In today’s leadership landscape, soft skills are undeniably en vogue. However, don’t be quick to lump empathy in with the rest. That’s because Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella firmly believes that the art of comprehending others transcends the soft skills category. In his view, characterizing it as “soft” understates its significance, as he asserts that mastering empathy is, in fact, the most formidable skill of them all.

“Empathy is not a soft skill,” Nadella said in an interview with Axel Springer’s CEO Mathias Döpfner. “In fact, it’s the hardest skill we learn—to relate to the world, to relate to people that matter the most to us.”

Not only does being empathetic enable leaders to better connect with their staff, but according to Nadella, customers too.

“In fact, innovation is about meeting the unmet, unarticulated needs of customers,” he added. “What’s the source of that? Some would say design thinking. But design thinking is empathy.”

Nadella beats the empathy drum

It’s not the first time the Indian-American chief who took Microsft’s helm in 2014 has hailed the power of empathy at work.

“If you have empathy for your people, they will do their best work and you’ll make progress,” Nadella once said on an episode of LinkedIn’s “Hello Monday” podcast.

He’s also previously spoken out about how becoming a parent to his late disabled son Zain—who passed away in February 2022 at the age of 26—shaped him into a more empathic leader.

“As [Zain’s] parents, it was up to us not to question ‘why,’ but instead to do everything we could to improve his life,” Nadella wrote in a LinkedIn post in 2017, where he credited his wife’s empathy with inspiring his own.

“From her I have learned that when I infuse empathy into my everyday actions, it is powerful, whether they be in my role as a father or as a CEO.”

“Becoming a father of a son with special needs…has shaped my personal passion for and philosophy of connecting new ideas to empathy for others,” Nadella wrote on LinkedIn. “And it is why I am deeply committed to pushing the bounds on what love and compassion combined with human ingenuity and passion to have impact can accomplish with my colleagues at Microsoft.”

Sports are key to soft skills building

As well as the profound impact that raising a child with quadriplegic and cerebral palsy had, Nadella also revealed that playing cricket growing up shaped how he leads today.

“Team sports have a huge bearing on who we become as citizens and leaders,” he said.

“Cricket is a symphony, and every player is a note in that composition. Leadership in cricket is about being a guiding light and source of inspiration,” fellow panelist and former cricketer Zaheer Khan agreed.

“In cricket, we lead not with arrogance but with humility,” Khan added before turning his attention to Nadella’s success as a CEO. “In the journey of Satya Nadella, we see a reflection of these principles in the corporate world.”

Recent research has echoed that sports can be attributed to helping people bank the soft skills needed to lead. It’s why athletic students are significantly more likely to gain an MBA, land senior job rankings, and earn more money than their non-athletic counterparts.

Ultimately, communicating, teamwork, and leadership are desirable traits both on the pitch and in the boardroom.

What are soft skills and why are they important?

Being vulnerable hasn’t always been an asset in the workplace, but during the pandemic employees (who were struggling from isolation, burdened with increased household responsibilities, and more) needed leaders who could listen, build a sense of team community, and help fit work around their problems.

Unlike technical skills, soft skills determine how you interact with your team. Emotional intelligence, effective communication, and being able to influence and motivate are all a part of the repertoire.

According to LinkedIn’s research of nearly 23,000 workers worldwide, more than three in five (61%) workers say soft skills in the workplace are just as important as hard skills.

What’s more, when it comes specifically to empathy, almost 90% of U.S. workers surveyed in Ernst & Young’s 2021 report said that having an empathetic manager increases their job satisfaction, productivity, and cultivated loyalty.

Meanwhile, over half said that they had left a job because their boss wasn’t empathetic enough about issues at work or in their personal life.