Evidence of Tesco's recent reappraisal of priorities due to its leadership changes and faltering performance was set out by Peta Hay, who as head of the Tesco Academy led the supermarket's strategy on leadership and development before recently becoming group resource director.

"We're recognising there are some things we have to do fundamentally differently in future," she told an HRD session yesterday. Up to now, because of the concentration on growth, the main questions had been: "how can we do this faster or go further?" Tesco had probably been seen as "cold, operational and fast-moving", she said. "Empathy and warmth probably has been missed."

Now the company, still the UK's biggest supermarket by a clear margin, is looking for additional qualities in its high-potential leaders: "collaboration and partnership; empathy; flexibility; curiosity and external sources of reference; and resilience."

Hay said the growing importance of people management and development within Tesco had been reflected in the decision of new chief executive Philip Clarke to appoint her boss, group personnel director Alison Horner, to the executive board – the first time this had happened.

Tesco is also putting into place a more structured approach for identifying future leaders. Many of its managers had grown up in an organisation split into silos. "They weren't naturally networked or curious," she explained. "Now we need to challenge them about their existing management style and about what's needed for the future."

Empathy also featured in the Army's list of eight key leadership qualities, as outlined by Major General Gerry Berragan, its director general for personnel. He started by saying that, contrary to many people's expectation, "an overly centralist, Stalinist command culture is the very opposite of what we seek to achieve."

Having talked about the necessary leadership qualities of "vision, determination, confidence, willpower and professional competence", he then emphasised that "self-awareness, humility and empathy are just as important if you want to win the respect of people and get them to go the extra mile for you."

Major General Berragan added: "for us it's not about profit margin, it's about success in the field – and that's a matter of life and death."