Some people think of empathy in leadership as a weakness. Some believe it to be a weakness even as a virtue. 

Empathy is a right-brain activity, which instigates people to think that it is a discipline associated with being touchy-feely. However, empathy is currency, and sadly too many people are absolutely broke.

“Empathy at its core is a very valued virtue and emotional intelligence currency.”

Empathy enables you to think about how people feel and helps you understand a problem by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Empathy is one of the best virtues to have as a leader of an organization or a group of people dedicated to achieving any cause.

There are several things that you can do every day, which will help you develop empathy as a leadership skill. 

Here are some of the ways in which you can develop empathy as a leader. Test these tips by practicing these principles in your daily life and watch your empathy grow exponentially.

Be a Good Listener

To be an empathetic leader you should not just truly listen to what others have to say, but also interpret and feel what is being said. You do this by paying attention to the tone and the emotions of the other person.

Being a good listener means that you are focused on listening, not on what you’re going to say when the person is done. You will gain more from listening to the other person emphatically rather than thinking about how you are going to respond.

“What most people are looking for aren’t answers with smart solutions to their problems, they are seeking to be understood, and validated first.”

Don’t Interrupt

Empathetic leaders know how easily a person’s quality of words might decrease if they are interrupted when speaking. A listener who is distracted comes off as impatient to the speaker.

When the listener hurries the speaker in order to move along with whatever they are trying to say, it leaves the speaker unable to recite their thoughts in an effective and an efficient manner.

Rushing to conclusions also has the same repercussions. Nobody wants a leader who rushes to conclusions without listening to the problem in the first place.

Interrupting people creates contention, when instead, as a leader practicing empathy, you want to create a safe space for expression and for validation.

“An empathetic leader listens with the intention to create a safe space for those approaching them.”

Be Present

When you’re talking to someone, you should never check the time, look around in the room, read an email, or respond to a message on your phone. It is that simple, and nowadays super difficult to practice.

When someone is speaking, you must be present with the person; not only physically, but also emotionally. Hence, you have to make sure that you don’t insult them by being genuinely distracted when they’re trying to talk.

One way to practice being a good listener is to ask yourself “what can I learn here that is of value to both of us”, the other is to be humble and remind yourself “everyone I speak with comes from the Universe to teach me something”. 

These two simple shift in context will help you to listen with intentionality, and thus increases your ability to be fully present.

“Being present as a leader, means listening without judgements.”

Don’t Judge

To practice more empathy as a leader, when people are speaking, not only do you have to listen to them proactively, but you also have to make sure that you don’t judge them while they are speaking.

When someone is speaking, you have to ensure that you leave your biases behind and be open to what the person might be feeling.

To be an empathetic leader and to develop empathy as a leadership skill, you have to ensure that you don’t judge the speaker and label them with agreement or disagreement.

Here is where you can go back to those two simple context shift ideas you just read about, allowing you to tap into your curiosity and humility.

Watch Your Body Language

As an empathetic leader within an organization, you have to understand the significance of body language in a conversation and ensure that you catch the cues the other person is sending out.

With that, you also have to mind your own body language when you deal with others. You have to remain open to listening to the other person speaking.

Practice makes perfect and if you spend time understanding how people feel when they are relaying their concerns, you will become better with time.

It’s about being open. This begins with your face. Your eyes need to be wide open and focused on the speaker. Smiling, and nodding signals you are positive and receptive.

Your body needs to be turned toward the person speaking rather than away. Your palms open and turned toward the speaker also. Don’t cross your legs, as it create a sense of being closed off.

When a leader lacks the quality of empathy, they make it hard and difficult for people to approach them with their problems. This also makes them feel that the leader is selfish and does not care about the interests of others.

This is not a feeling that you want to propagate. When you practice and develop empathy as a leadership skill, you do not come off as weak. With an empathetic leader, everyone feels comfortable and knows that their concerns will not go unheard.

