Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he doesn’t see empathy as a soft skill: ‘It’s the hardest skill we learn’

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 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 a 2023 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.

Read more: Satya Nadella returned Microsoft to the top by showing humility as CEO .

Here’s how it’s done “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 died 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.