From "Nice" to "Effective": How Ruinous Empathy Creates a Decaying Country Club
- Mac Ling
- Jan 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 30
In my years as an executive coach, I've found that the hardest thing for a compassionate leader to do is deliver difficult feedback.
If you're a leader who prioritizes human connection, the thought of telling a team member they are underperforming may make your stomach turn. We tell ourselves we are holding back to protect their feelings. We tell ourselves we are keeping the peace to maintain a "great culture."
But if we're being honest?
Often, we aren't protecting them. We are protecting ourselves from the discomfort of the conversation.
In the world of organizational development, there is a specific term for this dynamic, coined by Kim Scott: Ruinous Empathy.
And it is the silent killer of high-performing teams.
What is Ruinous Empathy?
Imagine a 2x2 matrix measuring your leadership style.
The Y-Axis is "Care Personally." (How much do you care about the human?)
The X-Axis is "Challenge Directly." (How willing are you to hold a high standard?)
Many leaders I coach fall into that top-left quadrant: High Care, Low Challenge.
This is Ruinous Empathy.
In this quadrant, you are supportive, kind, and approachable. Your team likely "likes" you. You may score very high on your engagement and leadership effectiveness scores. But because you are unwilling to challenge them directly, issues can fester. Mediocrity becomes the standard. High performers get frustrated because they see low performance being tolerated, and eventually, they leave.
The Symptom: The Decaying Country Club
When an entire leadership team operates with Ruinous Empathy, it doesn't just affect individual relationships; it shapes the entire company culture.
In the TripleGoal framework, we map organizations based on two dimensions: Performance/Innovation and Engagement/Psych Safety.
When you have high psychological safety (people feel safe and love working there) but low business performance and innovation, you end up here:
We call this The Decaying Country Club.
These organizations feel "good" on the surface.
Engagement scores are often high.
Conflict is low.
People feel safe.
But beneath the surface, the organization is slowly losing its edge. We are prioritizing "harmony" over "impact." Decisions take too long, feedback is sugar-coated, and the business results slowly slide backward because there is no friction to sharpen the team.
The Shift: Clarity is Kindness
The mistake many leaders make is thinking that "High Standards" and "High Empathy" are opposites. They think they have to choose between being a "Golden Torture Chamber" (High Performance, High Burnout) or a "Country Club."
This is a false choice.
The most effective leaders—the ones who build Great Organisations—operate in the top-right quadrant. They realize that clarity is kindness.
Holding a high standard isn't the opposite of empathy; it is the ultimate expression of it. When you give someone direct, clear feedback, you are saying:
"I believe you are capable of more than this, and I care enough about your career to tell you the truth."
How to Diagnose Your Reality
It is easy to say you want high performance and high care. It is much harder to measure if you are actually doing it.
Most engagement surveys only measure how happy people are (The Country Club trap). Most performance reviews only measure outcomes (The Torture Chamber trap).
At Coaching Collective, we use a specific diagnostic tool called the Leadership Growth Profile (LGP).
The LGP is a next-generation 360 profile that doesn't just measure "sentiment." It measures impact. It looks specifically at the behaviors that drive the Triple Goal:
Great Performance (Are we hitting the numbers?)
Great Workplace (Are people engaged and psychologically safe?)
Great Learning (Are we adapting and growing?)
If you suspect you are drifting toward the "Country Club"—or if you are swinging too hard toward the "Torture Chamber"—the LGP gives you the data to see exactly where the gap is.
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