Expressing empathy makes many people feel awkward. Still, no one has access to our thoughts. They only have access to what we say and do, say the authors of “Positive Communication for Leaders.”
Charlotte is a director of technology at a high-profile Silicon Valley company. She recently heard that two of her top-performing managers had decided to leave.
Their reason was simple. The managers had communicated multiple times—and in multiple ways—that they needed more support, encouragement, and positive affirmation from her.
Charlotte recalls hearing their feedback, but she never adjusted her leadership approach. She personally has never needed affirmation from her supervisors and thought dismissively, “They’re working at a tech titan, one of the best companies in the country. They already know they’re great!”
Or do they?
Their departure challenged Charlotte’s leadership philosophy and motivated her to talk to other team members. She soon learned that many of her direct reports were also wondering, “Am I valued here? Am I in the right place?’” Charlotte’s lack of empathy had eroded their confidence and motivation.
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
At its core, empathy is the ability to imagine and understand others’ experiences. When leaders listen with empathy, the people around them feel understood, supported, and appreciated. When leaders communicate with empathy, they establish mutual respect, build stronger teams, and promote a thriving team culture.
Recent research, scores of leadership writings, and leaders themselves agree about the importance of an empathetic mindset, but communicating with empathy as a daily practice doesn’t look like it’s caught on yet.
In a 2023 study by Ernst & Young, 87% of polled employees said empathy is essential for an inclusive environment, and 86% believe it’s a must-have for morale. Yet more than half (52%) of these employees feel their company’s efforts to be empathetic are dishonest.
These findings aren’t a one-off. Businesssolver’s 2023 State of Workplace Empathy Report, a survey of employees, HR Professionals, and CEOs across six different industries, revealed drastic declines in workplace empathy, with leaders receiving the worst marks in the survey’s history. Businessolver’s CEO, Jon Shanahan, sums up the report in one word: “Alarming.”
Clearly, this is a missed opportunity for leaders. It’s a call to action to put authentic, empathetic communication into practice. So, how can you start?
MAKE DEEP LISTENING A PRIORITY
Listening carefully and deeply is the beginning of empathy. It’s a critically important practice for leaders: The higher your rank in an organization, the more time you spend listening.
Thankfully, we can learn from the best listeners to level up our skills. When people describe the greatest listeners in their lives, they all offer the same descriptions:
● “They’re fully present and completely in the moment.”
● “They’re open to the other person’s thoughts, ideas, and feelings.”
● “They understood my experience from my vantage point.”
● “They were genuine and showed they cared.”
Who wouldn’t love it if their leaders truly listened like this?
From a behavioral standpoint, listening in this way requires reducing all distractions, turning your devices off and putting them out of sight, and positioning yourself to pay focused attention.
Your mindset, too, should be open. Deep listening is about “shutting up” your own thoughts, opinions, and judgments for a few moments so you can listen without giving in to the impulse to debate, disregard, or diminish what the other person is saying.
REORIENT YOURSELF TO FEEL WHAT OTHERS DO
Empathy begins with your willingness and ability to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings, and struggles. You must put yourself in the other person’s shoes. See life through their eyes. Prompt yourself to feel what they’re feeling.
There’s science behind this type of empathetic reorienting. Researchers Kathyrn Pavlovich and Keiko Krahnke found that active empathy dissolves the barriers between ourselves and others, allowing us “to find common ground for solution-building.”
Charlotte, the director of technology mentioned earlier, missed this opportunity. She thought first about how she personally required little positive feedback. She saw the situation through her own eyes.
Instead, she should have paused and asked herself questions to enter her managers’ minds:
● “I don’t need a lot of positive feedback, but what if I did?”
● “Have I ever felt as if important people didn’t appreciate me? What did that feel like?”
● “How would I feel if my supervisor wasn’t meeting my needs?
As you ask yourself questions like these, how can you gauge if you’ve made the leap to genuine empathy?
The first sign is that you’ll literally sense your emotions changing. You’ll feel “your heart go out” to the other person because you understand more about what it’s like for them. You’ll feel a swell of identification and similarity.
For leaders, this is a magical moment because you now understand your followers’ needs more clearly.
COMMUNICATE YOUR EMPATHY
As Maya Angelou said, “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”
In truth, expressing empathy makes many people feel awkward and vulnerable. Still, we must remember that no one has access to our thoughts and feelings. They only have access to what we say and do.
Even straightforward statements like the following samples can mean a great deal to the other person if they’re said with empathy, sincerity, and care:
● “I hear you.”
● “I understand how you feel.”
● “That sounds really difficult.”
Adding brief and fitting personal or professional details to these examples can be a nice touch as long as the conversation focuses on the other person’s experience.
For example, Charlotte could have thought back and responded, “I’m sorry, and I hear you. When I first started out, my boss didn’t give me positive feedback for two years. It wore me out. I understand, and I can do better.”
Communicating empathy may not sound profound when viewed from a distance. However, for the person in the room with the leader, the presence or lack of empathy makes a critical difference.
OFFER TO HELP
For some issues, your mere presence as an empathetic communicator is all the social support the other person will need to get through their struggle. In fact, if you fast-forward to solutions too soon in the conversation, you may unintentionally short-circuit the empathy process.
Still, leaders are in the business of solving problems all day long.
If you’re confident you’ve expressed empathy well and sense that the other person feels understood, offering potential solutions in a professional setting is part of the job. If there’s a way to help alleviate distress, remove an obstacle, or solve a problem, then offer to help and take the conversation from there.
When you consistently show your team you care like this, you’ll create a stronger culture for all.
For her part, Charlotte finally heard, understood, and empathized with her team. She accepted that her team members needed regular affirming communication from her and committed to doing it.
She told us that just because she was a leader, “that doesn’t mean I have to be stoic.” She put positive feedback on the agenda for her one-on-one meetings and used larger group meetings to express her sincere appreciation for the team’s accomplishments.
Her team responded by saying, “These are the kinds of conversations we’ve needed.”
What’s the lesson from Charlotte’s story? The shortest road between leaders and followers is empathy.
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Guest Author: Alexander Lyon
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