“Practicing empathy as a leader is all about being open to receive from the other person while creating a safe and welcoming space to do so.”

Being open and welcoming is powerful, as it creates an environment of trust and transparency. A leader who practices empathy, creates a powerfully vulnerable environment where everyone can be heard, validated and thrive.

You can’t expect everyone to be receptive to you, but one of the most important traits of a leader is to be approachable. If you want to ensure that your reputation amongst your peers and the people you lead is stellar, you have to be an approachable person; someone that your teammates admire, not fear.

Approachability Is a Leadership Skill

Being approachable does not come easy to everyone. If you are one of those people that struggles with it, here are some of the ways you can become a very approachable and charismatic leader. Try these simple tips for three months, on how to become more approachable, I guarantee you will definitely see positive results in the way people approach you in the workplace.

Greet Everyone Personally

Even a simple “good morning” followed by the name of the person you are greeting; will help you enhance your approachability. This happens in small increments every single day.

When you get into the habit of greeting people day in and day out, you convey to those people that they matter to you. You also give them a feeling of freshness and maturity, giving them the support they need to get on with the day and be their most productive self.

Greeting people on a regular basis not only enhances your own reputation in front of your teammates but you enhance people’s productivity throughout the day.

“Just a couple of words (good morning) and a smile on a consistent basis, can make a big difference in helping you become more approachable.”

Show You Care

People are naturally drawn to other people who show them genuine care without malice. When you set aside some time during your week to check in with your team, you are, in a way, reminding them that they matter to you.

“Deliberately taking time out of your schedule to check up on people like a friend, increases your approachability.”

Demonstrating that you care about your teammates and peers gives them incentive to catch up on you too, establishing a friendly relationship between them and yourself.

You can also practice being a good listener when they are speaking, ask follow up questions to show that you are interested and reflect back to them what they just talked about.

“Small but consistent everyday acts of care for others go a long way to improving your approachability.”

Offer Help

Ask your teammates and peers “How May I Help You” from time to time. When you convey to the other person that you are willing to do something to make their work or their task easier, you are essentially aiding their situation.

You are also conveying subtly that you care about them and that your problem-solving skills are up for grabs. Next time, when the same coworker or teammate actually needs your help with a task or an assignment, they will not hesitate to knock on your door.

“You become a better and more approachable leader when you ask people if they need your help, and you offer it on a regular basis.”

Have a Sense of Humor

There are times in the office that you might have to be absolutely serious about something pressing or urgent. However, there are other times that require a certain degree of levity. In this case, you must ensure that you know the difference.

You must know the situations when you can crack a laugh and defuse the environment. If you see that your employees or teammates are becoming too serious and that this seriousness is affecting the quality of work they are doing, it is great to de-stress them by cracking a joke or two in good fun.

However, you have to ensure that the jokes you crack are workplace appropriate and that they do not offend anyone in the workplace. Do not use cutting humor at the expense of any one single person or community and do not be too self-deprecating. Being self-deprecating can work against you in the case of becoming more approachable.

“Nothing makes you more approachable than being a source of levity for people when it’s needed.”

It is only when you become approachable and friendly with the people you lead that can you expect to lead them efficiently and effectively.

Without the power of approachability, you only have half a shot to success as a leader. If you want to develop approachability as a skill for leadership in your organization or any other part of your life, just follow the simple suggestions that have been listed above and observe your approachability increase.

Big ideas are always simple. Little acts of care and kindness go a long way to increasing your approachability as a leader.

Everyone has dreams, aspirations and ambitions. Although these differ from person to person, there comes a time in every person’s life when we begin to expect for our aspirations to become reality.

Sometimes our aspirations are truly ours, and other times they are driven by the desire to be liked, even adored by our friends and family.

What happens when you get where you thought you wanted to be, only to discover you’re at the wrong place?

What happens when you have had to compromise what you stand for and the very essence of your being to do something in order to succeed, that you would not normally do?

