A few years ago, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership studied more than 6,700 managers across 38 countries and found something that sounds, at first, almost too simple: empathetic leaders are higher performers. That is, managers rated higher on empathy by their direct reports were also rated as stronger performers by their own bosses.
The obvious takeaway is that leaders should be more empathetic. And we think that’s true, as far as it goes. But the way the CCL study actually measured empathy is worth a closer look because it’s not typically how we think of ‘empathy.’ The empathetic leaders in this research noticed when their people were stretched thin, took genuine interest in what mattered to them, and showed up with compassion when life got hard. They were present, and they could sit with tension, disagreement, and discomfort without reflexively smoothing it over. That’s a different skill than just understanding someone’s feelings.
We tend to think of emotional tension as a problem to manage, something to smooth over, table for later, or simply ignore in service of getting things done. But in our research and our work with thousands of leaders, we’ve come to see it differently. Emotional tension is a signal. It points toward the places in an organization where important work still needs to happen: a decision that hasn’t been made, a conversation that hasn’t been had, a commitment that isn’t quite real yet. Sweep it aside and you don’t eliminate the tension, you just drive it underground, where it’s harder to see and far more expensive to fix.
What Silence Actually Communicates
When leaders sidestep emotional tension, they send one of two messages: either I don’t know what’s going on, or I don’t care. Neither is the message most leaders intend. But teams are remarkably good at reading the subtext of leadership behavior, and silence in the face of visible tension tends to read as avoidance.
On the other hand, recognizing tension, naming it, and leaning into it communicates something different: I see what’s happening here, and I’m steady enough to work with it. That’s the foundation of trust, and a durable kind of trust that comes from being present to the reality your team is actually living.
The research bears this out in ways that should give every leader pause. In our own research, we found that high EQ predicted both greater individual work engagement and greater feelings of emotional drain. Think about that: your most emotionally intelligent employees are your most present, most connected, most invested people, and they’re the ones most likely to burn out in emotionally avoidant cultures. That’s because they feel everything more acutely. You can’t “out-EQ” a broken emotional environment, and your highest performers are the canaries in the emotional coal mine here.
This is why the emotional climate a leader creates is both a retention and a performance strategy. Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety has consistently shown that teams which feel safe enough to voice disagreement and surface concerns outperform those that don’t. When leaders stay present with tension rather than reflexively avoiding it, they signal something important to the people around them: this is a place where real things can be said. That signal builds trust, trust enables honesty, and honesty produces alignment; and alignment is what enables teams to push in the same direction and drive consistent results.
Three Things Leaders Who Do This Well Understand
They name the friction before they fix it. The instinct to resolve is strong, especially for leaders who are good at execution. Moving to solutions before the tension is understood almost always means solving the wrong problem. The leadership team stuck on budget isn’t really stuck on budget. Slowing down to name what’s actually in conflict is the first move, and it’s harder than it sounds. Research on emotional granularity – the ability to accurately identify and label emotional experiences – shows that people who can distinguish “I’m anxious about this decision because I don’t have enough information” from “I’m stressed” make better decisions, experience lower physiological stress, and build stronger relationships.
They treat disagreement as a signal of trust. When someone pushes back, challenges an assumption, or says “I’m not sure that’s right,” that’s a person who trusts you (or the team culture) enough to be honest. This is not an endorsement of argument for argument’s sake – and certainly there will be some people for whom disagreement is simply a cudgel. But in a culture where real disagreement is rare, the problem is almost never too much friction, it’s that people have quietly decided the risk of candor isn’t worth it.
They stay present with the emotional and the practical simultaneously. This is the hardest move. It means holding someone’s frustration or fear as real and important while also steering toward a decision. Staying present long enough to understand what the tension is carrying, and then moving.
Who This Is Written For
If you’re technically excellent but find yourself baffled by why your team underperforms, this is for you. If you pride yourself on keeping things calm, but calm and honest rarely seem to happen at the same time, this is for you. If you’ve ever left a meeting feeling like something important went unsaid, and you’re not sure whether you were the reason, this is especially for you.
The good news is that leading through friction is a learnable skill. It starts with staying in hard moments long enough to read what the tension is signaling. That’s where the real work is. And that’s where the best leaders quietly separate themselves.