Connection at work is the felt experience of being seen, respected and believed in by the people you work with, and above all by your leader. Psychologist Carl Rogers identified three conditions that create it in any relationship where one person helps another grow: empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence.
Gallup’s research finds that fewer than half of employees feel their supervisor cares about them as a person, and only 37% feel treated with real respect at work. Those are not engagement numbers so much as a description of the relationship between leaders and the people they lead. This guide covers why that gap exists, what each of Rogers’s three conditions looks like in leadership, and how to practice them.
Key takeaways
- Gallup finds fewer than half of employees feel their supervisor cares about them as a person, and only 37% feel treated with real respect.
- Most leaders already care. The gap is in the specific skills that turn that care into something people actually feel.
- Nursing scholar Teresa Wiseman defined empathy through four components: perspective-taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotion, and communicating that recognition back.
- Carl Rogers named three conditions for helping another person grow: empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence.
- Building on Rosenthal and Jacobson’s Pygmalion studies, research finds leaders’ beliefs about their people’s potential tend to become self-fulfilling.
- In Jules’s research on creative leadership, nine of twelve leaders named empathy as a defining, daily practice in how they led.
Why do so few employees feel their leader cares about them?
The Gallup figures above reveal an enormous gap between how much most leaders care and how little of that care actually lands with their people.
Closing that gap is not a matter of caring more. Most leaders already do. It is a matter of developing specific, practical skills that turn intention into felt experience. And the foundation of those skills is a word used constantly in leadership and almost never defined precisely enough to be useful: empathy.
What is empathy, really?
When leaders talk about empathy, they usually mean something vague: general warmth, a sense of caring, a preference for not being harsh. That is not empathy. That is niceness.
Nursing scholar Teresa Wiseman defined empathy with clinical precision. In her concept analysis, it has four components:
- Perspective-taking: the deliberate cognitive effort to see the world as the other person actually sees it, not as you would see it in their position.
- Staying out of judgment.
- Recognizing emotion in other people.
- Communicating that recognition back, so the person knows they have been seen and heard.
How is empathy different from pity, sympathy and compassion?
It helps to picture a continuum:
- Apathy: no awareness of the other person’s experience at all.
- Pity: you know enough about someone’s situation to feel sorry for them, but you are looking down from above.
- Sympathy: you see someone’s pain and respond from your own emotional frame (“at least it could be worse”). As Brené Brown notes, this still drives disconnection, because you are observing rather than connecting.
- Empathy: the harder step of deliberately entering another person’s experience instead of watching it from outside.
- Compassion: empathy in action.
For Human Centered leaders the goal is not empathy as a feeling. It is compassion as a practice.
What does empathy have to do with creativity?
In Jules’s research on creative leadership, nine of the twelve leaders named empathy as a defining feature of how they led, describing it as a daily, active practice rather than a personality trait. One put it this way: “I very much believe that leading creativity starts with empathy… I want to know what’s going on in their lives.”
What stood out was the direct line these leaders drew between their empathy practice and the creative work they got from their teams. When people feel known, they bring more.
What is unconditional positive regard in leadership?
Carl Rogers, whose work on person-centered psychology reshaped how we understand human development, identified three conditions that must be present in any relationship where one person helps another grow: empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence.
Unconditional positive regard is the most demanding of the three. It is a steady orientation of fundamental respect and belief in a person’s worth that does not depend on their performance, agreement or conformity. For a leader, it means the default stance toward every team member is belief rather than skepticism, curiosity rather than judgment, and possibility rather than limitation.
Research building on Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s foundational Pygmalion studies consistently finds that leaders’ beliefs about their people’s potential become self-fulfilling. Leaders who hold high expectations tend to get more creative contribution, more risk-taking and more initiative. Leaders who have quietly written someone off tend to confirm their own low expectations. The stance shapes the outcome.
Does unconditional positive regard mean no accountability?
No. It does not mean the absence of accountability or honest feedback. It means both come from a foundation of real care, so that even in a hard conversation the person knows their leader is fundamentally on their side. For more on holding both at once, see Empathy & Accountability: Mixing the Secret Sauce.
What is congruence, and why does it matter so much?
Rogers’s third condition may be the most important and the least discussed. Congruence is alignment between what you feel, what you say and how you act. In a word, authenticity: the real thing, not a performance of it.
People detect inauthenticity with remarkable reliability. When they sense a leader managing an impression rather than being a person, the relationship turns transactional. When they experience congruence, a leader who is actually themselves, shares a real perspective and is willing to be seen, the relationship becomes a human connection that can support real creative collaboration.
One of the most telling findings in Jules’s research was how leaders described the way their own style had changed. As one said: “I think I’ve learned over the last four years to be more vulnerable… I came up in the work world where life was very segmented. You know, we didn’t bring our whole selves to work… I’ve had to learn to not be that way.” That movement, from managed professionalism to real presence, is the inside work of becoming a Human Centered Leader.
How can leaders practice empathy, positive regard and congruence?
These three conditions are not a checklist. They are orientations that develop through deliberate practice. Here is what that practice looks like, drawn from each condition above:
- Ask more, assume less. Make the deliberate effort to see a situation the way the other person sees it, not the way you would see it in their shoes.
