Master Human-Centred Leadership: How to Lead With Empathy Without Burning Yourself Out

The weight you are carrying as a leader is heavy.

It isn't just the weight of responsibility; there is another weight that people find hard to put their finger on and describe. It's overwhelming and exhausting.

One of the reasons you're exhausted (and one we don't talk about as much) is because you're adapting to everyone.

Every team member has a different working style, so you adjust.

Every problem lands on your desk, so you solve it.

Every boundary you try to set feels selfish, so you don't.

The leaders I see this appear in the most are the ones driven by impact, the ones who describe themselves as people-centred.

It is out of balance, and it isn't helping anyone.

This isn't the good leadership that people think it is. It's people-pleasing disguised as being a good manager.

It's costing you your energy, your evenings, and your effectiveness as a leader.

The problem isn't that you care too much. I hear clients say this all the time: "I need to care less."

You don't need to care less. You need to care differently.

You're carrying weight that isn't yours to carry, and I want to help you see that there is a different way to be that people-centered leader that looks after you in the process.

Why Human-Centred Leadership Drains You

Most of us recognise that being human-centred is a huge strength. It's what makes us a great leader. It's what makes us create a safe space for our teams, it's the reason why our teams can open up to us, it's why a lot of our teams want to stay working with us.

They know they can come to us. They know we're helpful. They know we're supportive. That's all great.

When it tips the balance, or when things are out of alignment, it can drain us.

If you think of yourself as a battery, you will drain if the demand on you is higher than the energy that you have, and the time that you have to be able to give.

Here's what's happening:

Energy mismatch - They're asking for more than you have, so it's beyond your bandwidth. It might just be one of those weeks where you've got a lot going on, and you just don't have the same capacity.

Recognition gap - Many leaders have core values that are centred around impact and making a difference. This, combined with our human psychological need to contribute and to feel that we have some significance, can be a powerful combination.

Those of us who are driven by impact will quite often have a higher weighting on those human psychological needs of wanting to make a difference (contribution and significance).

When we don't get that recognition, there's a gap. What often happens is we tend to lean into that more. We tend to give more.

The more we do, what we actually end up doing is programming others to expect more. The more we do, the more is expected. We enable this challenge where people want immediate answers, they want access to us all the time, and they want us to be the go-to person.

What starts off as being a real positive ends up, for us, becoming a negative.

Losing yourself in the service of others - We flip the balance where we are trying to meet the needs of others, and we stop meeting our own needs in the process. There's a lot of energy in trying to adapt our approach, in trying to approach things in different ways.

Our battery drains when there is an energy mismatch, when our values are misaligned, and when our needs are not being met.

Now, if you've done the Burnout and Overwhelm workshop with me, you'll know that overwhelm is a stress response with a strong emotional response that comes with it. Consistent and persistent stress response and overwhelm is what leads to burnout.

When we talk about values and needs, because it's so intrinsic to us, it means that often there's an emotional response with it. We're not just getting a stress response; we're getting an emotional response with that stress response. That drains our battery a lot quicker.

When we're energised, quite often what that means is our values are aligned, our needs are being met. It increases our energy, and often that results in high performance for us, high performance for our team, and that sense of fulfilment.

The Rescuer Trap: How Good Intentions Undermine Your Team

What most leaders don't realise is that when we step into the problem-solving role and we do not enable our teams and individuals on our teams to problem-solve for themselves, we undermine their core psychological needs.

According to 'Self-Determination Theory', we all have three core psychological needs:

Autonomy - We have to feel like we have control over our choices.

Competence - We need to have confidence in our capability and our ability to be effective.

Relatedness - We need to feel a connection with other humans, and we need to feel like we belong.

When we jump in and solve problems for our teams, we have the potential to undermine all three of these elements.

For us, it can feel very empowering when we jump in, and we're able to problem-solve, and we've got the answers very quickly.

It's certainly a lot easier for us in the short term to jump in and give the answers, to give the solution.

However, we need to enable and empower our teams to be able to rescue themselves.

We need to help them with autonomy to take control over the choices that they make. We can step back and ask them different questions, we can coach them through it. We want to be able to give them autonomy over what they choose to do and the decisions that they make.

We want them to be able to see their capability. We want them to be able to recognise their level of competence, because not only does that feed into their confidence, it is also a big part of them building their own resilience. We can't build the resilience of our people for them. What we can do is enable them to take ownership of situations and increase their own competence, their own capability, and their own resilience in the process.

We want them to feel that connection and belonging. We want them to feel that they are significant and that they contribute. Whilst it's very easy for us to give the answer, if it feels disempowering to that individual, over time, that chips away at not just their confidence and their question over their competence to be able to make decisions and take ownership.

