonestly, so be honest with yourself.
As you reviewed your two lists, what ideas or feelings came to mind for you?
Do you feel satisfied with how you recorded your feelings?
Would you change something if you were to repeat the day of Paying Attention to your feelings?
Do you feel satisfied with how you observed other people’s feelings?
What would you do differently if you were to repeat the day of Paying Attention to the feelings of those around you?
Are there any feelings that seem to be completely missing from your lists? Why do you think that is?
Based on the list of other people’s feelings, how would you show empathy in a conversation with them?
Whether you write down your response, type it into an app, or dictate it for a voice recorder, it’s important to record your reflection. This is the record of where you are today, and perhaps you’ll look back at it in a few months, in a year, or much later. What do you think Future You would say to Current You?
Wrap up
Now that we’ve explored the E = Empathetic component of the SMARTED framework for giving transformative feedback, how are you feeling about your capacity to use empathy during feedback conversations? If you tried the Inner Tools of Paying Attention and Review and Reflect, do you feel able to learn more and continue developing empathy? There’s so much great material about Empathy and Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and I barely scratched the surface here. I believe in you - I know you can do this!
Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue in this focus on giving feedback that can be truly transformative, considering each element of SMART individually, examining the tools and techniques you already have and introducing inner tools that may be new to you. Next up is S for Specific.
Always remember that the goal for a Miriam’s Wisdom leader is fostering improvement and transformation in your organization (and in your self!), while maintaining trust, support, and psychological safety. In helping your people develop and grow, your leadership will deepen and grow as well!
Related articles
Additional Resources
The 15 Habits of Highly Empathetic People. Science of People. 2025.
7 Personal Development Practices to Build Empathy. Tiffany Fang. Words for Action. 2025.
Brave Conversations: How to Give and Receive Feedback with Empathy and Impact. Debi Skea. Humans Who Code.
The Difference between Empathy and Sympathy. Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc. Simply Psychology. 2023.
Empathetic Feedback: Everything You Need to Know. Fibery. 2024.
In fact, “Don’t be an asshole” might be the first rule of giving feedback. Almost always, if you have to ask if you’re being one, you are. Focus on empathy instead.