When these situations arise, you have only two choices: Keep living a lie or be true to yourself and tap into your authenticity as a leader.

Is Authenticity a Leadership Skill?

There are several ways in which you can develop authenticity for yourself and those around you.

The main goal isn’t to act authentic; it is to be authentic. There is a difference. We are not talking about a skill you turn on and off at will to meet your needs.

“Authenticity is a way of life. It is a life skill that you switch on the moment you decide to always embrace truth.”

Here are multiple ways in which you might go about developing the life skill of authenticity:

Become Self-aware

This might sound easier than it is. Self-awareness is not something that you can just be. It is something that has to be cultivated through strict introspection and loads of practice.

It requires complete self-accountability for every aspect of your life. You cannot fully achieve self-awareness if you still blame others for the results in your life.

This is because part of the practice of self-awareness is asking yourself, when someone rubs you the wrong way and upsets you, “what I am supposed to learn about myself now that I’ve been triggered?”

Often, leaders fail to realize the potential that self-awareness can have on their confidence and their ability to make a long-lasting impact on the world. This ends up causing them to lack authenticity skills in general.

These leaders may not necessarily know the process by which they should become self-aware, but they do know that the resource investment that is required to become self-aware is definitely worth it.

Personal Values

When you, as a leader, understand yourself well, you open the door to truly understanding others. Reflecting and introspecting on your own weaknesses and strengths allows you to be more compassionate towards others.

Asking yourself some basic questions can help you raise your self-awareness and understand the terms by which you lead your life.

What do you stand for? What is it about you that represents who you are at your core?

Your personal values are the terms of your life. Think of them as your personal life term-sheet. Everything you do is an investment in your personal growth.

An investor would not give you money without a term sheet outlining the expectations for their investment. Similarly knowing your values will determine what you should expect from yourself.

“Your values determine the terms that dictate how you live your life and how you show up as a leader.”

This technique also encourages a leader in every field to drive their passions beyond their limits and achieve personal as well as organizational success.

Balance Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations

The values that a leader possesses helps them gain insight into the kind of motivations that drive them, both extrinsic and intrinsic.

The common way to measure the level of overall determination and motivation that a leader or an organization has, is to measure it extrinsically.

Extrinsic motivations are based on rewards like money, titles, recognition, and fame.

Intrinsic motivation is driven by internal rewards. The motivation arises from within the individual because it is naturally satisfying.

However, the balance between these external and internal motivations has to be maintained and stabilized by you as the leader.

The balance between these motivations, both extrinsic and intrinsic is one of the keys to ensuring authenticity as a leadership skill for yourself.

Develop Your Support Team

Leaders do not have the means to succeed on their own. If you plan to be a successful leader, there are multiple things that you cannot do without the support of your peers or mentors and coaches.

To be successful as an authentic leader, you have to ensure that you create a support team for yourself. This team will help you by providing you with valuable feedback and a balanced perspective in terms of things that you view with a bias.

The support group will also help you focus on the correction of certain traits that you might be blind to and make sure that your ego isn’t running your life.

Know Your Limits

True leadership is the product of perseverance. If you are a leader within your organization, you must make sure that you maintain consistency and balance in almost all sectors of your responsibilities.

Leaders should also have the ability to integrate different areas of their life and turn the skill of authenticity into a reality.

The biggest challenge in this regard for the leader is to maintain a strong and stable personal life, one that is personal, but not too personal.

“An authenticity focused leader accepts they are not going to do everything right and embraces humility as the best teacher.”

Discovering your authenticity as a leader will not only require a lot of practice and effort, but also a lot of courage on your part.

You have to reflect deeply on your experiences, own your personal story, understand yourself well, and be humble enough to grow.

If you have trouble accepting yourself for the way you are and with the values that you have, ensure that you develop a deep understanding for the people around you.

Valuing your team will bring you a lot of benefits as a leader and will mean the world for the people you are vulnerably asking to be part of your tribe.

