The Gruff Kind of Empathy

I've always believed I'm empathetic. But I've also been told, more than once, that I come across as… intense. Gruff, even.

It's an interesting contradiction: how can someone who feels so deeply also be seen as hard-edged?

For years, I assumed those two things couldn't coexist. Empathy, in my mind, was soft. The kind of gentleness that instantly puts people at ease. I didn't fit that picture. My empathy tends to show up as honesty. I'll say the quiet thing out loud if it helps us move forward. I don't tolerate performative care or endless circling around what matters.

I used to think that made me less empathetic. But I'm realizing it's just a different dialect, one that loves people enough to expect better.

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My husband, Terry, recently said I'm more macro-empathetic than micro-empathetic, meaning I tend to read systems more than individuals. There's some truth to that, but not the whole story. The more I sit with it, the more I realize it's not either/or. It's both, working together.

I notice moods. I always have. Growing up in chaos, you learn to sense a storm before it hits - to read the shift in tone, the way a door closes, the quiet that feels like warning. That kind of empathy becomes muscle memory.

Maybe that's why I notice the emotional weather of organizations, too. Cultures have moods, just like people. I can sense when belonging feels brittle, when people are going through the motions instead of living it. That's empathy at scale.

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I've always described it as being able to read the energy of a space. I know that can sound a bit woo-woo, but it's really just pattern recognition at a human level… tone, posture, silence. The subtle ways people signal whether they feel safe, valued, or unseen.

That awareness started young, as a survival skill. It's stayed with me as a leadership skill. It helps me sense what's unspoken and name it before it festers. To read the small signs and translate them into something larger that helps people feel safe.

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In leadership and culture work, we talk a lot about psychological safety, and sometimes we confuse it with never feeling discomfort. But empathy isn't about avoiding tension. It's about creating enough trust to have the real conversation.

I'm learning that empathy and edge can coexist. In fact, they often need each other. Without empathy, honesty can sting. Without honesty, empathy can stagnate.

Lately, I've been thinking about Loretta Ross's idea of calling in: the practice of holding people accountable through love instead of shame. It's empathy with a backbone. That framing has stayed with me because it names what I've tried to do instinctively for years -to tell the truth with care.

Ross talked about this beautifully on Adam Grant's ReThinking podcast, where she described how "calling in" invites reflection instead of reaction. It reminded me that empathy isn't passive. It's active, discerning, and deeply human.

Maybe the gruff kind of empathy is exactly that - the courage to call things in, not out. To expect growth without withdrawing warmth. To believe people can handle honesty and still belong.

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For most of my career, I've held a quiet tension between my directness and my care for people. I used to think they needed to be balanced, like weights on opposite sides of a scale. But what if they were meant to work together all along?

Reframing that feels empowering, like rediscovering a part of myself I kept trying to smooth out. Seeing empathy and honesty as partners rather than opposites shifts everything. It's not something I have to tone down or apologize for. It's a superpower. One rooted in truth, care, and the belief that people can handle both.

This clarity didn't come from a quiet afternoon of reflection. It came from necessity.

Getting laid off stripped away the comfortable routine I'd built. The one I probably wouldn't have left on my own. And in that discomfort, I've had to do something harder than job searching: I've had to get clear on the actual shape of my gifts, on what I value, on how I operate at my best.

This is the work before the work. Not updating a resume or networking or positioning myself for the next role, but excavating. Getting underneath the professional persona to ask: what am I actually like when I'm not trying to fit in? What becomes possible when I stop treating my nature as something to manage?

That's the real recalibration. And it's what's making space for this reframe - from liability to superpower, from tension to integration.

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When was the last time you mistook someone's directness for lack of empathy? Or your own softness for weakness?

How does empathy show up for you, even when it doesn't look the way people expect?