Embrace these 3 habits to develop Empathy — the key to connecting with people.

Empathy underpins meaningful human relationships and is a key trait of good people leaders. Empathy can be developed by practicing 3 behaviors outlined here.

But let’s start with a poem I liked about Empathy.

Let me hold the door for you

I may have never walked a mile in your shoes, But I can see that your soles are worn

and your strength is torn, Under the weight of a story, I have never lived before

So let me hold the door for you. After all you have walked through, Its the least I can do

…….. Morgan Harper Nichols

During my 24 years corporate career spanning field service to IT Leadership, I have received appreciation for people leadership, mentoring, and humility. This appreciation has transcended geographies and cultures. I have had team members from all of India’s diverse cultures, and my today’s team members come from 8 diverse nations across 4 continents. I consider it my career achievement, that I continue to receive Teachers’ Day and Guru Purnima (Full moon day festival celebrating teachers) wishes from team members I managed long years back.

So, I was asked to speak about an important element of people leadership — Empathy, in a GE Leadership Programme Graduation ceremony. Here is an effort to recall and share these thoughts with many more of you. These thoughts are in the context of professional development. However, as you read this piece, you will realize that they easily transcend into personal, family and society relationships as well.

Key to leading a team, function or organization is to manage people and relationships. Upwards, downwards, sideways, external — i.e. managers, subordinates, peers and partners.

Looking at the world around, we intuitively know that effective leaders understand other people better. They bring this understanding to managing better — in a humane, conciliatory and inclusive manner — even when they are assertive and objectives driven. They differentiate themselves with empathy, the ability to understand and connect with people.

Empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

We assume that you either have it or don’t. In my experience, there are 3 behaviors, which when practiced, can help develop empathy.

No One Comes to Work to Screw Up

Image courtesy : @chuttersnap from Unsplash

Screwups happen all the time, everywhere. Our first instinct is to hold someone accountable and then be done with it. But we must remember — everyone comes to work to do well, grow, get a raise and — definitely not to screw up.

If we make ourselves believe — that everyone comes to work to do a good job; and not to screw up — then there must be something deeper why it happened. Understanding which can help the person, and the team, not repeat it.

It happened probably because she wasn’t sufficiently trained, equipped or informed. Or the instructions were not clear. Or the process had ambiguity. Or she had a personal issue which preoccupied her — is she is going through a close one’s illness, or kid’s admission stress, etc..

If goof ups happen more than once, we force ourselves to investigate about a square peg in a round hole — someone not loving her job, or not having an aptitude for this role; triggering identification of another role for her?

As we practice this belief — everyone comes to work to do a GOOD job; and not to screw up — we force ourselves to understand the person’s context better.

In addition to just assigning the goof up accountability; going deeper to understand the person’s context goes a long way in providing feedback to people, coach them on right behaviours, improve communication, explore right fitment of people to what they like to do, and develop trust and respect.

An example — long back, one of my team members in a traveling field role wasn’t effective and we rated him low. I followed this belief — he doesn’t intend to do a bad job, so why does it happen? and decided to have a 1–1.

I got to — “Hey, this rating is not what you are! What’s stopping you from doing better?” He acknowledged and shared with me that he had a kid with special needs which took him to doctor often. Worse, his wife worked in another town. He was not able to travel due to kid’s doctor appointments and therefore was not effective.

Once we understood this contextual root cause, we got around to talking about the right role for him, which allowed him sufficient time for his kid’s needs. We couldn’t find it within his location constraints. So we discussed around what kind of roles and companies he should be looking out for. He did find the right organization and role and left us.

Helping him thus, we developed a new respect for each other and our relationship continues to date. I respect him for what he is bravely battling with. And he respects me for my efforts in understanding him and helping him in finding the right role, whatever I could.

“Everyone WANTS to do a good job. No one comes to office to screw up”. This belief, practiced rigorously, forces us to understand people up close. It helps develop respect for our extra efforts to nail the ‘why’, beyond the quick ‘who’. It gives us deeper insights into the person, which helps create a long lasting bond and respect.

Delayed judgment

Image Courtesy : @rawpixel from Unsplash

As human beings, we are quick to jump to conclusions when we meet people “not like us”. Behind this distrust is our age-old survival instinct — which raises our antennas, as soon as it finds “(s)he is not like I or my clan”

Delayed judgement is a behaviour where we hold back our instinct to judge someone based on visible cues like looks, dressing, speech, tone, gestures, social courtesies, regional stereotypes, or food preferences…

Hold back your judgment before understanding more wholesomely — country, culture, beliefs, life experiences, achievements, disappointments ….. It has helped me coach diverse teams to be more aware of visible differences leading to judgmental behaviors. Such acknowledgment leads to greater collaboration and teamwork.

This helped me in my current role where my team has members from 8 nations, handling IT operations in 4 continents. What would normally be the fear, distrust, or judgment triggered by “not like us” easily leapfrogged to the excitement of learning about so many nations, cultures, geographies, family systems, languages, foods, social behaviors. We have great mutual empathy, better relationships, and great global collaboration amongst my team.

Do not judge anyone from whats apparent. Understand them better. Go below the surface of the iceberg that each one of us are.

Never forget your first day after retirement

Image Courtesy : @huyphan2602 from Unsplash

We have all seen powerful people walk into oblivion, one after the other, as they retire. They were powerful, they wielded the perks of their power, and used their organizations and resources for their success. Anyone who disagreed dropped by the wayside.

Well, all of that power and its by products, including people’s sweet behaviours went away with their retirement. The "day after" their retirement.

Everyday, if we visualize ourselves one day after our retirement, we force ourselves to think-

“Do we grow in our career to wield power and drive other people to achieve our objectives alone”, or,

“Do we grow in our career to help others grow too; develop meaningful, mutually rewarding relationships and meet everyone’s growth expectations”.

This principle, therefore, provides the philosophical underpinning of the “why” of empathy. Why should we understand others? Why should we feel for others? Why should we care?

Your ability to understand people and connect with them will make them work for you with effectiveness, commitment, trust; and happiness. You will learn from their life experiences and contexts; you will help them grow, and you will enrich each other.

The constant reminder of retirement should be humbling enough for us to realize that pursuit of power is transient, the meaning of our own growth comes out of our ability to contribute to others’ growth alongside our own; thereby creating long term relationships that endure beyond work years.

This visualisation helps us remain grounded, humble and respectful; despite the heights we achieve in our careers. This is probably the most important reason why we should develop empathy.

Summary

no one comes to work to screw up;

delay your judgment of people “not like us”;

never forget your first day after retirement.

Get ready to enjoy holding the doors for people around you — the least we can do.

Let me know what you think by commenting on this post. If you liked it, please do share within your social network.

You can connect with me on

Twitter — @jeyceebee

Linkedin — https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/jagdishbelwal

This blog was first posted on Medium @3-Feb-2019 and can be found on -