Emotional Intelligence for Everybody Else: Part 2 - Empathy

Empathy is often misunderstood as "talking about feelings." Think instead of how you can anticipate the needs of others, and you'll stay one step ahead.

To get started, begin with the first article in this series, Part 1: Self-Awareness.

Introduction to Empathy

Empathy is an appreciation for what others are thinking and feeling. A good manager can understand and process emotions that are dissimilar from their own. An empathetic behavior for a leader is hearing feedback or suggestions from another member of their team.

Some complain about sensitive types who want to “talk about their feelings” at work. I don’t think that sounds so bad, actually. Memes are making famous those of you who’ll travel far and wide to avoid therapy. I was one too not long ago.

There’s no need for anyone to worry. When we’re talking about at work, talking about your feelings hardly enters into it.

To be an effective leader, an emotionally intelligent person is interested in anticipating the thoughts and feelings of the people around them. 

Here’s an example. If a manager assigns someone a mindless and repetitive task, a skilled worker will grow bored and frustrated. Their rate of errors will probably increase. An empathetic manager will anticipate that, and act to correct it.

That’s a manager that other people will want to work with. See? It’s not that big of a deal. 

Why is empathy important? 

Empathetic leaders build influence through connections that motivate through trust and inspiration. This contrasts with traditional leadership systems based on command and control. These performance-based systems are often based on fear and the avoidance of consequences.

Our new values seem to be more inspiring to younger generations and multicultural populations. By rejecting anachronisms and adopting new models, we’re opening the door to diverse leaders who confound our stereotypes for what charismatic people look and behave like. 

I’ve organized three categories of empathetic techniques. Empathetic leaders can use these ideas to engage colleagues in ways that will inspire them, through curiosity, vulnerability, and trust. 

Curious leaders show interest in other people. That’s the first step towards empathy. Leaders who are inquisitive learn about the people they lead, and they learn about themselves.

Curiosity is employed in the management strategy MBWA (“Management by Walking Around.”) This is one of the few airport bookstore management aphorisms that sounds ridiculous but is actually totally brilliant.

By encountering employees and asking questions, leaders gain a richer understanding of the people they lead. Compared to centralized command-and-control, managers develop a sixth sense that enables them to anticipate issues and avoid problems

Vulnerability is an unguarded way of describing the state of humility or open-mindedness. A good leader seeks out perspectives that differ from their own. The best leaders engage perspectives that disconfirm their own beliefs. Reflect on this as you imagine a weak and hypocritical leader who protects themself from dissent and believes their own ideas are above reproach. 

Welcome feedback and embrace challenges to your own opinions. Be the first to find flaws or errors in your own work. Admit your own mistakes with humility. It’s especially impressive if you can do this with good sense of humor.

Trust means that you prioritize integrity, honor, and ethics in your partnerships with others. Support the health, wellness and well-being of your colleagues by minimizing unnecessary surprises and reducing needless suspense. You reduce anxiety for your team by affording them courtesies in those aspects of their experiences at work that you can influence or control. 

Curiosity

Empathy is vital to authentic relationships and curiosity is the way an empathic leader learns about the people around them. As you build relationships with your colleagues, express your interest in their perspectives.

In the workplace, people are often reluctant to express their true beliefs to leaders with power over them. Emotionally intelligent leaders can gain information and wisdom over time by humbly asking for the truth. 

Any time a differential of power exists, trust can be established through an expression of curiosity followed by a sincere display of understanding. Repeat the information that you’ve gained back to the person who has shared it with you.

This may sound familiar if you’ve observed a doctor visiting a patient’s bedside. It’s also how a teacher begins to adjudicate a playground disagreement. Professionals use curiosity in the practice of empathy in the real world.

Express empathy by asking thoughtful questions. Be polite and respectful. Don’t presume to make demands on someone’s time. If asked questions in return, give considerate, patient answers. The antithesis of curious behavior is to arrive with preconceived ideas about someone's thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. 

Empathy may be slower to develop when people are stressed, distracted, in an unfamiliar situation, or working with people who are new to them. Institutional mistrust or misalignment of incentives will also slow things down. Here’s the good news: there’s no statutory limit to how many questions you can ask. Just keep at it until you learn what you need to know.

Assumptions

Assumptions are empathy’s natural predator. Like a stealthy, silent stalker they’ll trip up our emotionally intelligent behavior, ruining our best intentions with a single ill-considered word.

One common assumption is that we know something more than someone else simply because we didn’t have the courtesy to ask. Another is to lazily enjoy the presumption that our rank in one context confers our superiority in another. In both cases we can miss the opportunity to learn something that’s hidden just out of view, simply because we couldn’t be troubled to look around the corner.

Senior people in a meeting sometimes allow others of different rank to assume they were invited to participate as observers. Higher ranked leaders signal active participation is encouraged from everyone by deliberately inviting them to contribute.

Administer an antidote to almost any assumption by being generous, inquisitive, and open minded. A leader role models these behaviors by taking the initiative to say the thing that’s on everybody’s mind. 

Delegation

When encountering an unfamiliar situation, assess the opportunity to develop new skills. Be mindful of the chance to delegate to your team. Leaders sometimes hoard responsibilities rather than spreading them around, or start abruptly handing out assignments without considering the existing workload. An empathetic move is to check in with each person on their appetite for additional work. 

Vulnerability

Our model of a leader who is an emotionally unassailable fortress no longer resonates with the modern workforce. A growing body of research associates humility with better job performance. The specific skills required are both intellectual (self-knowledge) and social (self-awareness.) Today’s workers respect a leader who’s not afraid to let their flaws show. 

Humble leaders get the chance to learn what others know about them. They operate among teams of people who are continuously changing and growing together. Doesn’t that sound great?

