How to Coach a Smart but Clueless Leader

You’ve probably come across people who are smart, but somehow clueless. They are great at picking up information from reports and data, but they just can’t take in what’s happening with the people around them. Not sure what I mean? Here are some examples.

Clueless Comes in Different Flavors

Sandy is known for sending out memos and developing plans that make no sense to the people who receive them. She can't grasp how the staff members see their world. Worse, she can’t connect to the thinking of the people who need to execute her directives.

Cliff is often surprised that his staff are upset by his requests. He can’t read the emotional reality of his team (or anyone), so can’t imagine how his requests will make them feel.

Robin’s staff call him “The Ice King” when they complain about his lack of caring around their struggles. Facing Robin’s coldness, they feel defensive and afraid to take risks.

Three Kinds of Empathy

What’s going on with Sandy, Cliff, and Robin? Each is operating without empathy, is unable to identify with or vicariously experience what someone is thinking or feeling. And, each of them lacks one of three specific kinds of empathy.

• Cognitive empathy allows you to sense how someone else thinks about the world. This helps you say things so they can be heard. Without cognitive empathy, Sandy was missing information that could inform how to best present ideas.
• Emotional empathy means you resonate with how another person feels. Cliff’s inability to read the emotions of his staff left him open to continually distressing the people around him.
• Empathic concern is an ability to sense what someone else needs and express how you care about those needs. Robin’s lack of caring for his team led to a decrease in their motivation.

Empathy is crucial to all forms of relationships, especially in the workplace. Effective leaders need to exercise all three forms of empathy on a daily basis. So, where does empathy come from?

The Brain Wiring Behind Empathy

Just like all of our thinking and feeling, empathy resides in interactions between different parts of our brain. Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago has shown there are three distinct wiring patterns in the brain for different kinds of empathy.

As I mention in my book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights, Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute studies emotional empathy. Singer has found that something called the insula is key to emotional empathy. The insula, a neural area important for emotional intelligence, senses signals from our whole body. When we empathize with someone, our neurons actually mimic within us that persons’ state. The anterior area of the insula reads that pattern and tells us what state that is.

Moving Beyond Clueless

Tania Singer and other researchers haven’t just studied the neuroscience of how empathy works, they’ve explored ways to rewire the parts of the brain responsible for empathy. They’ve found that empathy can be learned. Contrary to what many people believe, the thinking and feeling parts of the brain can change with repeated experiences, practice, and learning.

Singer, for example, has designed training programs for the empathy circuitry that produce positive changes. She and her colleagues describe Singer training programs in an ebook available as a free download from their website.

How can Robin build empathic concern? My colleague, Mirabai Bush, co-founder and former Executive Director of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, explained a powerful exercise she developed called Just Like Me.

“When I consult with organizations dealing with difficult leadership transitions or mergers, I introduce a practice called Just Like Me. Here’s how it works: you look at another person and remember, call to mind, all the ways in which they are ‘just like me.’ Participants silently repeat phrases like, ‘You are another human being, with thoughts and emotions, just like me, and you have been through very difficult things in your life, and you want to be a good person, just like me.’ At the end, you send goodwill and kindness to the other person.”

Brainpower: Mindsight and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership, provides leaders, executive coaches, management consultants, and HR professionals with a science basis for their leadership development work. Register for the live four-part webcast series throughout February here. 

Additional Reading

Understand the Brain Basis for Leadership Development                       

Why Brain Science Matters in Leadership Development

5 Ways to Develop Emotionally Intelligent Behaviors

How to Overcome Communication Breakdowns

Want a Loyal Team? Choose Kindness Over Toughness