Empathy and leadership

How can business owners show empathy and maintain strong leadership?

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, in the first instance this may feel altruistic and to those that do not understand the power of empathy they may see it as showing weakness or pandering to their team. The reality is somewhat different, inside a business, empathy helps create an environment where colleagues can perform at their highest levels, feel empowered to make improvements and innovate and become committed to the business and what its seeking to achieve.

So how does the power or empathy do all that?

1. Increases loyalty.
   Empathy happens when you see the world through someone else’s eyes, you can understand what it is like to walk in their shoes. To do this you have to spend time listening, adapting and making changes based on the information you are hearing. For someone on the receiving end of this approach they feel respected, valued and that they can contribute. We often hear the phrase colleagues join businesses and leave managers, they do, but not when they are treated in this way. Often, they will stay and perhaps refer a friend to work for the business too.

2. Enables colleagues to deal with challenges and get on with what is needed.
   In a team where there is high empathy, colleagues will feel supported along with clarity of expectation teams are able to collaborate, generate thoughts on how to tackle the challenges ahead and work together to do what is needed to get the job done. Empathy will bring a culture of collective achievement, not one person gaining but everyone being able to play their part and contribute to the business goals.

3. Creates a culture where there is high trust and no fear of failure.
   Innovation happens when colleagues feel safe and know that they will not be ridiculed for sharing a thought or idea. No idea is a silly idea, or if it is let us hear it anyway because who knows someone could just have a moment of genius, lost if the environment is driven by status and appearance. True brilliance can happen when colleagues can be creative with no barriers to stifle thought.

High performance can be achieved, where there is loyalty, freedom to get the job done and high trust exist. This happens as high expectations and challenge can be present where leadership shows empathy and support. So given the many benefits to an empathetic leadership approach how can Leaders become better at being empathetic with the people they work with

• Understand your team’s needs – ask and listen.
• Create an environment of open communication and more effective feedback. Communication must be two-way.
• Allow colleagues to explore problems that they face and ways to resolve them. You do not have all the answers, that is okay, show humility.
• When things go wrong, acknowledge it, look for ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again, create accountability but never look for blame and fault. Some of our best lessons are from getting it wrong.