There are limits to how open and candid work relationships should be. A respectful distance helps teams function at their best. Professional boundaries encourage healthy team dynamics. Draw the line before oversharing begins. You can make a decision that works for you. I draw that line at lunch, and head home after one non-alcoholic drink after any work event. 

Psychological safety

As you admit your mistakes, expect them to be acknowledged, discussed, and forgiven. In a modern agile scenario, you’ll share opportunities to improve in open, candid, humane conversations between yourself, the team, and your leaders. This methodical, structured approach to continuous improvement is favored by many scientific and research-driven organizations.

The science shows that leaders who support vulnerability cultivate psychological safety. This is shown to drive business outcomes across industries. Being receptive to criticism is essential for the identification of errors or mistakes. A receptive culture enables colleagues to point out improvements without fear of recrimination or retaliation. Making corrections enables improvements that lead to better outcomes. That cannot occur when there’s fear or the assignment of blame. 

Admit you’re wrong

Someone who cannot acknowledge their own limitations is limited in their ability to grow and improve. Imagine the crisis for a leader who is stoic and emotionally walled off when errors do inevitably occur. It’s embarrassing for the team if they must rush to conceal or minimize mistakes. Nobody wants to work like this.

We should try to empathize with someone who behaves this way. Perhaps they feel the admission of an error makes them vulnerable to pain or guilt. They may have experienced trauma associated with such admissions in the past. 

Can you help them grow to trust that future disclosures will be received without those consequences in the future? Could you craft a new kind of partnership they haven’t experienced before? This could be a new and unique opportunity for both of you to learn and grow together.

Trust

To develop empathy in authentic relationships, leaders must first build trust. They do this by acting with concern for the health, wellness, and other interests of their teams using ethical practices that are consistent and humane. 

Trust is earned by leaders when they take up their team's interests as their own. Workers recognize managers who show integrity consistently and who demonstrate that they shared values. Workers notice when integrity is demonstrated consistently over a period of time. They’re impatient with leaders who ask for trust to be lent via nepotism, or insist that it be delivered in lieu of expansive promises.

Leaders can force themselves into a trust deficit if they’re pressured to deliver too early in a new role. Under-promise until the unknown aspects of a new position have revealed themselves. Trust is built from consistent delivery that result after momentum is be established. Heroics are for emergencies, not the day-to-day execution that matters most.

Servant leaders elevate the role played by integrity and trust with employees. They relentlessly center the needs of the employees in order to get the best results for their employer. By serving employees, they optimize the achievement of company goals. 

Servant leadership is not the only tool for leaders to partner with employees, but it’s quite an effective way. Workers develop trust and fellowship with leaders, who maintain a high degree of personal integrity. Strong partnerships are forged, which in turn support operational execution. 

Integrity

Empathetic leaders understand that they influence the emotional well-being of the people around them. They act with emotional integrity when they cultivate the peace and calm of the team around them by minimizing unnecessary surprise, suspense, anxiety, or distress.

Some examples: News or announcements are shared promptly without needless preamble. Changes of significance should be delivered directly and in-person whenever possible. 

Before appearing in person, it’s thoughtful for a manager to supply a little advance notice. When sending a DM, it’s courteous for a manager to say why immediately after “Hi.” And a manager must always supply an agenda when scheduling a meeting with a subordinate (the meeting title is not a sufficient agenda!) 

Compromise and Fellowship

Compromised managers fail in the practice of empathy for their colleagues. They undermine the safety of their teams in the pursuit of productivity and profit. When this occurs people can be harmed, physically or emotionally. Trust in the manager and employer are ruined. The damage can be permanent, commensurate with the harm to the employees. 

In exchange for the privileges they enjoy, leaders are entrusted with a duty of care for the physical, psychological, and emotional safety of the customers and their team. If they endanger the safety of workers or customers, through actions or inactions, they should be considered promptly for removal from the workplace. 

Leaders and managers are paid to intersect the interests of their employers and employees. If a manager balances these interests in a way that’s authentic, and if they do this consistently over time, they earn their team’s trust, fellowship, and camaraderie. I know of no better reward on this Earth. 

Tips for Empathy

1. Managers can ask questions like “What could I have done differently in that meeting?” or “What’s one thing I can do better for you?” You’re combining opportunities for self-improvement and vulnerability, and building trust with your team all at once. 

2. Assume the best intentions. Consider the possibility that someone might be experiencing something unusual or extraordinary that explains something you haven’t considered.

3. Test your listening skills by developing the habit of repeating what people say back to them. Observe them as you do this, and study their body language. You may notice that you’re not always hearing them correctly. It’s not your ears that are getting it wrong. It’s your empathetic mind that needs the practice.

4. Managers sometimes work to wrangle elicit honest feedback from their teams. It’s especially tough with a new team, and even harder in a group. It calls for psychological safety, which needs time to grow. I sometimes see managers ask for feedback, then wait only a few seconds for someone to pipe up. Some people a minute to overcome stage fright. The fancier your title, the longer you might wait for butterflies to settle. A Director should give people at least at a five count. Add a few seconds for each level above that.

5. Deploy empathy when facing conflict in the workplace. If you can’t understand someone’s behavior, ask yourself: Have you really tried? Here are some questions to ask:

   • What do I have in common with this person?

   • What are their motives? Do they understand mine?

   • Could we exchange information about the similarities and motives we share?

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See the previous articles in this series, Emotional Intelligence for Everyone Else - Part 1: Self-Awareness. The next chapter, Part 3: Respect is now available. will be published next week. In it we’ll discuss how emotionally intelligent leaders connect with others in ways that prioritize their need for dignity and safety.

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Hundreds of Business Letters clients have benefitted from 1:1 coaching. They advance in their career, find new jobs, developed new skills, earned promotions, and become better managers by increasing their emotional quotient.