Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s – or group’s – perspectives and feelings and to respond appropriately.
Because leadership is underpinned by the ability to connect with and influence people, it’s unsurprising that the ability to relate to others empathetically is an important leadership skill.
By building that connection, empathy helps us to transform our relationships and enables change, innovation and creative thinking.
While empathy has been found to be a natural human reaction, that doesn’t mean that it’s straightforward: a truly compassionate empathetic response requires intention – and that can take practice.
Nursing scholar, Teresa Wiseman, has identified four attributes of empathy:
Taking on someone else’s perspective
Sharing or taking on the perspective of another person, while also recognising someone else’s perspective as truth (even if we don’t agree).
Being non-judgmental
When we judge another person’s situation, we discount their experience. That’s why perspective-taking requires us to be attuned to, and manage, our own thoughts, assumptions, and biases.
Recognising someone else’s emotion or understanding their feelings
That needs us to be in touch with our own feelings and be able to put them aside so that we can focus on the other person.
Communicating our understanding of a person’s feelings
It’s important not only to express our understanding of someone’s emotions or feelings but also to validate them. That shows that we accept, acknowledge and understand them.
That’s quite a list, so let’s unpick it a bit with five practical things we can do as we build our empathy practice:
It may sound counterintuitive for empathy practice to start with ourselves, but, as Wiseman suggests, the more self-aware we are about our own emotions, the more likely we are to be able to manage them – and also be attuned to the feelings of others.
This is important because empathy requires us to put aside our own views and values so that we can focus on the other person’s needs and craft a properly empathetic response.
It also means being aware of the biases and assumptions, conscious or not, that influence our thoughts and actions.
These assumptions and biases may offer us useful cognitive shortcuts, allowing us to make quick judgements and decisions. But they also come at a cost.
For example, we may give greater credibility to someone’s views if they’re similar to our own, or we may fall foul of stereotyping people with certain characteristics.
Unsurprisingly, neither will help us to be more empathetic.
Having genuine compassion for others starts with having compassion for ourselves. As leaders, we need to look after ourselves and cut ourselves some slack. Try to let go of obsessive self-criticism and cultivate self-talk that’s more positive.
For example, when something goes wrong, we need to adopt a growth mindset that helps us to see everything we do as a learning experience and not a fixed judgement on our abilities and performance.
If we’re overwhelmed or out of balance ourselves, we are much less likely to be able to be empathetic towards others.
If we’re going to develop a greater understand of the people around us, we need to be curious about them.
Asking questions – and showing interest in other people’s interests and experiences – is a sure-fire way to learn more about them and how and why they think in the ways they do.
We also need to observe. We can learn a lot by watching other people’s body language and non-verbal cues. Look out for facial expressions, hand motions, gestures and tone of voice.
Engaging in new experiences, and spending time with people from all walks of life, immerses us in other perspectives and opens us up to a wider range of thinking and experience. Being open to a range of perspectives gives us the ‘outsight’ we need to become more rounded, empathetic leaders.
When we have a wider frame of reference, it gives us a more nuanced insight into feelings or behaviours that might otherwise seem to us to be unreasonable. And, while we probably won’t be able to relate to every single experience of everyone we meet, we can always use our imaginations.
The ability to imagine what someone else is feeling is critical to empathy. We need to try to understand people, even when we don’t agree with them, imagining ourselves in the other person’s shoes. That’s the basis of Wiseman’s perspective taking.
To be empathetic we have to really hear what others are telling us.
That means listening to understand, resisting our natural impulses to jump in or judge and focussing instead on what’s being said from the other person’s perspective.
Listening to understand is about:
Committing our undivided attention to the conversation
Communicate this by cutting out any potential distractions and maintaining steady eye contact.
Letting the speaker speak
Give people the time they need to marshal their thoughts and get their points across. Resist the temptation to interrupt. Listen out for key words and phrases that may be repeated.
Paying attention to the “how” and well as the “what”
What is the other person’s body language and other forms of non-verbal communication telling us?
Summarising, sense-checking and reflecting
When the other person has finished speaking, summarise our understanding back to them (“Have I understood that correctly?”; “It seems to me that you’re saying you feel under-appreciated…”).
Asking insightful, relevant questions
Good questions can help to understand better how the other person is feeling – that curiosity again. But don’t be so direct that our questions might be perceived as argumentative or aggressive.
Suspending judgement and disbelief
This is not the time for rushing to judgement, disputing facts or trying to prove people wrong. Nor is it the time to focus on solutions. We need to be tuned into what the other person is feeling before we can help them empathetically.
Listening attentively, without interrupting or trying to provide a solution, opens us up mentally and emotionally to the other person.
If we are fully present when listening, we can better understand and really hear what people are saying to us.
If we listen to understand, we have a good chance of gaining a true understanding of how that person is feeling.
And once we feel those emotions – understand why others believe or feel what they believe or feel – we can acknowledge them and express empathy by voicing how we might feel in that same situation, and acting in ways that show we’ve taken on board another person or group’s perspective and feelings.
For example, using empathy bellies to encourage Ford engineers to experience how it feels to drive one their cars while pregnant has led to improvements in design that take on board the physical challenges of being an expectant mother.
When we respond in empathetic ways, we demonstrate to others that they feel understood and heard – Wiseman’s validation – leading to a greater sense of connection.
Empathetic responses are powerful because they show that we understand how the person is feeling. But they must, of course, be genuine.
Verbal examples might include:
“Thank you for sharing that; it sounds really tough.”
“You must be feeling so overwhelmed.”
“I can see how that would be really confusing.”
“It makes total sense you would feel frustrated by that.”
“I’ve felt like that too. I know how difficult it can be.”
Responding empathetically might require us to open up about how we feel ourselves, which can make us feel vulnerable.
But rather than seeing this vulnerability as a weakness, we should see it instead as a way of communicating that we’re human too, with our own weaknesses and fears, driving again that sense of connection.
There's no one right way to demonstrate our compassionate empathy. It will depend on the situation, the person involved and our context.
The key is to remember that it’s not about we want, but about the other person or group wants and needs. Our response – and any follow-up suggestions or actions – must benefit them.
Empathy is something that should not be reserved for crises, important as it is when times are tough.
Seeing the world from a variety of perspectives – and behaving accordingly - is a skill that can be deployed on a regular, day-to-day basis.
Empathy in action might be any one of the following:
Giving people our full attention in meetings.
Being interested in others’ lives and interests.
Offering (or taking on board) constructive feedback.
Finding out what a customer really needs – and taking that into account.
Giving a candidate for a job the chance to reschedule an interview at the last minute because of an emergency.
Noticing when colleagues are having a tough time at work or personally, and trying to accommodate how they are feeling.
Remember that just being aware of how someone else is thinking and feeling is not, on its own, enough. We need to follow that up with an empathetic response - in words, actions or both – if we are to show true compassionate empathy.
A Cheyenne Native American proverb advises: “Do not judge your neighbour until you walk two moons in his moccasins”. We’d be well advised to remember this as we build a skill that will help us to build the connection we need to become better leaders.
Outline Teresa Wiseman’s four attributes of empathy.
Describe three ways in which we can ‘listen to understand’.
Consider what could you do to practise and show empathy on a more regular basis. Reflect on Wiseman’s attributes and the five techniques outlined here and make a plan for boosting your own capabilities.