Leadership and Empathy: Edith Stein’s Wisdom for the Modern Business World

In the complex world of business leadership, much of the language we hear revolves around performance, innovation, growth and competition. Leaders are trained to optimise, scale, and execute, often at high speed and under pressure.

While these abilities are necessary for navigating today’s markets, they rarely address one of the most urgent and overlooked capacities required of any true leader: the ability to empathise.

Empathy is often misunderstood in corporate settings. It is sometimes perceived as a soft skill, an optional emotional add-on to the more serious work of managing results and driving outcomes. But empathy, as understood by philosopher and Carmelite saint Edith Stein, is anything but superficial.

For Stein, empathy is a rigorous, deeply human faculty, one that allows us to enter into the lived reality of another person without erasing their otherness. It is the foundation not only for ethical relationships, but also for a coherent and meaningful approach to leadership.

Edith Stein, long before her conversion to Christianity and eventual martyrdom, was a formidable intellectual. A student of Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, Stein was immersed in exploring the nature of human consciousness and intersubjectivity, how we come to know others, not just as objects in our field of view, but as subjects with interior lives as rich and valid as our own.

In her early philosophical work On the Problem of Empathy, she describes empathy not as an emotional reaction or a form of identification, but as an intentional act of perceiving the experience of the other as theirs, not ours. It is not about feeling for someone, but with someone. And crucially, it is not about assuming we understand, but being willing to remain present even when we do not.

This distinction is deeply relevant for modern leadership. Business leaders are constantly in relationships with others, employees, clients, shareholders, partners, communities, and the health of those relationships depends on the leader’s capacity to truly encounter the people they lead.

Yet many leaders fall into the trap of depersonalisation, treating others as roles or functions rather than as full persons. In this environment, empathy becomes a radical act. It slows us down. It demands that we see more than data and performance. It requires that we pay attention to the human being behind the task, the voice behind the report, the face behind the numbers.

Stein's philosophy challenges the leader to go beyond managerial competence and enter into ethical presence. She teaches that to be with another person, to allow ourselves to be affected by their reality without needing to control or solve it, is an act of humility and strength.

In business, this might look like a leader who listens with full attention, not to formulate a response, but to understand the person in front of them. It might mean holding space for discomfort or vulnerability without shutting it down in favour of efficiency. And it certainly means resisting the temptation to reduce people to their usefulness.

Empathy, as Stein describes it, is not passive. It is an active disposition of attentiveness, one that requires the full engagement of our intellect, our will and our emotions. For leaders, this means that empathy is not about being “nice” or avoiding hard truths. In fact, it often requires the courage to confront injustice, bias or emotional harm within an organisation.

Empathic leadership recognises that businesses are human systems, and that when people are not seen, not heard or not valued, performance and culture suffer, no matter how strong the external metrics may appear.

One of the most powerful contributions Edith Stein makes to the idea of empathy is her insistence that empathy is the beginning of ethical responsibility. To see the suffering or joy of another, to perceive their emotional world, is to become implicated in their well-being.

This doesn’t mean leaders must carry every burden or meet every need. But it does mean they cannot remain indifferent. In business, this might manifest as leaders who design humane systems, who make decisions with an awareness of their broader human impact, and who refuse to sacrifice integrity for expediency.

Moreover, Stein’s understanding of empathy provides a critical foundation for inclusion and diversity in leadership. To empathise with someone whose experience is radically different from our own, to make space for that difference without trying to assimilate or explain it away, is a deeply ethical act. It honours the otherness of the other, while also recognising our shared humanity. In a global business context marked by cultural complexity and pluralism, this kind of empathic attentiveness is essential.

Finally, there is a spiritual dimension to Stein’s thought that speaks directly to the inner life of the leader. Though she began her career as a secular philosopher, her later writings reveal a woman who understood that true empathy is sustained not just by psychological insight or intellectual training, but by interior formation.

The leader who wishes to empathise well must also attend to their own interior life, to cultivate silence, reflection and self-awareness. Without this, empathy becomes reactive or performative. With it, empathy becomes a steady disposition, a habit of the heart.

In Stein’s life, we see this integration. She was a woman of immense intellect and practical capability; she taught, wrote, spoke publicly and engaged the world. And yet she was also profoundly contemplative.

Her life reminds us that leadership, at its best, is not just about commanding others, but about serving them with clarity, compassion and courage.

As we navigate an era where the pace of change is overwhelming and the pressure to perform is relentless, Edith Stein’s voice offers a rare and necessary reminder: leadership without empathy is hollow. It may achieve results, but it will not build people. And in the end, it is people, those we lead and serve, who give our work its true meaning.