The Empathy Dilemma
How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries
Lead with compassion without compromising high performance or financial success.
We have entered a new world of work. It’s a world where successful leaders embrace a human-centric approach, prioritizing the mental health and personal responsibilities of their employees alongside their professional ones. However, post-pandemic, a dark side to the empathetic workplace has emerged and many well-intentioned business leaders are struggling to keep both productivity and morale high.
In The Empathy Dilemma, author, speaker, and empathy advocate, Maria Ross, explores the difficulties organizational leaders are having, and the solutions they need to get back on track. Drawing on her decades of experience, thorough research, and extensive interviews, Ross goes back to the basics of what empathy is, and what it isn’t. She details where leaders are going wrong and how to navigate complicating factors such as generational mindsets, philosophical differences, and diverse life experiences while still getting the job done. By utilizing the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership: self-awareness, self-care, clarity, decisiveness, and joy, leaders will discover actionable tactics to create the firm foundation, that enables compassion to co-exist with high-performance. And by bringing this all into focus, Ross emphasizes the fact that empathy is a two-way street that involves mutual respect and trust between all involved parties.
Written as a follow-up to her book The Empathy Edge, The Empathy Dilemma looks at the compassionate leader through a post-pandemic lens. It is the guide every leader needs in order to prioritize performance and protect mental health so that both their organization and their teams come out on top.
Reviews
“Maria Ross’s The Empathy Dilemma is a refreshing and practical guide for leaders who want to make empathy more than just a buzzword. By focusing on self-awareness, self-care, clarity, decisiveness, and joy, Ross provides a holistic approach to empathetic leadership that is both inspiring and achievable.”
“In The Empathy Dilemma, Maria Ross equips those of us managing workplace stress and burnout with the tools to develop an empathy practice that emphasizes much-needed self-care. Her Five Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership provide an invaluable framework for anyone wanting to cultivate a more empathetic and engaged culture without sacrificing high performance, clearly addressing the challenges of the post-COVID workplace.”
“If you’ve made the mistake, like I have, of mixing up ’empathy’ and ‘being a pushover,’ this book will save you. It will guide you on how to care and have boundaries, how to encourage and be a decisive leader.”
24.95 CAD • 19.95 USD
Published 09/10/2024
Paperback