Embracing empathy to lead with compassion

Welcome back to the Amplify Emotional Intelligence newsletter. Twice a month, I’ll share advice and inspiration to help you develop emotionally intelligent leaders and transform your company culture. Together, we can #amplifyei and create more belonging.

Embracing empathy to lead with compassion?

In my last newsletter, I discussed the importance of building relationships in the workplace . Today we’re digging deeper into two qualities that help us orient ourselves towards connection: empathy and compassion.?

We are in the midst of a connection crisis. According to BetterUp, 43% of people don’t feel connected at work, which may make them less likely to grow professionally, achieve their goals, and enjoy positive relationships. Now more than ever, leaders need to bring a human-centered focus to their leadership. Empathy and compassion are qualities that can help you foster meaningful connection in your organization, even with a mix of hybrid, in-person, and remote team members.?

Empathy alone is not enough

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are going through. It is the insight we gain when we see and feel what another person is experiencing from their perspective without the intention to fix, direct, or judge.?

Employees report that empathy boosts engagement, innovation, and inclusion. But empathy alone is static. It’s valuable, but it’s only one step in human-centered leadership.?

Compassion is empathy in action. You need this actionable part of the puzzle in order to be a great leader. Some of the most important leadership skills are listening, responding, and adapting to change. With compassion, you acknowledge another’s experience and look for ways to be supportive of their needs.

Learning to connect through empathy and compassion

If empathy is achieved through mindful listening, compassion is achieved through caring actions. This combination cultivates respectful recognition of the other person, leading to trust—the root of all healthy human connections.

Leaders should work to create a culture of empathy and compassion, where teammates feel seen, heard, and supported. It is a culture where people feel safe to offer suggestions and debate different ideas. Empathy and compassion boost collaboration by leveraging creative differences, and fuel the ability to navigate conflict through actionable feedback.?

One of the biggest challenges to learning and teaching empathy is the “like-me” bias. I’ve said before that having a brain means having biases. The like-me bias occurs when we treat a certain group of people favorably because they think, look, or act as we do.

The world is full of rich diversity. When we meet someone different from us, connection doesn’t always come naturally. Empathy and connection together teach us to find the commonalities between ourselves and another person, to feel for them, and to help them in ways that matter.

Neuroscientist Dr. David Engleman conducted a study where he showed how our brain’s response to another person’s pain was dependent on whether we felt connected to them. Subjects had a higher empathy response to those who shared the same religious beliefs as them.?

Empathy increases when you view someone as being in your in-group—whether that group is religion, race, profession, gender, or your favorite sports team. So in order to overcome this bias and practice empathy with everyone, we must learn to be more intentional about finding connections. That requires letting go of judgments and embracing curiosity.?

Leaders model intentional empathy through mindful listening , a way of hearing what another person is saying with full, centered attention. Mindfulness can help you dial up your empathy by making you more aware of your unconscious biases.? Be present and notice any judgments as they come up. Use your curiosity to examine your assumptions. When we are on the lookout for our judgments, they are less likely to drive our actions and decisions unknowingly.

Compassion, like empathy, can be cultivated.? It is acting in caring ways. It is other-focused. Intentional actions towards helping and supporting another person, however similar or dissimilar to you they may be, are acts of compassion. It may be sitting in silence with a grieving coworker or communicating a challenging truth to an underskilled direct report. Choosing to approach a person with curiosity and attention rather than judgment provides the connection necessary to truly be of service.

Empathy is caring in a feeling way. Compassion is acting in a caring way. When we leverage compassion alongside empathy, we can see beyond our biases and truly understand and support others, no matter how different they may seem.

As a board-certified leadership coach, keynote speaker, and facilitator, for over twenty years, Patrice B. Borders has combined her employment law and human capital practices to help organizations and individuals develop resonant leaders, collaborative teams, and inclusive workplace cultures. Continue the conversation at amplifyei.com and stay connected by following #amplifyei .