Being an authenticity focused leader is about embracing relationships and being open to your own flaws while striving passionately to live your personal values.

For more information on how to be more authentically yourself by breaking free of the command-and-control norms check out the Radical Purpose movement by clicking here.

Creativity and the innovative problem-solving abilities of employees should be fostered from the inside. While manifesting ideas require a lot of structure and a high degree of adherence to deadlines, a truly innovative organization provides its employee enough room to make strides in areas that have yet to be explored.

Warmth enables the emergence of novel and new ideas in the workplace to become commonplace, making the entire process of working more productive and efficient.

More rigid organizations whose primary motive and long-term goal is to avoid as much risk as possible in their respective markets stifle employees by not tolerating any novel approaches. They tend to stick to the basics and the standard procedures of doing things (AKA best practices) preferring old school methods with the lowest risk.

Build A Positive Culture

To create a work culture that is both comfortable and challenging, where every member feels free enough to express new ideas and unique approaches to new problems, is challenging. 

The challenges are big, and you will need a lot of positive actions across the leadership and among employees. In the end of it all, however, research maintains that the main elements that you should maintain in an organization are the following:

● Warmth in the organization in its daily working

● A long-term future solution and vision that employees and the leadership can voluntarily get behind

● A greater tolerance for failures or ambiguity in goals and assigned tasks

As a member of the organization you belong to (does not matter whether you are a leader or an employee), you must be the one who takes up the responsibility to influence the organization’s culture in a positive way.

“Every person in the organization is equally responsible for enabling a positive culture.”

Warmth Promotes Innovative Thinking

The temperature of the workplace cannot be measured by scientific instruments. It can only be measured in terms of how supportive and approachable employees feel towards each other during the course of the work week.

The amiability of employees in their interactions with each other gives the feeling of whether the organization is cold or warm. A cold workplace is the one where employees are highly serious and competitive, even sometimes withdrawn from others around them.

Although cold organizations can be very productive, organized, formal and efficient, they are not places where creativity can bloom, and new ideas do not find their place for active implementation.

The warm temperature of an organization is where employees can foster collaborations and creativity without fear of rejection or ridicule.

“Fostering a warm temperature in the workplace comes with a lot of inherent advantages.”

These warm institutions often incorporate a lot of social interactions between employees. Employees might feel that the administration or their direct superiors or supervisors are on their side and want them to succeed in life and in the workplace.

“Warm organizations care about people’s success across every aspect of their lives, not just at work.”

Warm organizations also have a relationship factor to them as they are breeding grounds for professional work relationships that are often mutually beneficial. Conversation, play and energy are some of the main characteristics of such a warm organization. 

In a warm climate, employees and members of the leadership team feel free to discuss emotions, personal details and challenging ideas, along with unique solutions to problems without fear of judgement or rejection.

While a warm environment for a workplace is incredibly essential to foster innovation, it is also important to make sure that the work environment does not degrade to a completely informal space. Some professionalism is always going to be needed to maintain civility and order.

That being said, a warm environment is a breeding ground for innovative thinking and novel ideas. Most organizations do not foster this kind of creativity in their everyday workings. 

The warmth in the environment of any organization can be significantly improved by practicing the following on a regular basis:

● Reading up on how to make polite conversation with co-workers, listening skills and making sure that you apply them in your real life

● Allowing yourself to be emotionally expressive if needed

● Promotion of organizational warmth by designating communal spaces where employees can unwind, socialize and relax with their co workers

● Promotion of freedom to be yourself and deliver on the expected value on your own terms 

Co-Creation

A key to creating a warm culture is shifting from command-and-control hierarchy to shared authority, whereas the goal is co-creation. 

“Co-creation is rooted in a humans first mindset.”

Co-creation allows employees to experience the need to make an impact on their own terms and experience the fulfillment of being able to do so.

Co-creation allows for authentic and more intimate working relationships among employees. This helps to stimulate positive interactions among all employees, co-creating a more positive workplace.

