InPower Women Essentials: Empathy ?? Without Burnout ?? Part I

There is so much going on in the world. It’s hard to be “there” for yourself and everyone else, too. I find myself advising people a lot on how to be appropriately sensitive to others’ pain (especially their employees’) while still focusing on business goals and success. I thought that now, at the beginning of a new year, it’s an excellent time to reground ourselves in the essential skills of empathy and compassion. This is focused on how to give it so that it doesn’t deplete you, but remember you deserve to get it, too. ~ Dana Theus

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HOW TO HELP PEOPLE WITHOUT SUFFERING YOURSELF

?When I reflect on the things that have led me to burnout at my job over the course of my career, I wouldn’t ever have said “empathy” was the reason I burned out. However, when I’ve had to deploy empathy, I can think of times it’s led me to “burnout” in various ways, from losing empathy for a person who refused to help themselves to struggling the ability to focus on things that matter.

And I have no idea if I’m average here. I have many clients who list empathy–primarily for their employees–as part of the dynamic in their career/job burnout. They say they “care too much” for their people or that they have to “give too much of themselves to their staff” to counter the fact that the company doesn’t care about its people.

The fact is that caring for people and about people takes energy.

And it’s not always energy we have to give.

Should leaders really be “more empathetic?”

In the last twenty years, a lot has been written about how leaders need to be more empathetic. And I do believe that it’s essential for leaders to cultivate the ability to be empathetic when appropriate. However, I think some of this leadership advice is a bit of a backlash against the “culture of metrics” that tends to dominate most of the business school focus on producing results.

The push for empathy is too often an oversimplification of the need for leaders to add soft people skills to the hard skills of the business.

Empathy is great, but by itself, it can actually backfire. As the Power Takes below point out, empathy is a doorway to connecting with people. Still, in a business context, it’s important to do more than connect; it's important to use connection to help create action and move forward toward solutions.

Managing emotion isn’t always “actionable”?

If you’ve spent any time in your life being human, you will know that not every challenging emotion needs to be, or should be, “acted on.”

Emotions are tricky. They carry information about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. But emotional information can be used for many things, only some of which are worth acting on.

So many leaders get tripped up over how to use emotions–their own and others’--to take action and create solutions. It’s pretty common to listen with empathy to someone’s emotional challenges and offer a solution only to be told “you don’t get it” and that “they just needed to vent.” This is valid criticism because many challenging emotions don’t need a solution:

• at the moment
• from someone else.

What challenging emotions require is support for the person feeling the emotion to find a solution themselves that will help them move forward as quickly as possible.?

Leaders don’t fix people (or their emotions)

This is why emotions can be challenging for leaders, because leaders are paid to fix things, and people can’t be fixed. People can only be supported.

Back to empathy. Empathy is a great way to connect with someone else and help them trust you enough to let you support them. But the support they need is not for you to fix them, but to give them what they need to fix themselves.

But these things are not the result of empathy, they’re the result of compassion. Compassion begins with listening and validating that people are actually feeling what they’re feeling without judgment. Often, once they feel genuinely heard, they feel better and can begin to find solutions to their own challenges, and that’s when you can step in and begin to support (not fix) them.

Sometimes, that support is letting them do a little venting and being empathetic and then:

• Guiding them toward actions they can take (ask them open-ended questions and use active listening to guide them)
• Removing roadblocks they don’t have the power to change on their own
• Helping them identify the help they need to ask for
• Helping them get the help they ask for
• Referring them to resources and people who can help them

And compassion is actually less energy-intensive for the leader, and often more appreciated by the person you’re trying to help.

So the next time you feel empathy start to drain your energy, switch it up and learn to deploy compassion. You’ll help yourself and the other person a lot more when you do this.

What’s your experience with empathy and compassion?

Photo by Jon Tyson

COACHING QUESTIONS

Go deeper into this topic by setting your phone timer and spending at least ten minutes thinking/journaling on these questions:

• How do I use empathy in my career and worklife? Is it serving me?
• How am I using compassion? Is it serving me?
• How can I do both better?
• What will I commit to do in the next 24 hours to practice this?

Want to talk about it? Bring your thoughts on the above to our next InPower Women’s Mastermind, where we’ll discuss this and more.?

InPower Women Mastermind February 21st @ 12pm EASTERN - Empathy vs. Compassion - When should leaders use them? Join us to explore the best uses and the differences between empathy and compassion in the workplace. We’ll talk about how to support employees and colleagues suffering as well as how to get the kind of support you need from your colleagues. Learn More & Register

Have an idea for an upcoming Mastermind topic? Let me know!

DID YOU MISS US?

Miss out on a newsletter or just want to review past topics??Check out a listing of all our past newsletters.

InPowering Powerful Women,

Dana Theus

Executive Coach

InPower Coaching

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Look for part II of the InPower Essentials newsletter next week!