Empathetic Leadership in Crisis: Why Mature Leaders Turn Understanding into Action

Empathy — and action born from empathy.

Empathy is not softness. It is not sentiment. In the Intelligent Leadership framework, empathy is tied to altruism, emotional honesty, character, and versatility — components of the Inner Core that fuel mature leadership under pressure.

Empathy is strength. Empathy is strategy. Empathy is maturity in motion.

Before exploring empathy through the lens of leadership maturity, it’s important to understand the Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory (MLEI). The MLEI is a powerful assessment designed to help leaders measure and strengthen their leadership maturity — the single greatest predictor of leadership effectiveness. 

Unlike traditional personality tools, the MLEI uncovers how a leader’s inner-core motivations, strengths, and fears influence their outward behaviors — especially in times of pressure. It identifies a leader’s dominant enneagram type, highlights maturity levels, and reveals patterns that shape communication, decision-making, emotional regulation, and empathy. 

Most importantly, the MLEI provides a developmental blueprint. As the guide explains, it is “more than an assessment — it’s a path for transforming leadership potential into lasting impact.” 

This makes it an essential foundation for understanding how empathy strengthens leadership in crisis.

According to the MLEI Interpretive Guide E-Book, empathy is part of the Helper Trait (Type 2), defined as:

In crisis, people’s fears, anxieties, and confusion escalate. Leaders who lack mature empathy tend to:

• retreat into self-protection
• become rigid or controlling
• focus solely on tasks, numbers, or optics
• ignore the human signals that determine whether the organization will recover

By contrast, mature empathetic leaders: 

• listen without defensiveness
• tune into both spoken and unspoken emotional cues
• understand the “why” behind reactions
• respond in ways that calm, support, and empower
• take bold action aligned with human needs

This is the foundation of leadership maturity — the ability to translate empathy into decisive, constructive behavior.

The Guide states that courage is the most essential element of character:

Empathy without courage creates passive, overly accommodating leaders.

Courage without empathy creates harsh, disconnected leaders.

In a crisis, leaders must combine both.

Empathy gives leaders accurate information about the emotional landscape;

courage gives them the conviction to act on that information.

Empathetic action looks like:

• acknowledging people’s fears openly
• making decisions that prioritize long-term culture over short-term optics
• taking ownership, not assigning blame
• adapting plans to human realities, not ideal conditions
• protecting the team’s psychological safety while advancing the mission

Courage and empathy work together to propel the organization forward — not through pressure, but through trust.

The MLEI warns leaders about learned helplessness — a mindset where negative references convince people that nothing will improve.

In crisis, teams can easily fall into this trap.

The Guide notes:

Empathetic leaders interrupt this downward spiral by:

• naming the struggle
• normalizing fear
• providing perspective
• reminding people of past successes
• creating small wins that build positively charged references

In other words, empathy becomes the spark that reactivates belief, hope, and forward momentum.

The Guide states clearly that, "Versatility is the most important of all behavioral tendencies… To be versatile is to observe and empathize.”

Versatile leaders:

• read the emotional climate accurately
• adjust their communication style to the needs of the moment
• flex between empathy and accountability
• stay emotionally grounded
• seek connection before correction

In a crisis, versatility is essential because people respond differently to stress. Empathy is what allows leaders to adapt — authentically, appropriately, and effectively.

The Intelligent Leadership model highlights a key truth: 

In crisis, immature leaders allow negative thoughts to dominate:

• “I’m a victim.”
• “I’m being treated unfairly.”
• “No one is listening.”
• “I can’t fix this.”

These thoughts generate defensive, reactive, or emotionally driven behaviors. Empathy, however, shifts the mindset. When leaders focus on understanding others, not protecting themselves, their thoughts — and therefore their emotions and behaviors — become more mature. 

The results are powerful:

• more grounded communication
• cooler heads in heated moments
• greater patience
• reduced conflict
• improved decision quality

Empathy stabilizes the inner core — which stabilizes the entire organization.

The Guide identifies loyalty as a core element of character:

Crises test loyalty. People remember how leaders made them feel more than the strategies leaders used.

Empathetic leaders reinforce loyalty by:

• being transparent, not withholding
• sharing the burden
• acknowledging sacrifice
• expressing gratitude (another core element)
• respecting the emotional experience of their people

This builds psychological safety, the number-one predictor of team performance — especially under pressure.

Crises reveal how strong or fragile a culture truly is.

Empathy ensures that recovery is:

• faster (because people trust the leadership direction)
• stronger (because people feel valued and understood)
• more sustainable (because the culture isn’t damaged in the process)

The Guide reinforces the importance of gratitude:

Empathetic leaders express gratitude consistently — and this fuels renewed energy and commitment.

Empathy is not a “soft skill.” It is a core requirement for any leader responsible for guiding an organization through uncertainty.

When empathy becomes action:

• trust increases
• fear decreases
• clarity emerges
• people re-engage
• culture strengthens
• innovation returns
• performance accelerates

This is what the Intelligent Leadership framework calls the mature cycle — where positive thoughts drive positive emotions, which drive positive actions, which drive breakthrough results.

The bottom line is that in a crisis, empathetic leadership is not just a leadership style —it is a lifeline. It stabilizes people, restores confidence, rebuilds culture, accelerates recovery, and ultimately, transforms organizations.

Empathy — when paired with courage, character, and decisive action — is how mature leaders move their teams out of crisis and into strength.

Rich Baron is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Global Coaching Projects at John Mattone Global (JMG) and a Master Certified Intelligent Leadership® Executive Coach. He partners with C-level leaders and high-potential executives around the world to strengthen trust, elevate culture, and drive sustainable transformation.

Rich leads large-scale coaching and cultural initiatives across multiple regions and industries, and serves as a strategic bridge between executive teams, HR, and global coaching networks. He is also the co-host of the Mainline Executive Coaching ACT podcast, recognized as one of the top executive coaching podcasts globally, where he explores the real-world challenges and opportunities facing today’s leaders.

Through his work, Rich is dedicated to CHANGING THE WORLD One Leader, One Organization at a Time® by helping leaders move beyond performance and build the inner architecture required to become world-class executives.