“A positive and warm workplace enables new ideas to flourish and encourages collaboration, leading to a stronger unified company.”

For more information on how to expand on the principles of co-creation and co-ownership at work, check out the Radical Purpose movement by clicking here.

Employees who are disengaged cause losses to companies in the long run. The cumulative revenue impact across companies can add up to $500 billion every single year.

As a result of loss of efficiency, companies around the world are actively searching ways to create cultures that are less toxic, more productive and more efficient.

However, most company cultures often create a paradigm that encourages micromanagement activities with employees, which causes further disgruntled employees. 

In the long run, instead of having a positive impact on the work culture, it leads to negative and often degrading impact on people.

Company cultures focused on creating an environment of autonomy, greatly help employees become more engaged with the work they are doing and take it upon themselves to be accountable for it.

The more autonomy employees have, the more devoted towards work they become. With autonomy you also experience reduced relational barriers between people.

Studies show that more autonomous company structures translate into the best financial performance.

“When people have more choices to shape their working environment, they are happier, more committed, engaged in their jobs, more productive and most loyal to the organization.”

Ownership

Creating a culture of autonomy in the workplace gives employees the freedom to determine their own ways to make sure they reach company goals. This is done, however, with established boundaries. 

To implement this in your workplace, you will need a clear vision employees can get behind and mass alignment on core values. These components, if taken care of well, will help your people gain a sense of belonging and a sense of pride, which in turn helps them become more efficient and productive.

Employees want autonomy more than anything to be productive and efficient in the work that they do. However, secretly, they also want to be responsible and accountable for their actions. 

This might not make much sense now. However, when you start to realize that accountability gives you a reason to measure success, all the pieces fall into place automatically.

“Accountability from the top down is design for controls, while bottom-up ownership fosters self-accountability.”

While autonomy gives employees complete freedom to own their work and be completely proud of it, ownership holds them responsible for the results that the work has brought to the company and the goals that they are all trying to achieve.

There are two kinds of accountability: clear accountability and meaningful accountability. For coherence, there has to be an equal share of both kinds of accountability with employees.

While clear accountability entails the communication of expectations, this means that the employees know exactly what is expected of them.

Meaningful accountability has a specific plan in place to make sure success is achieved, but it’s mostly driven by a sense of ownership that can only be accomplished with autonomy.

Balancing Autonomy and Accountability

The goal is to make sure that everyone has the liberty to stay on track to achieve the intended success agreed upon.

The key to creating autonomy at work is to give lots of choices with clear expectations and mutually agreed goals and timelines.

Without mutual agreements among the people involved, you can end up with lack of coordination, irregularities and in severe cases, anarchy.

“A strong system to hold each other accountable, is essential for autonomy to flourish.”

This kind of accountability and autonomy balance in the workplace makes employees more efficient and productive at the same time. Not only do they have the freedom to work on their own terms and in their own ways, but they also make sure that the work is done with relation to the vision of the company and in support of the long-term goals that it is trying to pursue.

Balance is the key to producing a work culture that is not only efficient, but also creates results that are appreciated and work towards the company’s vision. 

Although putting such a thing into place might seem difficult at first, there are a lot of advantages that come when it is finally done right.

Allocating autonomy to employees creates a sense of implied responsibility. This sense of responsibility brings out the most creative side of people.

“More autonomy results in increased productivity due to the sense of ownership it creates.”

Companies who make an effort to create an autonomous work environment, are most likely to end up with more devoted and loyal employees who will be most concerned about the success of the business.

For more information on how to expand on the principles of more autonomy and ownership at work, check out the Radical Purpose movement by clicking here.

While several nations are celebrating their independence from foreign rule every year, the same cannot be said for the superimposition of various factors on people in workplaces.

Employees also deserve freedom and independence from the command-and-control structures that are still very pervasive in corporate culture today. Here are some of the questions that need to be addressed to maintain freedom in order to build more trust in corporate cultures.

