WHAT DO YOUR PEOPLE WANT MOST FROM YOU AS THEIR LEADER?

Is it your time they want? Or do they want to catch your vision with greater clarity? Do they want you to call out bad behaviour from your colleagues? Or just to be more present and available?

I have written quite a bit here in the last little while about how important it is for the people you lead to experience and appreciate your empathy. Remembering that fundamentally, leadership takes place in a relationship – a relationship between the leader and their followers - and that is what your people want more than anything else from you as their leader – they want to sense that they have a relationship with you.

They will sense that if they feel known by you; understood by you; valued by you and supported by you, according to Jeff Haden, (in Want to Instantly Become a Better Leader? Use a Little?Social Jiu-Jitsu to Help Employees Feel Understood, Valued, and Supported, in Inc, 22 Feb 24). Haden offers these insights: Great leaders seek to understand, not to be understood; and, ?it’s good to be interesting, but it’s better to be interested, and then he adds, That’s especially true if you’re a leader.

Put simply, what your people need to feel from you is that you actually understand them and are interested in them, and moreover, that you actually quite like them. If they think you like them, they are far more likely to like you! In fact, Haden cites Mark Cuban, who asserts: One of the most underrated skills in business is being nice!

While you shouldn’t need bottom-line reasons to be more interested, engaged, and therefore likeable, Haden continues, there actually are plenty: Research shows likeable people are more likely to be more effective leaders, Haden affirms as well as more likely to get hired, or promoted. And most important of all, they are more likely to build and maintain good relationships with those whom they lead.?In short, by being interested, empathetic and engaged, you are more likely to make other people feel better about themselves.

According to Haden, a recent study in the?Journal of Experimental Psychology?found that feeling known by your leader is associated with better relationship satisfaction than the feeling of knowing; and feeling known by your leader is important because people seek associates, colleagues and partners who support them. We gravitate towards people who want to understand us. The people most attractive to us are those who express a desire to get to know us, Haden avers.

Which, he continues, requires a teeny bit of social jiu-jitsu.

Social Jiu-Jitsu and Leadership

For Haden, social jiu-jitsu – which he admits is a term he made up - is the ancient art of getting people to talk about themselves.

Practising SJJ is easy Haden attests: all you have to do is ask open-ended questions. How the person did something. Or why. Or what they liked about doing it, or what they learned from doing it, or what you should do if you find yourself in a similar situation. You get the point? The key is to listen, ask follow-up questions, and avoid the temptation to talk about yourself. This is not hard, Haden urges – indeed, given the slightest chance, most people are happy to talk about themselves, he suggests.

A study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences?determined that approximately 40 percent of everyday speech is spent telling other people what we think or feel, Haden points out; or in simple terms, talking about our subjective experiences — not just that you bought a new phone, but whether you like your new phone. How you feel about transferring data. How you feel about the cost. Whether you like the size and shape. And so on.

Indeed, he claims, we almost can’t?help?sharing our thoughts and feelings. The same study found that talking about ourselves, whether in person or on social media, triggers the same pleasure sensation in the brain as does money or food. Self-disclosure causes increased activity in brain regions associated with the sense of reward and satisfaction from money, food, and other things that are important in our lives.

He adds that the study found many people will turn down money to keep talking about themselves: participants were offered cash if they chose to answer questions about other people instead of about themselves and voluntarily gave up between 17 and 25 percent of what they could have made just so they could?keep?talking about themselves. To at least a certain degree, Haden emphasises, you literally can’t pay people to talk about someone else. They would rather talk about themselves.

Haden cautions that this situation does not arise because people are self-centred, because we’re wired to talk about ourselves. That’s how we’re made.

Now, he says, let’s apply that to leadership.

Flipping the Conversational Script

A study in the?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology?found that when their boss or knows them better, people feel less ‘objectified’ ?(think an employee rather than a person, or a number rather than a name), Haden begins, adding, if you’re my boss, I don’t need to know you, but I do want you to know me.

Haden points to other research which backs that up as well. According to the study he referred to from the Journal of Experimental Psychology, feeling is a precursor to feeling supported, and so long as a person’s appreciation and enjoyment of their relationship with their boss stems more from their perception that they are receiving good support rather than providing it, their belief that they are known by their boss will be more strongly associated with their satisfaction than their belief that they actually know their boss.

Or, Haden explains, in non-researcher-speak, I don’t need to hear about your weekend — but I would like you to ask about mine. I don’t need to know how your work is going — but I would like you to ask about mine. I don’t need to hear you vent about a problem — but I would like you to let me vent, and then work with me to help me to solve it.

Feeling known and feeling supported are foundational to any relationship, Haden reminds you, but if you’re a leader, those feelings don’t have to go both ways. In fact, Haden states, they shouldn’t go both ways. Your job isn’t to be known; your job is to know. Your job isn’t to be interesting; your job is to be interested.

By way of illustration, Haden refers to a Harvard study in the?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which concluded that we converse with others to learn what they know – their information, stories, preferences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Then, by asking questions that follow up on the other person’s responses, we elicit and project better listening and better understanding, which in turn lead to feelings in them of being validated and cared about. The apparent responsiveness of the questioner will lead to the other person liking them better. And this occurs because the other person senses that the person asking them these questions knows – or at least wishes authentically to know - them better, and understands them better, with the result that they feel valued and supported.

Imagine someone who listens more than they speak, Haden encourages. Someone who seeks to understand, rather than be understood; who validates, rather than justifies; and ?who shows, not through mere words but through actions, that they genuinely care about those whom they lead..

Does this sound like the way a good leader might behave?

You betcha! Haden concludes.

Go try it!

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