Here is an excerpt from an article written by Ron Carucci for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of luxury watches or handbags, there are emotions and actions that look like the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed was a combination of deep empathy, attuned listening, and self-awareness but was, in fact, a way to serve their own emotional needs. It’s important to learn to spot these forgeries, especially if you’re the forger.

Plenty of research has documented manipulative misuses of emotional intelligence — the intentionally subtle regulating of one’s emotions to engineer responses from others that might not be in their best interest. Given that most people aren’t sociopaths, in my experience, the more common misuses of emotional intelligence are subconscious. To safeguard against inadvertently falling prey to them, we need deeper levels of self-examination. Here are three of the more common counterfeits I’ve seen snare well-intended leaders.

A need to be the hero disguised as empathy. Empathy is one of the key components of emotional intelligence. The capacity to understand and share others’ feelings creates authentic connection and deepens trust. But a leader’s genuine desire to demonstrate care can transcend healthy boundaries in unintended ways. I saw this play out when debriefing with the Chief Operating Officer of a $20 billion global company. I’d helped him prepare for a potentially volatile conversation with his direct report, who was behind on the implementation plan of a major initiative. The project costs had ballooned, and the direct report was emotionally frayed. Some of the issues were legitimately outside her control, but some were the result of her mistakes. The goal of the conversation was to agree on how she would get the project back on track. When I asked him how the conversation went, he responded with exuberant relief, “Better than I could have expected.” He went on to explain: “I was sure to start with empathy the way you coached me, and when I felt it was time, we moved into problem solving.” When I asked about the resolutions they’d agreed to, he told me, “We’ve agreed to push out the completion date by a year, I’ve given her the extra $40k she needs for the consultants, and at her request, I’ve agreed to step in as co-leader of the initiative.”

Over the next two hours, we unpacked the conversation to reveal how his need to feel indispensable completely overshadowed what she actually needed: accountability, coaching, and guidance. He felt the conversation had gone well because he felt needed by her. She thought it went great because she was no longer on the hook alone. At first, he defended his intention of being a caring and compassionate leader. But eventually he was able to see that when his expression of care turned to rescuing her from a difficult situation, it stopped being compassionate, and became selfish. When a leader indulges a codependent need to feel central to another person’s success, it takes away the other person’s power, making them weaker instead of stronger.

When expressing empathy for those you lead, pay attention to any need you might have to be the hero. Compassionate understanding for the challenges of others is emotionally intelligent. Rescuing them from the consequences of those challenges may be more cruel than kind.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He is the best-selling author of eight books, including the recent Amazon #1 Rising to Power. Connect with him on Twitter at @RonCarucci; download his free e-book on Leading Transformation.