Does empathy merely take place in leaders’ mind? How does it help us better understand and practice leadership? In the past, entitative relational leadership studies have mainly drawn on a mind-based understanding of empathy and focused on the association between individual empathy trait and leader emergence and effectiveness. Such an approach overlooks leadership practice of empathy as a constructive process. By integrating emerging research from diverse disciplines from philosophy to communication, the paper first offers a constructionist view of empathy, based on which empathic leadership practice is conceptualized. The paper explicates how leadership practice of empathy construction is rooted in relational ethics and takes place in both synchronic dyadic interaction through conversation as well as diachronic narrative practice with a collective other. By conceptualizing empathic leadership practice through a social constructionist approach to empathy, the paper makes significant contributions to our understanding of relational leadership.

同理心只发生在领导者的心中吗？它如何帮助我们更好地理解和实践领导能力？过去，对关系型领导力的研究主要基于对同情心的基于心理的理解，并且侧重于个人同情特质与领导者的出现和有效性之间的关联。这种方法忽视了同理心作为一种建设性过程的领导实践。通过整合从哲学到传播等各个学科的新兴研究，本文首先提出了一种共情的建构主义观点，在此基础上概念化了共情领导实践。本文阐述了共情建构的领导实践是如何植根于关系伦理学的，它既发生在通过对话的同步二元互动中，也发生在与其他集体的历时叙事实践中。通过使用社会建构主义的移情方法概念化移情领导实践，本文为我们对关系领导的理解做出了重要贡献。