How to keep empathy sustainable in a world of hybrid, intergenerational work

“Empathic leadership is commonly associated with better employee engagement and lower turnover. But leading with empathy can burn out even the best managers. Asrif Yusoff looks at whether millennial managers, who find themselves between older and younger generations with contrasting approaches to working , suffer more than others. Empathy has become the an expectation of business leaders today. Employees expect managers to listen well, respond with care and create psychological safety. Organisations no longer treat these behaviours as a “nice to have” but as a baseline competence . There is, however, an uncomfortable reality behind this push for empathy. Managers who do it consistently can end up carrying an emotional load that is rarely acknowledged. In my recent study on empathic leadership among millennial managers, a consistent pattern emerges. While empathy can improve team outcomes, sustained empathy can produce fatigue when it continues without recovery. I was initially drawn to this topic after coming across a trend on social media about millennial managers. In these videos, they protect team members from top-down pressure, keep everyone happy – and get burned out as a result. What I’ve found is that this squeeze is not a millennial problem. It’s a common challenge across middle management, which tends to be more visible among millennials because of where many sit in the organisational hierarchy today. Why empathy is rising and why it is costing more Empathic leadership is commonly associated with better employee engagement and lower turnover. In several sectors, studies link empathic leadership to job satisfaction and employee resilience, especially during periods of change. When managers lead with empathy, it can act as a buffer against workplace stress. Against this backdrop, empathy becomes costly because it is more than just an attitude. It is a set of behaviours that requires ongoing emotion regulation . Managers need to stay calm when they feel frustrated, remain patient when they get overwhelmed and show care even when they themselves are depleted. This is where emotional labour becomes relevant. Emotional labour research describes what happens when people regulate their feelings across two concepts. First, “ surface acting ” where the expected emotion is enacted while the real one is suppressed. Second, “ emotional dissonance ” which is the strain between felt emotion and displayed emotion. In frontline roles, where interpersonal interaction is intense, these processes are well known. In management roles, they can become hidden as empathy is framed as a leadership style rather than work that consumes psychological resources. The more a manager is relied upon as the emotional stabiliser of the team, the more they are exposed to sustained regulation of demands. Over time, this can translate into fatigue and burnout , even when the team is thriving. Are millennial managers uniquely affected? Once deemed as “disruptive” when they joined the workforce a decade ago, as managers, millennials are now mostly seen as collaborative and inclusive . They may also be more comfortable with hybrid work and technology. These traits fit the modern workplace which increasingly values flexible and supportive leadership. However, when I tried to look for comparisons between generations across existing studies, the evidence for millennial uniqueness is limited. In some professional contexts, empathy and burnout levels do not differ meaningfully between millennials and prior generations. In studies on leadership styles, the preference for empowering and transformational leadership among millennials often overlaps with adjacent cohorts. A clearer explanation is that millennial managers are currently in between older and younger generations with contrasting approaches to working. Many manage upward to senior employees while managing downward to early career staff with stronger expectations of coaching and wellbeing support. With hybrid working conditions and faster organisational change, the emotional availability expected from managers increases. In short, while empathy related strain may be more visible among millennials, it is not well supported to be unique for one generation. The stressor appears to be the combination of contemporary organisational design and managerial expectations and not cohort membership alone. Three considerations to reduce empathy fatigue Make emotional load visible. Most organisations track team deliverables and performance targets. Few track the emotional load of the role. One consideration is to add a prompting questions into routine conversations with managers. “What emotionally heavy situations have repeated this month?” “Where are you absorbing conflict, stress, or ambiguity for others?” This surfaces invisible work for discussion and mitigation. Train for emotional regulation, not just “being empathic”. Many leadership programmes teach empathy as a value. Few build skills for sustaining empathy under strain. Development should include concrete capabilities on delivering difficult feedback, responding with care, and reducing surface acting. This is where emotional intelligence upskilling becomes more practical than theoretical. Create a culture where boundaries are respected, not penalised. Empathy becomes dangerous when managers believe that setting limits is interpreted as a lack of care. Senior management set the norm here. If boundary setting is taken as being professional, managers can sustain empathy longer. If boundary setting is treated as weakness, empathic managers quietly absorb strain until they disengage and burn out. This is an opportunity for senior management to truly show they care, and walk the talk. This blog is based on Leading with empathy: a double-edged sword for millennial managers? Published in SN Social Science 6, 104 (2026). This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics. You are agreeing with our comment policy when you leave a comment. Image credit: Anima Designer provided by Shutterstock. The post How to keep empathy sustainable in a world of hybrid, intergenerational work first appeared on LSE Business Review .

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