● Does the workplace allow employees to process and share feedback that relate to performance across all levels of the organization?

● Does the workplace sufficiently allow employees to become confident in themselves and empowered?

● Does the workplace facilitate the articulation of varied opinions of employees amongst each other and with leadership?

Ensuring Freedom

For an employee, there are many ways (including the ones stated above) by which freedom can be ensured. Some of the ways mentioned above are to ensure a positive impact on the organization’s culture and the employee’s well-being. However, the others are to ensure that the elements of freedom relate to the individual freedom of the people and may or may not be relevant to the organization they work for.

Leaders need to realize that freedom is a powerful tool that should be ensured and emphasized in an organization. For example, employees need to be given the freedom to solve problems on their own, using thought patterns that belong to no one else but themselves.

In this way, workplaces can appreciate their way of bringing an innovative solution to the table and tackle issues in innovative ways. The more innovative ways that come to the table, the better future we can ensure.

“Diversity of thought in the workplace is extremely important to enhance trust among people.”

Freedom at work has become a business imperative with a multigenerational workforce. The importance that employees place on their freedom in the workplace is paramount and has become one of the first requirements as a way of ensuring their personal liberty.

Organizations have now started to realize this and have resolved that curtailing this innovative freedom is hardly the solution. Hence, the creation of a framework that identifies and recognizes freedom with its boundaries, limitations and restrictions is a challenging yet essential task.

Top organizations like Google and Facebook are known for the kind of freedom they impart to their employees. This autonomy helps their employees foster a sense of value and happiness in the work environment, making them feel important in the organization and comfortable with the role they play.

“It is very important to give employees the freedom at work, the freedom they deserve.”

This also means that although the provision of freedom is important, the guidance to the usage of freedom is also equally important. Companies need to play an important role in defining whether the freedom at work entails everything they think it does.

The behaviours that entail this freedom in the workplace need to be clearly and objectively defined so that all parties, the employees and leadership, benefit from them. This is also a sure-fire way of preventing freedom conflicts and keeping productivity at its peak.

“Freedom comes with responsibility and bilateral cooperation across the organization.”

Just like there is a freedom of expression in our country, freedom of expression should also be implemented in the workplace. However, just like restrictions are implemented on fundamental rights in order to protect from force and violence, the freedom to expression in the workplace should also be curtailed to an extent.

Employees should be taught to express what they feel but within the set of rules defined for this expression. Those rules need not be a top-down effort, rather they are bilaterally agreed upon by the team members involved with each other.

However, employees cannot exercise unrestrained freedom of speech with respect to the company’s financial and internal data or the details of clients that the company deals with.

Social media has made everyone less wary about the information, judgements and biases they possess. With the advent of such platforms, employees tend to be less wary with the kind of information they disseminate in public. This freedom can lead to challenges and might hinder progress in the long as well as the short run.

Freedom = Happiness

It is essential to understand that the demand for freedom in the workplace is not a trend that will fade away with time. It is an ongoing process of employee rights that needs to be fostered in a healthy and nurturing way.

The earliest American definition of freedom, stated frequently by the Founding Fathers, is about constraints on personal actions “if I don’t hurt anybody else, I should be free to pursue my own will.”

Understanding freedom is not a small matter. Several studies have shown that freedom causes happiness.

“Freedom and happiness are highly correlated.”

As people we have certain universal needs. We need to be treated as equals. We need opportunity for personal growth, and we want to lead a self-sufficient life. Each of these needs are not being met in command-and-control hierarchies.

The most important benefit of freeing an organization is that it gives people access to these basic yet most essential needs.

Psychologically, when people’s need are being met at the most fundamental level, there is an almost immediate bond of trust created and that trust combined with freedom is what makes some companies unstoppable.

For more information on how to expand on the principles of freedom at work, check out the Radical Purpose movement by clicking here.