They start to question what they contribute to the team. Whether that is on a conscious level or an unconscious level, they will start to question it. They will start to feel disempowered over time.

Although it's with the best of intentions (to be helpful, to be supportive, to help them come up with a quick solution), we can actually disconnect them from their team.

The more we empower them, the more we enable them, the more we help them with that self-efficacy, the more they start to feel part of the team. They can see what they contribute, they can see what they add, and where they add value.

That is really important, because that also helps people to stay in a team. When they can see why they're in that team, the part that they play, and how they contribute to the success and that high performance of the team, the more likely they are to stay.

Remember: rescuing can undermine all three of these psychological needs.

When you solve problems for people, you can remove their autonomy, prevent them from building competence, and create an unhealthy dependence.

We need to keep this in check because it's our ego. It's our ego that likes to know more, it's our ego that likes to be right, it's our ego that likes to feel that everybody comes to us for the answers.

However, it's also what frustrates us when we are not left alone to do what we are supposed to be doing. It's also what frustrates us when we recognise that our team have an unhealthy dependence on us.

Creating a Culture of Self-Efficacy

Your role is to support, not to solve.

You have to help them to find the solution. It's not your responsibility to solve the problem.

Self-efficacy grows through experience. If you are always rescuing, they don't get the opportunity to experience, they don't get the opportunity to learn, and so you're slowing down their development.

The more we can take that step back and support them by asking questions, and helping them to work through what are the different options, how can I resolve this, what do I think is the best option, get them to talk through their thought process and their decision-making process.

You can ask different questions to help them to explore other options that they might not yet have seen.

Ultimately, you are guiding them through the thought process and the decision-making process. You are creating that space for them to make those decisions in a safe space, because they've still got your support and they've still got your guidance.

As a leader, you are creating an environment where people can learn, which also means that they can fail and that they can then succeed.

Part of this is creating a safe space for people to get it wrong and to fail. Now, you will need to determine how big that risk is, and at what point you might need to step in and ask them different questions.

You're not stepping in to fix and to rescue. You're stepping in to ask them questions, to find out where they're at, what their thought process is, what they think the results of those decisions are going to be, what might be the intended consequences and the unintended consequences.

Asking questions like:

• What decision have you made?

• What was the thought process that led to that decision?

• What did you consider?

• What have you deconsidered (what have you taken off the table)?

• What's the intended consequence?

• What might be a consequence that you're not intending? What else might happen?

Just stepping in and asking questions can be enough to shift their way of thinking without you taking it away from them.

This is not the hot potato that you want to be throwing around. You want them to be able to hold onto this and be able to work it through, even if you know an answer (you might not know the answer, but you might know an answer).

Asking them questions will help them to explore the possibilities and come up with a decision and a solution that they feel is the best option.

The Boundaries Problem: Understanding Yes and No

We need to hold boundaries. We need to understand what boundaries we want to set, and we also need to hold the boundaries that we put in place.

What do you associate with the word "yes" and what do you associate with the word "no"?

When you hear "yes," when you hear "no," is it good, is it bad, is it right, is it wrong, is it selfish, is it unselfish?

Most of us have learned from an early age that good people are "yes" people.

Good people say yes. A yes is kindness. A no is selfish. People who say no are selfish, they're not helpful, they're not kind.

If we've learned this from an early age, it shapes how we now respond to things. If we want to change our behaviour, we have to start to shift the beliefs that are driving the way that we think, the way that we feel, and the way that we behave.

If you recognise that you have a very strong association with yes and no, and you know that that is driving you to say yes more and not to say no as much as you would like to, then do some work around what you believe to be true around yesses and nos, and what you want to believe is true that's going to be more helpful to you.

Behaviours vs Intentions: The Yes/No Framework

A great way to look at this is to examine behaviours versus intentions.

We've got soft and hard behaviours, and we've got selfish intention and loving intention.

Just because we're saying yes doesn't mean that it's a loving intention and a soft behaviour. It can go the other way.

Soft and Selfish: Say yes to avoid conflict, people-pleasing, over-committing, because we want to be liked, and avoidance of difficult conversations. This is what I describe as reactive leadership. It solves the problem in the moment, but it ends up being part of a much longer-term, bigger problem. We often feel resentment. It's a soft behaviour, but it's with a very selfish intention. We are protecting ourselves or looking after ourselves in the process.

