Empathy is always a crucial skill for business leaders as they build productive and high-performing teams. Over the past few years, empathy and leadership has taken on even greater importance as employers and employees navigate the impact of a pandemic and rapidly evolving customer and employee behavior.
Why Is Empathy Important in Business?
Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they must be feeling.
Empathy is a vital part of being a great leader and a major component in a leader’s ability to gain the trust and support of their team. Empathy can improve teamwork by encouraging good relationships among those who work together and creating a foundation for building teams with higher levels of performance.
Empathy is one key to developing a robust corporate culture that values and respects employees. A recent study by Catalyst showed just how important empathy is in the workplace:
- Companies with empathetic leaders are nearly four times more likely to be innovative.
- Employees receiving empathy from their managers and supervisors are nearly three times more engaged.
- When employees feel valued and respected, nearly 60% said they were unlikely to leave their job — two to five times more than those that didn’t experience empathy at work.
- Half of the workers with empathetic leadership rated their workplace as inclusive vs. 17% of workers with less empathetic leadership.
In companies that prioritized leadership, 86% of workers say they were better able to balance the demands of work and life.
The Benefits of Empathy in the Workplace
The benefits of empathetic workplaces can’t be understated. Such work environments produce stronger collaboration, less stress among workers, better morale, and more productivity. Employees are also more resilient and able to deal with setbacks or challenges including business downturns or layoffs. Empathy fosters resiliency.
Empathy Is Contagious
Emotions in the workplace can spread in much the same way germs do. Have you ever noticed how one person in a bad mood can negatively impact others? It can work the other way, too.
Neuroscientists call this emotional contagion. Without conscious effort, humans tend to mimic the emotions of those around them. As part of building a positive culture, emphasizing the importance of empathy can help create a more positive overall environment.
Tips to Improve Empathy in the Workplace
So, with all of these benefits, how do you foster a more empathetic environment at your workplace? We’ve got a few tips to get started.
Listen more
Great leaders listen and focus on the speaker. When you interrupt their train of thought or let your mind wander to other tasks, you aren’t really hearing what they are saying. Imagine how you might feel if your boss tuned you out or ignored what you were trying to tell them. Such behavior can discourage employees from talking openly.
When employees share problems or concerns, your first instinct as a leader may be to jump in and provide solutions. Sometimes, you just need to listen and help your team members come to their own solutions. Trying to fix the problem too quickly can cause the person to feel you aren’t listening to them.
Understand Employee Challenges
Comedian Steve Martin has a great joke. Before you can criticize someone, he said, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them, you’ll be a mile away and have their shoes.
While you may not want to take your employee’s shoes, there are two points here. First, you really do need to understand what your employees are going through, the challenges they have, and what it takes for them to do the job. Secondly, if you do have to criticize someone’s work, do it at a distance, such as in your office, rather than in front of other employees.
Recognize Unconscious Bias
All of us are the sum of our past experiences. Because we tend to view everything in life through the lens of our experience, this can create an unconscious bias in how we interpret the way others see things.
This can manifest itself in several ways, such as failing to take into account others’ experiences that may lead them to different conclusions.
Practice Cognitive & Emotional Empathy
Cognitive empathy (also known as empathetic accuracy) requires you to proactively think about another person’s emotions and mindset. By consciously thinking about a situation from someone else’s point of view and trying to define how they perceive things, you can become more aware of how they feel.
Cognitive empathy on its own is only part of the equation, however. Cognitive empathy might cause you to pause, fail to respond, or offer sympathy rather than empathy. Emotional empathy allows you to feel along with them, but also to respond appropriately and offer support and guidance.
By going into situations with a proactive mindset to practice both cognitive and emotional empathy, you can build up muscle memory until it becomes automatic.
Assume the Best
Very few people show up at work and purposely try to do a bad job. Everyone has off days or brings personal problems to the workplace that can affect their work. Empathetic leaders don’t assume someone is purposely trying to sabotage the workplace.
Before criticizing, take the time to talk to your team members and find out why they are performing at less-than-optimal levels. You may be surprised how often they struggle with a problem or challenge you can help find simple solutions for.
Build Empathetic Teams
Teams often take on the personality of their leaders. When you are empathetic towards your team, it encourages others to be empathetic as well. It also helps to take team building seriously. When people get to know each other and develop stronger work relationships, they tend to work more collaboratively and be more empathetic towards each other.
Do the Little Things
In a recent study, employees were asked what is the most important thing your manager or company could do to get you to produce great work. The top answer was personal recognition. When you understand what employees are going through, what it takes to do the job, and truly value the work they produce, take the time to let them know.
Whether it’s a simple thank you, a personal note, or showing your appreciation in other ways, it can help create that empathetic, positive culture you need for success.
Empathy and Leadership Is a Key to Business Success
Business leaders acknowledge the importance of empathy for business leaders. A Harvard Business Review report showed that 80% of CEOs responding said empathy was a key to success. Yet, just one in five companies offer any kind of empathy training for its leaders and managers.
While there is some evidence of a genetic predisposition for empathy, it’s rare. The good news is that empathy is a skill that can be learned. Impro can help. We’ve incorporated lifetimes of what we’ve learned from one-on-one coaching and created an innovative online platform that helps leaders grow and achieve.
In just five minutes a day, you can unlock and learn new abilities to make sure yourself a better leader and help your team perform at their highest levels.
Learn more about Impro today, how we work, and what we can do for your business.
