Empathy without agency can leave us standing on the sidelines (I said that, 2026)
We often talk about empathy as though it is the answer. If we could only understand what another person was feeling, we assume, we would treat them differently. We would notice their discomfort. We would recognise when something was wrong. We would intervene when someone was being harmed. But empathy alone doesn’t necessarily produce action.
You can understand that someone is uncomfortable and still say nothing. You can recognise that a colleague is struggling and still walk past. You can know that a joke has crossed a line and still laugh along with everyone else. You can care deeply about someone and still hesitate when the moment arrives. This is one reason I have become increasingly interested in the idea of strategic empathy and its relationship with active bystandership.
Strategic empathy has roots in military strategy, international relations and national security. Zachary Shore’s A Sense of the Enemy (2014) helped popularise the concept, emphasising the importance of understanding others’ motivations, perspectives and constraints. More recently, research by Allison Abbe and colleagues has explored how military leaders can develop strategic empathy through perspective-taking and structured learning. Applied to active bystandership, strategic empathy helps individuals understand harmful behaviour, recognise power dynamics and anticipate how interventions might be received.
Strategic empathy provides the understanding; active bystandership provides the tools to turn that understanding into purposeful, proportionate action.
Strategic empathy asks us to go beyond simply understanding another person’s perspective. It asks us to use that understanding to determine what might be helpful, appropriate and effective in this particular situation, and for me that is where active bystandership training has an important role to play.
Empathy Is Not Enough
Empathy is complicated. Psychologists distinguish between different forms of empathy, including emotional empathy and cognitive empathy or perspective-taking. We can experience something of another person’s emotions, or we can try to understand their perspective. Both can be valuable, but neither automatically tells us what to do.
Imagine seeing a colleague being repeatedly ridiculed by their peers. You might recognise their discomfort. You might even feel uncomfortable yourself.
But then the questions begin:
Should I say something?
Will I make things worse?
What if I’ve misunderstood the situation?
Is this really my place?
What will the rest of the team think?
What happens if I challenge someone more senior than me?
This is where the science of bystander behaviour becomes important. The problem is not necessarily that people don’t care. Sometimes the problem is that caring doesn’t come with a behavioural script. Active bystandership training can provide that script.
From Empathy To Perspective-Taking
The first contribution of active bystandership training is helping people become better observers. You need to notice the event before any intervention becomes possible. In any organisation, behaviour is rarely isolated from context. Hierarchy matters. Relationships matter. Group norms matter. Previous experiences matter. So does the reaction of everyone else in the room.
A comment that might appear trivial to an outsider can have a very different meaning to the person receiving it. Active bystandership encourages people to notice these dynamics. Rather than simply asking: “Is this behaviour acceptable?”
we can encourage a richer set of questions:
What is happening here?
How might this be experienced by the person involved?
What is the group communicating by laughing, remaining silent or joining in?
Is there a power imbalance?
What might happen if nobody does anything?
That is perspective-taking in practice and it is an important foundation for strategic empathy.
But Understanding Isn’t The Destination
This is where I think active bystandership adds something important. The purpose of understanding another person’s perspective isn’t simply to become better observers.
It is to become more capable actors. If I understand that someone is uncomfortable, what can I do? If I recognise that a colleague is being isolated, how might I bring them back into the conversation? If a friend is beginning to behave differently, can I check in? If someone makes a comment that risks becoming normalised, can I challenge it without unnecessarily humiliating them? If a situation is escalating, who can I involve?
These are practical questions, and they require more than empathy. They require judgement, confidence, communication skills and a repertoire of possible interventions. That is precisely what good active bystandership training should develop.
Strategic Empathy And The Fear Of Getting It Wrong
One of the biggest barriers to intervention is uncertainty. We often imagine that people remain silent because they don’t care. That can happen, but research into bystander behaviour and the psychology of inaction suggests a much more complicated picture.
People can be afraid.
They can worry about social consequences.
They can look to others for cues about what is happening.
They can be uncertain about whether intervention is justified.
Hierarchy can make intervention particularly difficult.
