The Empathy Dilemma How Successful Leaders Balance Performance People and Personal Boundaries

2025 Axiom Business Book Silver Award in Work-Life Balance/Time Prioritization

Lead with compassion without compromising high performance or financial success.

We have entered a new world of work. It's a world where successful leaders embrace a human-centric approach, prioritizing the mental health and personal responsibilities of their employees alongside their professional ones. However, post-pandemic, a dark side to the empathetic workplace has emerged and many well-intentioned business leaders are struggling to keep both productivity and morale high.

In The Empathy Dilemma, author, speaker, and empathy advocate, Maria Ross, explores the difficulties organizational leaders are having, and the solutions they need to get back on track. Drawing on her decades of experience, thorough research, and extensive interviews, Ross goes back to the basics of what empathy is, and what it isn't. She details where leaders are going wrong and how to navigate complicating factors such as generational mindsets, philosophical differences, and diverse life experiences while still getting the job done. By utilizing the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership: self-awareness, self-care, clarity, decisiveness, and joy, leaders will discover actionable tactics to create the firm foundation, that enables compassion to co-exist with high-performance. And by bringing this all into focus, Ross emphasizes the fact that empathy is a two-way street that involves mutual respect and trust between all involved parties.

Written as a follow-up to her book The Empathy Edge, The Empathy Dilemma looks at the compassionate leader through a post-pandemic lens. It is the guide every leader needs in order to prioritize performance and protect mental health so that both their organization and their teams come out on top.