Soft and Loving: We're saying yes because we genuinely want to say yes. It's a yes that still supports our boundaries. It might be a flexible yes, but it comes from a place where we've got a yes to give. We're just adapting that yes to make it work for us and to make it work for them. It means the yes often is with empathy, but it's also protecting our own energy in the process. This is intentional leadership. We're saying yes because we genuinely want to, we're supporting us and them in the process, and it is in balance.

Hard and Selfish: We're saying no to protect ourselves, but we're also being very dismissive of other people's needs, too. Those rigid boundaries are in place, and it is self-preservation and self-protection at any cost. This can erode the trust within our team. Quite often, I see this even from good people and good leaders when they have had enough, and they are tired of boundaries being tested. Something happens where they feel disrespected or unappreciated. They shut it right down. The pendulum swings too hard from one side to the other.

Hard and Loving: Parents will get this. Sometimes we have to say no because that is the best loving intention. It's a hard behaviour, but it's with the best of intentions. It has clear boundaries but with care, and it can still come with compassion. We are having difficult conversations, but we are having those difficult conversations early, before it snowballs into anything bigger. We're having difficult conversations with respect, with compassion, with care, and we're holding people accountable because it's the right thing to do.

Sometimes the kindness is in having those difficult conversations because it helps people to grow, it helps people to learn, and it does build trust. We bring out the best of people through difficult conversations, through not being in the comfort zone (that's our comfort zone and their comfort zone).

I'm Okay, You're Okay: Sustainable Leadership

Life itself is all about balance, and we need to balance the fact that we are okay and that the other person, the business, the company is okay at the same time.

This is sustainable leadership. We need to make sure I'm okay, you're okay.

It's mutual respect, it's equal worth, it means there are healthy boundaries in place. Not only are we respecting our own boundaries, we are also respecting the other person's boundaries as well.

We can still flex on the approach, but we're staying aligned with our values, and we are still making sure that needs are being met.

This allows us to lead without losing ourselves in the process.

As a leader, often you have to balance the individual needs and the business needs, and that's an I'm okay, you're okay too.

We want to get to the place where I'm okay, you're okay. It's mutual respect, healthy boundaries, collaborative problem-solving (looking for joint solutions, a solution that works for you, a solution that works for them), equal worth and dignity.

When we don't have boundaries in place, that's when it goes out of balance and becomes people-pleasing. The motivation for people-pleasing is very different.

People-pleasing is kindness without a boundary.

When we boundary our kindness, when we boundary our empathy, when we boundary our compassion, we ensure that I am okay and you're okay. We're looking after ourselves while still looking after another individual.

When that is out of balance and we are focusing more on the other individual, and we don't boundary our care, our compassion, our value, our worth, our kindness, and we focus more on making sure that they are okay and we are not, that's where it all goes horribly wrong.

With human-centred leadership, absolutely be kind, compassionate, and empathic. We want to make sure we are still all of those things. What we are not doing is giving it all away so that we are unkind to ourselves in the process.

Most of us want to please people. We want to create impact. We want to make a difference. What we just need to make sure is that there are boundaries in place that make sure we don't tip the balance, that we are not people-pleasing and displeasing ourselves in the process.

Staying Grounded and Aligned in Leadership

We need to ground ourselves in our own okayness first. This is the pouring from the empty cup; this is putting the oxygen mask on first.

We need to ground ourselves in what is okay for us too: our values, our needs, our self-worth, and our own value.

Flexibility in our approach doesn't mean changing who we are.

When we talk about authentic leadership, we want to be flexible in our approach, we want to be flexible in the way that we communicate, we want to be flexible in how we manage different people in different situations, because that's what makes us great leaders.

We don't want to flex it so far that we lose ourselves in the process.

Flexibility doesn't mean changing who we are. It is like a dimmer switch. Dialling some things up, dialling some things down, but we are still true to ourselves in the process.

We are adapting our approach. We are not adapting our value and worth.

The balance is between being for them and being for you. That is the balance. I'm okay, you're okay.

When you have a team of people who all need you to lead them differently, you have different people with different values and different needs. You're finding that you are having to flex and adapt your approach to get the best out of them.

How do you stay grounded? How do you stay in check with who you are so that you are adaptable and flexible, but not to the point where you are not grounded and not aligned with what's important to you?

When you don't, that battery that we talked about at the very beginning is going to drain so fast, and so quickly. You won't always know that that's what it is, but it will be.

Staying grounded, staying aligned is really important.

Leading Without Being the Problem Solver

This is a conversation I have with clients a lot, especially those who are moving up through leadership levels.

There will have been times when you've had a leadership role where being the problem solver was what made you successful. When we get into leadership positions, we have to let go of a lot of that.

