That's not all it does, and is arguably opposed to something important it does. It keeps honest emotion in and displaces the injection of description of “thoughts” that are really rationalizations for emotional responses.
OTOH, in formalized transactional relationships, the assumption of mutual concern for the emotional state of the other that it rests on is not given.
Could you share some examples?
Alternately, if someone were interested in empathizing with the team and protecting egos, we might navigate towards a worse solution. One which took into account everyone's feelings, instead of a cold calculation of method and results.
Nothing about respecting teammates and their emotions says you have to accept their pull request.
It is not even hard. Just keep it factual instead of using words like "stupid", "shitty", "crap" or passive aggressivity. Discuss issues before they become big. Listen when they disagree with your assessment - they might have reasons.
I already met enough people who claim to criticise while actually venting their emotions and settle scores with those they dislike.
But for certain, you could go too far in in the other direction: completely ignoring everyone's emotions.
Specifically, if you're in an environment that's swung too hard in the direction of totally ignoring people's emotions, then my advice probably sounds awful.
Someone using NVC can still be forceful and rude. I'm struggling with how to describe this. I suppose all it does it remove unrestrained emotion and moral blame from the interaction. Unrestrained emotion and moral blame are not a given. (ie, they may not be injected into a conversation, even if NVC is not implemented) And further, I suppose, it's possible to push somebody around and refuse to listen to their concerns while employing NVC. For example, under the guise of empathy a boss may "feel" your perfectly valid concern, equivocate it to the concern of others in the room, and then simply ignore your recommendations. It's possible that your recommendation was actually best, but instead of understanding the value of your idea, the boss has simply made sure not to trample your emotions.
I can think of plenty of situations where I don't care if someone tramples my emotions, but I'd be pretty distraught if they adopted a flawed idea, or couldn't understand why one idea was superior and another was inferior.
[edit]
Just to clarify, I think I talked myself into a conclusion I feel comfortable with. Empathy is not inherently useful. An approach that focuses on the feelings a person might demean them (since their feelings are not actually so fragile) while also equivocating all the ideas in the room. (all ideas might not be created equal, but it is necessary to treat everyone -- and their feelings -- with the same respect.)