The Intelligent Empath and the “Make It Happen” Leader

Senior executive: “Just make it happen. Period.”

Executive: “But the impact on the people would be…”

You can hear the gap from here.

I work with a brilliant executive who has learned to weave her empathy with her intelligence. She reads a room the way some people read a spreadsheet, and she is sought out for her team building and her problem solving in equal measure.

Then her reporting line changed.

Her new leader is brilliant in his own way. He has little time for her and a very different approach. He believes the way through is through: figure it out, make it happen, people will adapt or they won’t.

For most intelligent empaths, the first move is the honest one. Show the data on what can and cannot be done, and why. Lay out what happens to the people downstream. With a partner, that opens a shared plan.

He is not a partner. He is a senior leader recognized for his results, and he is not changing. Let’s not fool ourselves. Doing the same thing and expecting him to hear it differently is a strategy for burning out.

So what does an empath do when her integrity is bear-hugged to how people get treated, and her leader treats people like machines to be programmed?

She stopped spending her few minutes with him on the people. She spends them on the path.

“Ok. This is what it takes.” Period.

(She doesn’t actually say period. She isn’t trying to start an imaginary fist fight.)

He doesn’t want to hear about the people. She doesn’t want to waste her time or her energy convincing him. He wants it to happen. She gives him the way to make it happen, built by someone who has already accounted for the people, whether he knows it or not.

He may not like it or take the time to understand why the path looks the way it does. She may not like that a discussion about impact is off the table.

But they have found a rhythm. Minimal intellectual punches thrown.

Here’s the unspoken truth underneath this. Nobody talks about how much energy capable people spend trying to make their leaders feel something. The empath wants the leader to care about the people. The leader wants the result. When you stop trying to move his heart and start making the right path the easiest one to pick, your values don’t shrink. They go into the design, where he can’t take them out.

So, my intelligent empaths with “make it happen” leaders.

Stop trying to make him feel it. Start making it impossible to ignore.

Get what’s needed, in their language, with your values intact.