Acting emphatically without invoked feeling, sounds “dry”or high-functioning-sociopath-like (not a killer, but as “doing it only because you know it’s expected/required”).
Managers shouldn't be making empathy conditional in the usual sense of the word, it is necessary in all settings to maintain an orderly, pleasant and respectful workplace. The article probably means something similar to but ultimately not exactly empathy. Probably sympathy, which gets used in the same paragraph. High empathy, low sympathy is par for the course for a good manager in a hard conversation.