5 Habits of Highly Empathic Business Leaders
Empathy is an important skill not reserved for business leaders or managers. It’s a skill everyone should adopt. However, few people show empathy in their dealings with others, and it’s even worse with business leaders.
The excuse is that work-life is complex, stressful, and busy, but that should be the major consideration to being empathic. However, you should create time to show empathy to colleagues or team members.
Empathy is the ability to sense others’ emotions and understand their point of view. Showing empathy creates an enabling environment for trust, improved performance, and positivity because everyone feels validated and important. Being empathic can include in things like genuinely inquiring about the well-being of a colleague, comforting a grieving team member, or diffusing a tense situation.
Although it can help, you don’t have to be professionally trained to show empathy. Our brains are naturally attuned to connection. We are a social species; therefore, to show empathy, we only have to be considerate and thoughtful. A considerate remark that will cost us little or nothing can mean all the world to a struggling or anxious friend or team member.
As a leader, making empathy your core skill will create trust among your team members. People feel relaxed, comfortable, and friendly in an environment where there is trust. The result is that team members will go the extra mile for the company because they believe that the company has their best interest at heart.
Many business leaders feel that showing empathy is a sign of weakness. In contrast, it’s a sign of strength. For many, the challenge is finding common ground between being a considerate leader and a firm manager. Still, if you imbibe these five habits, you can have a balance.
Cultivate Active Listening
Most business leaders are always in a hurry and too busy to listen to what their team members have to say. Their focus is on giving the correct reply instead of listening to understand what the team member is actually saying.
To be an empathic leader, you must be an active listener, which involves paying full attention to what the person is saying, asking questions to clarify their points, and using adequate body language to indicate that they are communicating.
Affirming questions like “If I’m hearing you correctly you are saying that… ” or “This sounds to me like… ” goes a long way to show the speaker that you are interested in what they’re saying. It also helps you to understand the message that they’re trying to pass.
Use Body Language
Active listening also involves nonverbal cues like maintaining eye contact, smiling, nodding to the things you agree with, and even short, verbal affirmations like “I see” or “I agree.” Making these behaviors part of your everyday communication will help improve your work relationship and the trust and friendliness in the workplace because the workers will feel heard, validated, and important.
Avoid Assumptions
Most business leaders tend to assume what their teammates want to ask and jump in to offer advice or finish their sentences. Not only is this uncomfortable, but it shows your team members that they are disturbing you and that their opinions may not be important.
If you want to be an empathic leader, do not interrupt. Let the speaker say what is in their mind; then ask your questions and offer the solution or required advice. This might be hard, but it’s much more beneficial than interrupting.
Pay Attention
There is no denying that the workplace is a fast-paced environment, and as such, plenty of things need our attention; however, to be an empathic leader, you have to focus on the speaker, whether they’re a team member or a client.
Checking each and every notification that comes to your phone, replying to every email, or working a the laptop while your team member is sharing their viewpoints shows that you’d rather be doing other things than listening to them. Not paying attention to a person means you do not respect them enough. When your team members feel that you don’t respect them, their attitude and motivation to work will be negatively affected.
Understand Nonverbal Communication
Many of us have to show up to work no matter what we are going through, and sometimes we can get overwhelmed by either work or an internal issue we are dealing with. As a leader, when you notice somebody avoiding eye contact, being tense around you, or on the brink of tears, it is best to react with kindness and find out the problem.
Do not judge or criticize them when they have opened up to you. Rather, provide help or words of encouragement if it’s something beyond you. Assure them they are open for further talks, and ask how you can provide more help.
Final Thoughts
Empathic behavior can lead to improved productivity in the workplace, and by making the above tips a habit, you will also improve your personal relationship with others. You need to work on your emotional literacy because you can’t show compassion if you feel no compassion.
