Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls this the hardest skill that both leaders and employees can learn; and how his wife inspired him to develop it
Satya Nadella believes empathy is the hardest skill leaders and employees can master. The Microsoft CEO has pushed back on the common practice of filing empathy away as just another soft skill. In his view, the ability to truly understand others sits above the rest of the leadership toolkit, and he says it took becoming a father to a disabled son to fully grasp why.
“Empathy is not a soft skill,” Nadella said in a 2023 interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.
