Empathy for a Cockroach
What started as an odd moment in an Army hotel became one of the most enduring leadership lessons - and a reminder that even our greatest strengths can become blind spots.
Empathy has become a surprisingly controversial word.
Depending on who you ask, it’s either the answer to everything or the reason everything’s gone wrong.
After years facilitating leadership and coaching leaders, I thought I understood empathy pretty well.
Then a cockroach taught me something leadership doctrine never did.
And there I was…two weeks into a TDY, staying in a hotel near Fort Bragg.
If you’ve ever stayed in contracted government lodging, you know the experience. The furniture has stories. The HVAC has two settings: Arctic and Swamp. Somewhere around day three, making coffee in the bathroom starts to feel completely normal.
That’s when I found the cockroach.
She wasn’t one of those terrifying sprinters that disappear before you can react.
She looked…sick.
One antenna drooped.
She barely moved. One wing was stuck outward.
She looked like she’d lost a fight with whatever government-approved pesticide somehow manages to kill an insect that’s rumored to survive nuclear fallout.
Clearly, she was dying.
Instead of grabbing a shoe, I grabbed one of the little bowls from the hotel suite.
My logic was simple: if she only had a few hours left, maybe she deserved to die in peace. Besides, as long as the bowl stayed put, she couldn’t crawl up my nose while I slept.
Twenty-four hours later, curiosity got the better of me.
I lifted one side of the bowl.
She wasn’t dead.
In fact she looked better. Her wings shinier.
Her antennae stood straighter.
She moved with purpose.
Now what?
I was only halfway through my TDY.
So I left the bowl in place. If she recovered, I’d release her when I checked out. If she didn’t… we’d cross that bridge later.
It seemed perfectly reasonable.
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Somewhere during those two weeks, the cockroach became Katy.
Waking up and eyeing the bowl, I’d say, “Morning, Katy.”
When I came back each evening, I’d tell her about my day. She was an excellent listener.
Checkout morning finally arrived. It time to let her go.
I carefully lifted the bowl assuming she wanted to say goodbye, had my camera ready to take her beautiful picture, and before I could say cheese
Reached down.
And Katy immediately chose violence.
She shot across the carpet, disappeared beneath the radiator, and vanished before I could react.
And there I was.
A grown woman.
A leadership instructor.
Standing alone in an Army hotel room…
…calling maintenance because I’d accidentally lost the cockroach I’d spent two weeks trying to save.
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When the maintenance technician knocked on the door, I realized I was about to explain the situation out loud for the first time.
There are moments in life when you suddenly hear yourself.
This was one of them.
Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped asking whether Katy actually needed saving.
I’d simply assumed she did.
That assumption became a story.
Our brains are remarkably good at that.
They create stories much faster than they verify them.
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Katy taught me something I still think about today.
Empathy isn’t the problem.
Unchecked empathy is.
The same strength that helps us understand another person can quietly convince us we’re responsible for fixing them.
And maybe that’s true of every leadership strength.
Confidence becomes certainty.
Responsibility becomes control.
Optimism becomes denial.
Empathy becomes rescuing.
Leadership isn’t about using our strengths more.
It’s about recognizing when our greatest strengths have quietly become our greatest blind spots.
I still think about Katy.
And I still wonder how many people I’ve accidentally put under a bowl because I cared too much to stop and check the conditions first.
Turns out…
Nobody checked the conditions.
Least of all me.