'Leaders need to be more empathetic!' We hear this all the time in reference to leadership and management right? In fact, empathy has increasingly been listed as a key leadership competency in recent years, with countless articles and books written on the subject. It has a significant business impact too. Catalyst found that 76% of people who experienced empathy from their leaders reported they were more engaged, and 61% of employees said they felt more innovative when empathy was present. All key metrics for driving business impact and engagement.

Empathy is great, don't get me wrong. The ability to empathise with someone else's situation, take on their perspective, and to feel their emotions is a critical skill. But what happens when you end up taking it all on, and you're finding yourself having the same conversation with the person you're trying to support? The conversation repeats in a cycle and you start to feel like all that empathising is going nowhere. This is the empathy trap, and there is something really key you can do to avoid it.

The first thing to do, is to make the distinction between empathy and sympathy:

• Sympathy is typically defined by feelings of pity for another person, without really understanding what it’s like to be in their situation.

• Empathy, on the other hand, refers to the capacity or ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas, or opinions of that person.

But there's a third thing, and that thing is compassion. Compassion takes us from 'the feeling' stage to 'the action' stage. It enables us to empower people with solutions and ways to help themselves out of a situation. As leaders we need to not take it all on. This means us creating space for people to problem solve, find solutions, and innovate knowing they have a safe space with compassion and empathy should they need it. Shifting away from an empathy only approach doesn't make us less human, far from it. It gives us more thinking space and a clearer perspective. Remember, you're not stepping away from the person, you're stepping away from the problem in order to help them solve it. Ask your people what they need, put the power back in their hands and allow them the opportunity to reflect on what's really going to help.

By avoiding an empathy hijack, you as a leader will create more space for yourself to be fully present and available, but crucially empower your people with the skills they need to coach themselves through adversity and build their resilience.