- Say what you see. Empathy is not finished until you communicate it back, so the person knows they have been heard.
- Catch the “at least.” If you hear yourself starting a sentence with “at least it could be worse,” you have slipped from empathy into sympathy.
- Start from belief. Check your default stance toward each person on your team: belief or skepticism, curiosity or judgment, possibility or limitation.
- Notice who you’ve written off. Low expectations tend to confirm themselves. Ask what you would do differently if you expected more from that person.
- Hold the line from their side. Give honest feedback and keep accountability, and make it clear you are on their side while you do.
- Line up feel, say and do. Share your real perspective and let yourself be seen. Being real is not a vulnerability; it is the strongest leadership signal you can send.
Connection is not a soft skill. It is the hardest skill, and the most consequential.
Empathy, sympathy and compassion: what’s the difference?
The continuum above is easier to use when you can see the steps side by side.
| Response | Where you stand | What the other person experiences |
|---|---|---|
| Apathy | Unaware of their experience | Invisible |
| Pity | Above them, feeling sorry | Looked down on |
| Sympathy | Outside, reacting from your own frame (“at least it could be worse”) | Observed, not connected |
| Empathy | Inside their experience, by deliberate effort | Seen and heard |
| Compassion | Inside their experience, and acting on it | Seen, heard and supported |
Most leaders sit somewhere in the middle without realizing it. Sympathy feels caring from the inside, which is exactly why it is so easy to mistake for empathy.
What does unconditional positive regard look like in a hard conversation?
The real test of positive regard is a conversation about disappointing performance. Holding the stance does not mean softening the message. It means the message comes from a different place. In practice that looks like:
- Start from belief. Go in assuming the person is capable of more, not looking for confirmation that they aren’t.
- Name the gap honestly. Accountability and clear feedback stay in place.
- Make it clear whose side you’re on. The person should leave knowing you are fundamentally for them, even if the conversation was uncomfortable.
- Stay curious. Ask what is going on before deciding what it means.
This is where the Pygmalion research matters most. The expectations a leader carries into a hard conversation tend to shape what happens after it.
How does connection fit into Human Centered Leadership?
In Human Centered Leadership, connection is part of the relational foundation every team needs before it can do its best creative work. In the Creative Alliances System, Rogers’s three conditions sit at the heart of every bond as the Core Conditions: empathy and compassion, unconditional positive regard, and congruence, alongside creative leadership self-efficacy. They are the leader’s side of building strong bonds, one relationship at a time.
Frequently asked questions
How can leaders show employees they care?
By turning care into skills people can feel: taking their perspective deliberately, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotion and saying what you see, holding a steady belief in their potential, and being the same person in what you feel, say and do.
Why don’t employees feel valued at work even when leaders care?
Because intention is not the same as experience. Many leaders care but express it as general niceness or sympathy, which does not leave people feeling seen. Connection depends on specific, practiced skills that make care visible.
What are Carl Rogers’s three core conditions?
Empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence. Rogers described them as the conditions that must be present in any relationship where one person helps another grow, and they apply directly to the relationship between leaders and the people they lead.
What are the four components of empathy?
In Teresa Wiseman’s concept analysis: perspective-taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotion in others, and communicating that recognition back to the person.
What is the difference between sympathy and empathy?
Sympathy responds to someone’s pain from your own emotional frame and observes it from outside, which Brené Brown notes still drives disconnection. Empathy deliberately steps into the other person’s experience. Compassion is empathy put into action.
What is the Pygmalion effect in leadership?
It is the finding, building on Rosenthal and Jacobson’s research, that a leader’s beliefs about a person’s potential tend to become self-fulfilling. High expectations tend to draw out more contribution, risk-taking and initiative; low expectations tend to confirm themselves.
Is connection a soft skill?
We would argue the opposite. Turning care into something people actually feel takes specific, practiced skills, which makes connection the hardest leadership skill and the most consequential.
Of Rogers’s three conditions, empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence, which one is hardest for you to practice consistently? That is usually where the most important growth is.
— Lane & Jules
Morris & Morris | BOMBDIGGITY, LLC
Michael Lane Morris, PhD and Jules Morris, PhD co-authored “Human Centered Leadership: The Decisive Leadership Advantage,” published in the SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Development (2024). Jules Morris’s doctoral research on creative role identity and female leaders (Morris, 2025) grounds the leadership practices described in this article.
Sources & further reading
- Amabile, T. M. (1998). How to kill creativity. Harvard Business Review, 76(5), 76–87.
- Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 315–338.
- Brown, B. (2015). Daring greatly. Avery.
- Gallup. (2025). State of the Global Workplace Report. Gallup Press.
- Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103.
- Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
- Wiseman, T. (1996). A concept analysis of empathy. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 23(6), 1162–1167.
- Morris, J. (2025). Playing the creative advantage: Creative role identity of female leaders [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
- Morris, M. L., & Morris, J. (2024). Human centered leadership: The decisive leadership advantage. In SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Development. SAGE Publications.
This article is part of our Human Centered Leadership hub, where we collect our work on how leaders build trust, connection and creative capacity in their teams.