Leadership Attributes and Why We Need Empathetic Leaders

Compassionate Leaders Produce Better Results

Leadership Attributes: What makes a Great Leader? Being Honest, Responsive, Likable, Enthusiastic, a great Motivator, bringing out the Best in your Team, Great Listening & Delegating Skills, Strategic Planning, Staying Focused & Getting Results, Adaptability, being able to give clear instructions, giving Credit and rewarding achievements, as well as helping your team reach it’s goals, always overdeliver, show gratitude and treat others the way you want to be treated, with care and respect.

The Case for Empathy and Compassion

More than ever, we need Empathetic and Compassionate Leaders. Contrary to some conventional beliefs, empathetic and compassionate leaders are strong and courageous; they promote trust and collaboration, promoting well-being in others; and at the same time, they produce positive results.

Leaders in business schools, organizations and in politics are taught to lead with their heads and not with their hearts. They are expected to be strategic, rational, tough, bottom-line business people who focus on results. Yet, recent research on successful leaders and the current turbulent economic and social times calls out for a different style of leader—one that exhibits kindness, compassion and empathy.

Toxic Leaders and Toxic Work Cultures

The toxic state of many workplaces is often as a result their leaders’ influence. The dissonance it creates is associated with toxic relationships and emotions such as anger, anxiety, and fear. There is an increasing prevalence of leaders who engage in trash-talking, or “smack-talking,” about their opponents or competitors and under the stress for results, revert back to an authoritarian, style of leadership.

Leaders can learn more by reading this book by Amaco:

"The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave - Recognizing the Subtle Signs Before It's Too Late".

Defining Sympathy, Compassion and Empathy

It might be useful here to make some distinctions among empathy, compassion and sympathy.

Sympathy means the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else's trouble, grief, misfortune.

Compassion can be defined as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering, with the focus on a desire for action.

Empathy is a much deeper feeling and can be defined as the feeling that you understand another person's feelings and emotions, because you know what it feels like.

What Empathy is Not

Empathy is not a weakness. To the contrary, empathetic leaders often spend a great deal of time hearing about the pain and suffering of constituents. To do so and remain positive and optimistic requires a great deal of fortitude. Empathy also is not caving into every concern or fear of those you serve. Leaders must maintain their resolve and cannot waffle on many decisions. Otherwise, the followers will lose confidence and be uncertain of the direction a leader will take. Empathy is the ability to recognize the emotions of others, so that we can understand and relate to them. It is built on openness to feelings of others, and the ability to read information from nonverbal channels.

Empathetic and Compassionate Leaders

The ability of a leader to be empathetic and compassionate, “to understand people’s motivators, hopes and difficulties and to create the right support mechanism to allow people to be as good as they can be,” had the greatest correlation with profitability and productivity. The practice of kindness, authenticity, humility and humor improves employee performance and retention. Empathy enhances our ability to receive and process information, find solutions and help us with negotiations. It strengthens bonds of trust, and it is the basis for our intrinsic sense of justice. In particular, empathy with the negative, that is, with the emotions behind someone’s unleasant or destructive actions, can provide clues to behavior.

Empathic executives are better at managing relationships. They establish safe environments in which people can express hopes and fears. Because it is “contagious,” empathy contributes to better negotiation, collaboration, and conflict resolution. It plays an important role in effective team formation. When the expression of empathy is part of a company’s culture, its stress level will be lower. All of these advantages lead to a more committed workforce with a greater motivation to perform beyond expectations.

There is a gap between how empathetic leaders perceive themselves to be and how their message and action are perceived by employees. That gap can lead to decreased satisfaction and lowered engagement levels, not to mention employee turnover and low morale. Employees want their priorities, expectations and needs to be heard and understood by their leadership, and leaders are struggling with what to do and say that shows empathy to their employees. Employees are more likely to take and keep a job at an organization that they perceive to be empathetic. Consumers, too, are more eager to do business with an organization that they think is empathetic. Studies have shown:

• Only 24% of Americans believe that organizations are empathetic versus 60% of CEOs.
• 31% of employees believe profit is all that matters to their organization, and that their organization doesn’t care about employees.
• 1 in 3 employees would switch companies, for equal pay, if they were more empathetic.

Transformational leaders need empathy in order to show their followers that they care for their needs and achievement; authentic leaders also need to have empathy in order to be aware of others; and that empathy is also a key part of "Emotional Intelligence" that several researchers believe is critical to being an effective leader. Empathy is positively related to job performance. Managers who show more empathy toward direct reports are viewed as better performers in their job by their bosses. Leaders can develop and enhance their empathy skills through coaching, training, or developmental opportunities and initiatives.

Why Compassion Makes Good Business Sense for Leaders

In a compassionate work culture, leaders regularly demonstrate concern for people experiencing difficulties and act upon the concern to help and support them. Their efforts in engagement demonstrates a sincere commitment to values, ethics and genuine kindness.

What does it take to be an empathetic and compassionate leader?

Empathy and compassion and comes from a place deep within us, and yet it seems there are too few opportunities to express it in the workplace and even fewer opportunities for leaders to demonstrate kindness and compassion. Kind and compassionate leaders:

• Have greater levels of self-awareness;
• Are open-minded and open-hearted;
• Regulate their emotions, particularly in crisis or stressful situations;
• Intentional respond to highly charged situations and people, rather than impulsively reacting;
• Lead by example, rather than by direction;
• Remove or decrease judgment and criticism of others as a motivational strategy;
• Are mindful to the effect their words and actions have on others;
• Spend a greater amount of time being emotional observers of others, rather than most of the time being initiators;
• Are sensitive to others’ feeling and emotional states with their hearts, and not just spending most of the time in their heads in rational thought;
• Are empathetic and compassionate listeners, not just active listeners;
• Demonstrate vulnerability and a willingness to admit mistakes.

To all the CEO's, Executives and Small Business Owners: If you want your Business to be successful, keep your employees happy, by showing appreciation, recognize their achievements and create a more empathetic, positive work environment.Train Leaders to be more Empathetic by offering coaching classes, and inviting expert Speakers to talk about this subject. You can also suggest reading books like the "Emotional Intelligence 2.0 " by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. After all, Employees are a big reason your Business will excel to the next level, so keep them Happy, by learning to be more Empathetic.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Feel free to share your ideas!

Sincerely,

Sheila Kay McIntyre

Written by Sheila Kay McIntyre, CEO of 20 Businesses - SKM Global Enterprise