By Margi Bush
What is Empathy?
- Empathy is the ability to support your direct reports without offering a solution.
- Empathy is making the choice to have a learning mindset and respect the perspective of your direct reports.
- Empathy is listening for the emotions and clarifying the emotion that is being felt by the direct report by asking questions.
Empathy requires these things:
- Ability to understand the content of what has been stated by your direct report
- Ability to dig deep and understand what is behind the content and understand its meaning
- Ability to reflect back what has been said, “I hear you…” without evaluation or judgment
If you read Mack’s post from yesterday, “Reflect on Shared Experiences” you will see that in the conversation Mack intentionally wrote the script in a way that lacked empathy.
Boss: “Hey Jim, I hate to do this but I need you to work late tonight.”
Jim:“Aww really Boss? Tonight, is my bowling night”
Boss: “I know. I’ll be missing my daughter’s soccer game tonight, but this deadline is really important. I’ll make it up to you on Friday. Will that work?”
Jim:“Yeah, whatever. I guess.”
Boss: Look Jim, I know this sucks but trust me, I had this pulled on me quite often when I was coming up and my Boss never seemed to care. But I do. And I’ll make it up to you.”
Demonstrating empathy would have gone like this:
Boss: “Hey Jim, I hate to do this, but I need you to work late tonight.”
Jim: “Aww really Boss? Tonight, is my bowling night”
Boss: “I hear you. I know bowling is something you look forward to. Hey, how is your team doing?” (Insert listening) Then…”Jim, this deadline is really important. The organization needs us to meet the deadline.”
Jim: “Yeah, whatever. I guess.”
Boss: “Thank you, Jim, I appreciate you.”
Our point is as you learn and practice the concepts on the Road to Rapport, they are interrelated and don’t work in isolation of the other concepts.
As the Boss, to inspire your direct reports and keeping them moving forward, you must take the time to understand their perspectives, their views on how things are going regarding what the organization is doing. It is not agreeing or disagreeing; the goal is to see things from their perspective. It will help you understand what is behind their behaviors, actions and feelings.
We wish you a week of Being a Great Boss.