We're not the problem solver. We're a solutions provider.

We have to come up with the solutions, but we don't necessarily need to do the fixing. We delegate, we allocate it back out, and we help our teams to come up with the different solutions within that.

We are creating the direction, we are starting the momentum. We're not doing the implementation.

Your job isn't to have all of the answers. You've got to let go of that, because that's what holds a lot of people back.

When you trust that your team have more information, they are the subject matter experts, they are the people who are in this day in and day out, they know a whole lot more than you do. Your job is not to know more than them.

Your job is to help, to guide and support, to find their own solutions with the information that they know.

Your role as a leader is about building capability, definitely not dependence, and helping them to increase their confidence in their own competence and increase their resilience, so that they become a very resilient and high-performing team.

You having all of the answers isn't going to build that. You helping to create a team where they have that self-efficacy, where they feel empowered to keep hold of the ownership, take responsibility for things they can control, and come up with their own solutions is what will build a high-performing and resilient team.

The CLEAR Coaching Model: Ask, Don't Tell

When you catch yourself going to tell, switch it to a question. Remember that these are not solutions disguised as questions. "Have you thought about..." is a suggestion, it's not a question.

We need to make sure that we're asking, not telling.

The CLEAR coaching model will help you do that:

Contract - Check in around the sense of urgency, around the sense of importance. There will be occasions where you do need to give a quick answer, you need to give direction, and a coaching conversation isn't appropriate. The contracting is checking in that this is an appropriate time and place, that the person is in a good place to have a coaching conversation, and that the situation allows for a coaching conversation.

If somebody's coming to you for permission because it needs somebody in your role to give that permission, this is not a coaching conversation.

If you are somebody who doesn't normally do this and you're starting to introduce this into your leadership approach, you will need to communicate this with your teams rather than suddenly switching things around.

You can say: "Look, I have an answer. Actually, I think you might already know the answer, I would like to ask you some questions to help you to explore this and see what answer you come up with. How does that feel? How would you like to approach that?"

Listen - You're listening to understand. You are not listening to think of a solution so you can jump in and fix. Take the time to listen and ask more questions so that you can listen more.

Most leaders do not listen enough. Ask questions that allow you to listen more.

Explore - Explore with them. What have they already tried? What options do they see? What options do they think are viable? What options do they think are not viable? How do they want to approach it? What are their thoughts? Help them to work through their thought process.

Action - What are you thinking to do? How are you thinking to do it? When are you thinking to do it? What might get in the way? What are you intending will be the outcome of this? What might be the unintended consequences that you might need to consider?

Especially for those of you who are working in an environment that carries some risk, you're still responsible, you're still accountable for asking questions that help them to consider the risk and the different outcomes, whether they are intended or not.

Review - It's very similar to delegating. We don't want to just hand this over and then not check in. Part of the contracting is to agree: you're going to go away and implement what you've come up with, and come back and check in. We will talk through how it went.

You can then ask them different questions around what their learning was, what worked really well, what didn't work well, and what will they do differently next time. That's where the learning is for them. Potentially, there's some learning there for you too.

Your Path to Sustainable Human-Centred Leadership

Here's what to remember:

Rescuing undermines autonomy, competence, and belonging. It keeps people stuck.

You can say no with love, and you can say yes with resentment. The intention matters more than the behaviour. It's not just the 'what' that is important; it's the 'how' and the 'why'.

I'm okay, you're okay. That is how you have sustainable leadership when you are person-centred. Protect your energy. Stay grounded.

Your job is to ask powerful questions, not provide the answers. In the same way that the coaching ethos is that the person sitting in front of us is a very resourceful and experienced person, they have the answers. They just don't know what questions to ask to bring the answers to the surface. That's our role. Like a thinking partner, it's very similar in leadership. You are their thinking partner. Your role is to ask them the better questions to help bring the answers to the surface.

Flexibility in your approach doesn't mean losing yourself. You can stay authentic to being you and lead in a way that feels right to you, that aligns with your values, that fulfils your needs, and still be flexible for everybody else. However, you have to stay grounded.

The weight you're carrying as a leader is heavy. However, you don't have to carry everyone's weight.

When you learn to set boundaries that protect your energy, stop rescuing and start empowering, and lead from that place where I'm okay and you're okay, you create sustainable human-centred leadership.

That's how you care without carrying. That's how you lead with empathy without burning yourself out.

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Zoë Thompson: I help overwhelmed leaders transform from reactive to intentional leadership in 8 weeks - so you finish work on time, take The Big Week Off with zero work and zero guilt, and create success that feels as good as it looks.