Empathy as a Critical Organizing Tool and Strategy
Along my 25+ years in organizing, I often find myself returning to three core adages I’ve heard:
Be softer on the people and harder on the systems.
Empathy does not equal endorsement.
Change moves at the speed of trust.
When we look around at the current political and social landscape, the sheer frustration and anxiety with the players in our financial systems is palpable– and completely understandable. But personally speaking, in an effort to be in as much service of positive outcomes as possible, I’m trying to ask myself as I think ahead about what to do with those feelings: What lenses do we want to deploy that are bold yet feasible and sustainable? How do we build a stronger, more enduring capacity in our approach to policy change for healthy democratic governance and growing true civic power?
For me, the answer lies in a strategy that is too often overlooked or misunderstood—one that demonstrates that a sharp lens of equity and justice is actually more achievable through deep strategic empathy, not less.
Mapping the People Possibilities Needed for Power Building
Taking the time to understand the decision-makers, influencers, and implementers within a given system is fundamental to achieving lasting, transformative change. If our goal is structural equity, strategy requires approaching these actors with a clear-eyed, honest sense of which lanes of influence they actually hold, where their hands are tied, and what conditions are needed for movable people to take more courageous steps towards progress.
In my years at CFA, I’ve come to learn that when I apply genuine curiosity to the landscape, I can more accurately identify the spectrum of allies:
The “not obvious champions,” who may be ready to move to work forward alongside us.
The “movable middle,” who could be champions, but require specific resourcing, strategic cover, or political safety to step up.
The “passive opposition,” who are pushing back and creating inertia, not out of malice, but because of institutional incentives, fear, or unaddressed friction points.
I also gain keener insight to what the real conditioning, disincentives, and potential incentives different people within the system experiences which shines more light on where intervention points lie.
Without this level of strategic clarity, we risk treating every actor as a monolith, burning energy on unmovable targets while missing the exact leverage points needed to dismantle systemic barriers.
Real Talk– The Strategic Power of "Soft" Tools
Let’s have some real talk: two of our most critical strategic tools– empathy and curiosity– are frequently dismissed or unacknowledged in hard-nosed spaces. Why? Because they are historically coded as "soft" (and, by extension, gendered as feminine).
But make no mistake. Far from being passive or weak, empathy and curiosity are essential power-builders. From Mary Parker Follett to bell hooks, many key feminist and organizational change theorists called that out.
Those leading thinkers recognized that strong empathy and curiosity allow us to advance changemaking in practice rather than just in rhetoric. Understanding how people within a system operate allows us to read the board accurately, anticipate countermoves, uncover leverage points that wholesale adversarial approaches miss, and push for real material redistribution of power. Discounting them as soft skills isn't just a misconception—it's a strategic miss.
For A Little Clarity: What This Is (and Isn't)
To be clear, adopting empathy as an organizing strategy is not about sugarcoating reality or compromising our values.
It does not mean ignoring the creators and marionettes who actively design and uphold systems of inequity, extraction, greed, and marginalization. Nor does it suggest that systemic change works like “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” where if we just hold hands and sing loud enough, bad actors will suddenly experience a miraculous change of heart.
Most importantly, this approach is never meant to diminish the serious, disproportionate harm that unjust systems and entrenched cultural norms inflict on marginalized communities every day. Rather, it is designed to confront that harm directly by using more precise people-power-building tactics to dismantle it.
Because to transform unjust systems, we know we have to build enough people power and cultivate the enabling conditions to tip the scales already heavily stacked against us. Far from watering down our vision for justice, strategic empathy gives us the actual tools to realize it.
That requires finding and working with those who are organizable to grow our collective influence and create real leverage. And that calls for seeking out, better understanding, and helping move people within those systems, whether inside a municipal governmental body, a state agency, or a multifaceted union ecosystem.
Empathy gives us the precision to see people as they are within a system while we try to change it, curiosity gives us the tools to engage them, and trust gives us the speed to win. By reclaiming these tools as core hard-power strategies, we don't just yearn for change– we build the durable relationships and structural leverage needed to win it.
This reflection was written by Danielle Fox, Organizing Manager and Policy Specialist at Climate Finance Action.
