Why Empathy and Observation Will Revolutionize Your Leadership Style

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I work as a strategic advisor to Fortune 100 companies and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). People often confuse this with being a business coach. My job is to help organizations define clear missions and perform intelligence gathering, which allows us to create strategies to navigate complex challenges and achieve measurable results.

In contrast, a business coach typically works on individual growth, offering guidance to improve personal skills, mindset, and leadership abilities within a business context. I work behind the scenes to advise my clients on both day-to-day operations and during a crisis.

Among the many challenges my clients come to me for advice on, the top five are:

Expanding their client base/getting more business from existing clients
Dealing with a supply chain nightmare
Resolving and surviving a corporate crisis/bad press
Working with a diverse team
Inspiring a team through a year of up and down cash flow

Although the scenarios may change, my advice is usually the same. Ensuring good outcomes will depend largely on a few factors, but the biggest one will be how thoroughly they do intelligence gathering.

Being a team player and empathetic are both exceptional qualities in a leader, and without both, it will be difficult to inspire anyone on your team to follow you. However, without intelligence gathering, you’re missing key data points that can be the difference between reacting to an issue and moving through the situation for the best possible outcomes.

Effective and usable intelligence gathering combines analytical tools and human judgment, ensuring the information collected reflects both the factual landscape and humanity — which includes empathy, collaboration and ethical considerations.

It’s easy to get derailed by data. There are endless amounts of it, so sifting through it can be an enormous job for anyone or even a team of people. Sifting through it requires a “wheat for the chaft” approach to ensure what you end up with works for your mission.

Because of this, when I preach intelligence gathering, I’m not talking about the surface-level information we can all find on the internet. Effective intelligence gathering enables us all to bridge the massive gap between seeking answers and the decision-making process by focusing on relevance, context and actionable insights.

By integrating these elements, intelligence gathering becomes a powerful tool for leaders, enabling them to navigate complexity, anticipate challenges and act with clarity and precision.

The heart of strategic leadership lies in empathy and observation

Human intelligence relies on understanding people: what makes them tick, what their needs are, how they think and work through issues, and how they behave in any given situation. Empathy enables leaders to connect with everyone involved, whether employees, customers or partners, to turn data into valuable resources. Observing subtle dynamics, from workplace morale to market trends, provides context that raw data often lacks.

Taking things out of a business context, let’s consider something I bring up in my second forthcoming book on intelligence gathering. I describe a scenario in post-conflict Iraq during reconstruction efforts. During my deployment (second Gulf War), I advised parliamentarians on governance and power-sharing, facilitated the creation of democratic systems, and navigated high-stakes political dynamics during the insurgency.

Intelligence gathering was vital to navigating a volatile environment. In these scenarios, leaders relied on human intelligence, engaging local tribal and community leaders to understand shifting allegiances and uncover potential sources of unrest.

By combining these insights with open-source intelligence, such as public reports and news, they could anticipate risks and tailor strategies to stabilize communities. This approach ensured actions were informed not just by data but by a deep understanding of the operational and human landscapes — a principle that applies equally in corporate and humanitarian contexts. It was during this last deployment (previous ones including Jordan, Indonesia and Ukraine) that I decided to get into strategic advising.

Effective leaders in these scenarios listen to local communities, observe their needs and integrate on-the-ground realities into broader strategies. This approach isn’t confined to disaster zones; corporate leaders can apply the same principles to understand their teams and markets better, ensuring their actions are both informed and impactful.

Collaboration as a catalyst

Intelligence gathering isn’t a solo endeavor. It thrives in collaborative environments. The most successful leaders cultivate intelligence cultures within their organizations, encouraging input from diverse perspectives. By engaging employees at all levels and fostering open communication, leaders can ensure intelligence reflects a wide array of experiences and insights.

For example, when addressing operational inefficiencies, front-line employees often provide invaluable intelligence. Their firsthand experiences can reveal gaps in processes or customer pain points that may be invisible to executives. Leaders who prioritize collaboration turn this intelligence into solutions, aligning organizational actions with real-world needs.

Turning insights into strategies

Gathering intelligence is only the beginning. The true power of human intelligence lies in translating insights into strategy. This requires not just interpreting data but aligning it with organizational goals and values. Leaders must ask: What does this intelligence mean for our mission? How can we act on it to create meaningful and lasting change?

For instance, companies navigating supply chain disruptions often rely on intelligence to anticipate challenges and adjust strategies in real-time. Walmart, for example, uses data-driven intelligence to optimize supply chains, but it’s the human element — leaders interpreting and acting on this data — that ensures success.

Balancing instinct and data

Leadership intelligence thrives on balance. While data provides clarity, intuition often guides the final decision. Experienced leaders integrate their instincts with intelligence, especially when operating in high-stakes environments where time is critical and information is often incomplete.

During post-disaster recovery efforts, for example, leaders routinely face conflicting reports and unpredictable conditions. In these instances, they must rely on both the available intelligence and their ability to read between the lines, combining facts with an intuitive understanding of the situation.

Ethical considerations in intelligence gathering

Something we all must grapple with at one point or another in our lives is what to do with the information we’ve unearthed. Whether it’s intel about your competitor, uncovering a crime someone you know committed or that a close friend or relative is involved in an extramarital affair, we must decide how to act on some of that intelligence.

Even when it will benefit your company, you have to ask yourself whether using it to your advantage is ethical. Does it align not only with legal standards but also with your company culture, not to speak of the image you want to uphold? Given how we’re all prone to making mistakes, if it were someone with intel about you, how would you hope it was handled? Two things I tell my clients about intelligence gathering:

It’s important to be transparent with stakeholders, being clear about how intelligence is used
Let the main thing be the main thing

For example, companies that rely on social media analytics to monitor customer sentiment should consider treading carefully. Although public data can offer valuable insights, overreach—such as invading privacy or using manipulative practices—can erode trust and harm reputations. Ethical intelligence gathering ensures that insights serve a purpose greater than profit, aligning actions with mission-driven goals.

Leading with intelligence

At the end of the day, human intelligence should always be seen as more than a tool. Truly empathetic leaders will collaborate and be ethical, using intelligence in a positive way. Although you may have the “goods” on someone, is it your best move to use it against them? By thinking outside your immediate needs, you can turn intelligence gathering into a strategic advantage, turning uncertainty into opportunity.

And believe me, I don’t think it’s always easy or obvious what the right decision is. We all grapple with what’s ethical at times. Given how complex and interconnected our world has become, intelligence clearly matters. How will you, as a leader, harness its power?

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