Allison Robinson, CEO and founder of The Mom Project, recently said: “Managers are now faced with the reality that we all have lives outside of work. And whether they like it or not, they have to acknowledge the employees’ personal considerations.”
Empathising employees’ needs is moving up management’s priorities. Robinson’s research reported a whopping 75% of women voted that employer support and greater understanding of work-life flexibility are the most important criteria for being respected at work.
In addition, with increased demands for mental health support and millennials’ and aging professionals’ work preferences, companies now face new challenges that will require an agile, natural, humanised response.
Why is empathising with your employees important for employers?
When leveraged effectively, empathy in leaders can prevent workforce mishaps, champion never-before-seen causes, and become holy grail bridges between company ideals and functioning social norms.
As mentioned by Jamil Zaki in Harvard Business Review’s Making Empathy Central to Your Company Culture, employees collaborate better in teams, encounter less stress, have higher individual and community morale, and are far more resilient than those who do not inculcate empathy as a work-based tenet.
Employees who communicate empathising and sympathising messages regularly are usually rewarded with better morale by co-workers within the organisation, feel valued as contributors and want to be kinder to others.
In addition, research from the University of Michigan and Cornell University found interpersonal connections to be beneficial for not only employees, but employers as well.
Employers and leaders of organisations who extend instrumental compassion to the suffering employee at work are found to be happier, and generally focused in wide-ranging tasks at work.
The study found that the act of work empathy alone can instil positive, productive changes in leaders who adopt it fast, maximising their strengths earlier in their attempts to build collaboration and strengthened communication in their teams.
Here are five ways Singaporean employers and managers can recognise and boost their leadership with greater empathy below.
1. Recognising and boosting the approachable self in empathetic leaders
As leaders, it is important to acknowledge that fellow members in the organisation are like-minded human beings who encounter daily work and life stresses, and require quality and timely interaction.
Whether it be a kind reminder on fulfilling day-to-day tasks or a friendly assistance in problem solving, leadership does not have to represent an intimidating hierarchy that withdraws an incoming approach from a subordinate fixated on a high-level point of view and an occupied busy schedule.
Rather, it is about becoming relational to equal individuals in the same organisation as part of a unified team with common objectives in achieving the best goals and credible means to succeed.
Being there for each other, quite similar to being present when helping a friend in need, is the attitude of approachability that leaders should rethink and adopt in their current work routines.
2. Recognising and boosting empathy by taking care of yourself as a leader
As leaders experience copious amounts of burnout under high pressure circumstances, it is important that they take care of their physical and mental states well before attempting to care for others.
Leaders experiencing persistent burnouts are reported to be slow and indecisive when facing critical decisions, frequently becoming less confident in their choices at work.
This can lead to reckless decisions, lucking out on timed opportunities, and even passively depleting employee engagement.
Caring by empathising the leader in you should come first. Scheduling restful breaks for self-care can be the determining factor for your ability to care for others.
Exercising, spending valuable time with family and friends, getting a good night’s sleep, and sticking to a proper healthy diet are good ways to manage your leadership wellbeing.
When leaders feel good about themselves, they would be able to feel and create a source of empathy for others. An empathetic remedy to a leader’s team begins with remedying the leader from within.
3. Recognising and boosting listening in empathetic leaders
When leaders listen to people deeply, they not only look beyond the surface by obtaining diverse opinions, but also seek reasons why certain actions were suggested, done or accepted while conscientiously being intuitive and alert.
Thoughtfully, they are careful to watch out and involve others in active conversations in any form of review or evaluation, which can include a team’s performance, task agenda and encourage others to share opinions while giving ready feedback.
They also put others readily forward to brainstorm ideas and manage expectations. In addition, they listen to be flexible and adaptable to differing perspectives while validating, recommending and at times research on a proposition.
If a team member brings up new innovative ideas which prove to be beneficial, the empathizing leader should listen and transform these into doable actions, accepting them as useful contributions.
4. Recognising and boosting empathetic team motivation and empowerment for rainy day situations
Empathising also means building motivation in the team and empowering it to tackle unpredictable, ad-hoc situations.
Employees can speak up, be highly creative, participate responsively to various opportunities, and tackle business challenges themselves.
Focus groups are still common avenues for garnering employees’ constructive feedback and brainstorm innovative ideas, empowering employees for future work achievements.
An empowered and motivated team is highly effective, communicative and reflexive – always thinking about the next step ahead before their leaders have the chance to engage them.
5. Recognising and boosting empathy through practice, humility and determination
The very first step in embarking on any form of leadership with empathy is that leaders have got to recognise that empathy is not a trait which one is naturally endowed with.
It is a nurtured skill, exercised like a muscle and can get stronger if consistently reviewed and improved.
Like all skills, where even failures have occurred at times, it has the potential to grow and thrive with guidance and conviction.
Leaders will have to position themselves as humble students instead of masters of the trade, still eagerly having much to learn and attentively listening with an open heart and mind.
Leaders can only start assessing their employees’ mindsets and moving towards empathetic ideals when they acknowledge that it all takes practice, humility, and that extra grit to not give up. Practice makes perfect!