Sometimes people simply don’t know what to say.
This is why telling people to “speak up” isn’t enough. It is the equivalent of telling someone to swim without teaching them how. Active bystandership training creates an opportunity to rehearse the behaviour before the real moment arrives.
People can practise checking in. They can practise challenging a comment. They can practise interrupting an emerging situation. They can practise seeking help.
They can practise getting alongside someone afterwards.
The objective isn’t to create confrontation specialists. It is to create people who have options, and having options reduces the sense that intervention is an all-or-nothing decision.
Strategic Empathy Is About Proportionality
This is perhaps the most useful part of the concept. Not every situation requires the same intervention.
Sometimes the right response is direct: “That’s not okay.”
Sometimes it is curiosity: “What did you mean by that?”
Sometimes it is support: “Are you okay? That seemed uncomfortable.”
Sometimes it is distraction.
Sometimes it is delegation.
Sometimes the intervention happens afterwards.
Sometimes the situation requires formal reporting.
Strategic empathy helps us consider the person, the behaviour and the context together. Active bystandership training can give people the tools to make those decisions. That is important because an intervention can be well-intentioned and still be poorly judged. The goal isn’t simply to intervene. It is to intervene effectively.
From Judgement To Curiosity
There is another connection between strategic empathy and active bystandership that I find particularly interesting. Both can encourage us to replace immediate judgement with curiosity. Consider the difference between: “What’s wrong with him?” and “What’s going on here?” The first closes the conversation. The second opens it. That doesn’t mean excusing harmful behaviour. Understanding is not the same as accepting.
Empathy does not require us to abandon standards. In fact, strategic empathy can help us hold standards more effectively because it allows us to think about how those standards can be communicated.
A colleague can be challenged without being humiliated.
A friend can be confronted without being abandoned.
A person causing harm can be held accountable while still being treated as a human being capable of changing their behaviour.
That is a much more sophisticated model of intervention than simply identifying good people and bad people.
The Cultural Dimension
Perhaps the biggest opportunity lies beyond the individual. If we train individuals in strategic empathy but leave the culture unchanged, we are asking individuals to carry an enormous burden. Culture determines what people believe is normal.
It tells us what gets laughed at, what gets challenged and what gets ignored. It tells us who is allowed to speak. It tells us whether an intervention is welcomed or punished.
This is why active bystandership should not be reduced to a training course. Training can introduce the language, skills and confidence, but culture determines whether those behaviours survive afterwards. When teams develop shared expectations, “around here, we look out for each other”, intervention becomes less socially risky.
The person who speaks up is no longer seen as someone creating a problem. They are reinforcing the culture, and something else happens. The person receiving the intervention becomes part of the culture too. We need to talk much more about this.
Active bystandership isn’t simply about creating people who intervene. It is also about creating people who can receive intervention.
A healthy culture requires both.
Leaders Create Leaders
This is particularly important in high-risk organisations. We often look upwards when we talk about culture. What does the chief want? What does the senior leadership team expect? What does the policy say? All these matter. But culture is also created horizontally. Between colleagues. Among peers. In messes, locker rooms, offices, vehicles, classrooms, teams and WhatsApp groups.
The person standing next to you may have more influence over your behaviour in a particular moment than the person at the top of the organisation. That is why I increasingly think about active bystandership as leadership development. You don’t need positional authority to influence culture. You don’t need to be the boss to change the direction of a conversation.
You don’t need a leadership title to be a good friend.
Leaders create leaders when they give people permission, confidence and capability to influence what happens around them.
Strategic empathy strengthens that leadership. It gives people the ability to understand before they act—and active bystandership gives them the tools to turn that understanding into action.
From Empathy To Agency
Perhaps this is where the conversation needs to move. We have spent years encouraging people to be more empathetic. That matters, but empathy without agency can leave us standing on the sidelines.
The challenge is to develop people who can notice, understand, decide and act.
Strategic empathy provides the understanding. Active bystandership provides the behavioural capability. Culture provides the permission, and together they create something much more powerful than empathy alone: People who are prepared to do something with what they see.
