Opening the door to humanity in the workplace!

What a year it has been, for so many reasons – in light of 2020 I wanted to share three things that I’ve learnt throughout the year that I think others will find useful too.

Let's talk about Empathy. Empathy is more essential than ever before, but make sure you leave some fuel in your tank - protect your own energy levels and whatever you do, don’t forget to set boundaries. You need to be very clear on what’s ok and what’s not.

Empathy and compassion are two different things, empathy can be taught and is the skill we need to bring authentic compassion to life, and compassion is a belief that we’re deeply connected to each other, it’s the human factor (gosh I love that!)

So through research HF have identified six pairs of traits that are “in demand” for the modern leader, we’ve called this research Leadership ‘in the balance’ and you can discover more on the link below.

Leadership in the balance

For me, there are two traits in particular that really grabbed my attention and inspired me to explore more. Empathy and determination. The balance between these traits really got me thinking, what is empathy? How do you develop it? And why is it so important? 

Here's what I’ve discovered- there are 3 types of empathy...

Cognitive Empathy

This isn’t how most of us would like to think about empathy but cognitive empathy is essentially thought rather than feeling, much more logical and processed-focussed as opposed to feelings and emotions. It’s the power of being able to put yourself into someone else’s place, enabling you to see things from their perspective, stepping into their shoes so to speak. 

A top skill for those of us in consultancy or negotiation roles or for those that manage others, it is a great way to build long-lasting and trustworthy relationships. 

Emotional Empathy

Emotional empathy is when you can literally feel the other person’s emotions alongside them, almost like the emotion is contagious. Connecting with another human in this way can form a really strong bond and in the words of Brené Brown "Empathy is communicating that incredibly healing message of 'You're not alone.'"

Check out this short video from Daniel Goleman, a great overview of Cognitive vs. Emotional Empathy

Compassionate Empathy

Then there’s compassionate empathy which I think we’re all a lot more familiarly with. 

As a general rule, people who want or need your empathy don’t just need you to understand (cognitive empathy), and they certainly don’t need you just to feel their pain (emotional empathy). Instead, they need you to understand and sympathise with what they are going through, and crucially, either take or help them to take, action to resolve the problem, which is compassionate empathy.

So to summarise, our compassion can be the safe space for really courageous and authentic conversations (now that’s real vulnerability) you can tell the truth as you see it, with the other person’s best interest at the forefront of the conversation. The key is to set aside your judgments, opinions, and stories.

This is the heavy lifting part of a job as a leader, and remember leadership isn’t just a hierarchy position, but a mindset that gives anybody the ability to be an effective and empathic leader.

As you begin to reflect on your compassion and empathy, you’ll be able to see your own humanity in others. We are all learning and doing the best they can during these uncertain times and if we had something more to offer, I’m sure we would.

But before you go, just reflect and consider how being more compassionate will benefit you and those around you as we begin 2021.

I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I can’t wait to see what 2021 has installed for us.