Why does Microsoft continue to be the world’s largest developer of software by annual revenue? Is it because it has highly knowledgeable software engineers? No; all of its competitors do also. Is it because its marketing department is superb? No; that's the case with many of its competitors too. The secret of Microsoft’s continued success is the compassion of its CEO, Satya Nadella.
As Nadella told CBS Sunday Morning’s David Pogue, compassion is a crucial component of business. "We are in the business of basically meeting unmet, unarticulated needs of customers," Nadella said. "And there's no way you're going to be able to get that consistently right if you don't have that deep sense of empathy, or being able to see what others are seeing."
Empathy is crucial not only to personal success but also in business, says the Microsoft CEO.
"Most people think empathy is just something that you reserve for your life and your family and your friends, but the reality is that it's an existential priority of a business," Nadella told Bloomberg in 2017. "I think empathy is core to innovation and life's experience."
Research indicates empathy is a valuable management attribute. Yet only 40% of managers are "proficient or strong" at it.
Very important, according to one solid study on the topic. The research, from DDI, found that empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of another) is a "critical driver of overall performance" for management.
In the study, "listening and responding with empathy" was highly correlated with key management skills including coaching, engaging, and making sound decisions, as well as overall performance.
We recently found ourselves contemplating this question: If building empathy is a business priority, how do we cultivate empathy and understanding amongst nearly two thousand co-workers across seven global offices? How do we strengthen the empathy muscles of our employees?
Our answer was to host a live storytelling show called Humans of HubSpot.
Modeled after NPR’s The Moth, Humans of HubSpot featured eleven HubSpot employees from across our offices telling personal stories on the theme of “identity.”
How do you learn to be more empathetic? I have developed what I call the Empathy Self Audit. It is a way to assess your empathy and do some self-reflection in this area. Ask yourself the following:
Are you aware of how others are feeling?
Do you try to avoid hurting the feelings of others?
Do you respect the way others feel, or do you put them down or tease them?
Do you care about the feelings of others?
Does the display of strong emotions bother you, or do you understand and appreciate what they are experiencing?
.............
Learning the skill of empathy is in demand, and working with an executive coach can speed up the process. If you are not aware of your own emotional state, then your emotional self-expression will be weak as well. To begin this journey, I suggest taking an emotional intelligence assessment to discover your skill gaps. Your success as a leader is dependent on developing empathy and self-awareness.
4 ways to be more empathetic So, here’s what can you can do to be more empathetic toward your employees:
Check yourself first: Since you as a leader are role modeling empathetic behaviors, you need to understand your own empathy levels. What are you strong at? What are your own empathy deficits? “It’s really important that you have that self-awareness since that translates to the rest of the organization,” says Parmar...
Take time for face time:.. Find the commonality: .. Identify the trouble spots: ..
Belinda Parmar argues that boosting diversity means ditching diversity programmes.
Empathy is also an easier sell than diversity – it taps into our innate desire to want to play fairly and be treated fairly. This means that companies are far more open to the message, and willing to commit budgets to ensure programmes are sustainable.
Diversity’s weakness is that it emphasises otherness. It might champion the other, it might even acclaim, praise and extol the other, but the other always remains just that: other. And in this increasingly polarised society otherness has become an extremely fragile currency.
Emotional empathy vs rational compassion You have made an emotional connection with the case, rather than a rational choice. You’ve also just moved a number of other terminally-ill kids down the list, because they remain anonymous to you.
Such an experiment and its results are cited in the latest book from Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion closely examines the limitations and dangers of empathy when it comes to making moral choices.
Referencing numerous studies, experiments and anecdotes, the book suggests there are better ways that can increase our chances of making the right decision rather than choosing a course of action because it tugs at our heartstrings.
The techniques we provide in our forthcoming book, The Bullseye Principle, leverage the time-honored methodology used by professional actors to collaborate, cooperate and succeed. The ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of others whose circumstances are different from our own is something every actor masters as they develop their craft. Meryl Streep once said, “An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like.”
.....Communication often fails because we jump to the worst possible conclusion about the other person without considering their circumstances or point of view. As you engage with your coworkers, family members or social media contacts moving forward, challenge yourself to actively listen to their concerns, without getting defensive and without judgment. Don't interrupt; simply let them speak.
Then ask questions to gain a deeper understanding of their feelings. Once you have established mutuality, work together to create a path forward that will provide benefit to all parties. By opening up your communication and having empathy for those around you, you will not only build trust, you will also create stronger and more lasting relationships.
It’s All About Empathy Sinek says researching his latest book has even changed the way he conducts his own life and business. “The lesson I’m learning is that I’m useless by myself. My success hinges entirely on the people I work with—the people who enlist themselves to join me in my vision. And it’s my responsibility to see that they’re working at their best capacity.”
Empathy—the ability to recognize and share other people’s feelings—is the most important instrument in a leader’s toolbox, Sinek believes. It can be expressed in the simple words, “Is everything OK?”
It’s what effective leaders ask an employee, instead of commanding “Clean out your desk” when he or she starts slacking off. It’s what you ask a client when a once-harmonious relationship gets rocky. “I really believe in quiet confrontation,” Sinek says. “If you had a good working relationship with someone and it’s suddenly gone sour, I believe in saying something like, ‘When we started we were both so excited, and it’s become really difficult now. Are you OK? What’s changed?’ ”
Three key ways to elevate empathy Under Nadella’s leadership, we’re using empathy to unify teams and customers by focusing on three key areas:
Listening: We all want to be heard, which is why taking the time to truly listen to each other can be such a powerful force for good. It’s much easier for office workers to be effective in their roles if they know that their voices, opinions and ideas matter. To truly change the world through technology and innovation, we must all understand the needs of those around us.
Trusting: Communicating ideas freely doesn’t always come easy in the workplace. But you’ll be amazed what teams can accomplish when they no longer worry about who gets credit for the wins––or blame for the losses, especially in competitive environments where no one wants to be wrong. That type of collective accountability can help elevate a team’s performance.
Understanding: Without asking, it can be hard to tell what kind of day someone is having. Gaining insight into the reasons for a colleague’s actions or feelings can make the difference between a productive interaction or an unproductive one. Relating to each other more closely makes for better communication and allows us to overcome barriers in new ways.
Empathy might seem like an unnecessary skill for technology leaders, but being able to see things from another point of view can make you significantly more effective.
From an IT leader's perspective, at first blush, empathy might sound like a virtue deserving of one of my five-year-old daughter's favorite quips, borrowed from a recent movie: "A bunch of hippie-dippy baloney." However, empathy can make you a more effective leader, and broadly accelerate your career growth. Like many "soft skills," part of the reason empathy gets a bad rap is overly complicated interpretations of how one practices empathy. For our purposes, it's the simple ability to see the world from someone else's perspective.
In addition to confidence, a CEO must have empathy, Nadella said. This is a quality one doesn’t typically see on a list of top CEO character traits. But in Nadella’s view, empathy is, among other things, a key source of business innovation.
He said that although many regard it as a “soft skill,” not especially relevant to the “hard work of business,” it is a wellspring for innovation, since innovation comes from one’s ability to grasp customers’ unmet, unarticulated needs
There’s no denying, $600 billion in lost productivity is a big number. The way to fight this is with empathy. According to Shanahan, a culture that fosters empathyin the workplace is one of the best ways to create an engaged workforce that combats the loss of productivity and more.
The majority (85 percent) of employees agree that empathy is often undervalued by their employer.
Almost one-third of employees (30 percent) don’t feel the company they work for is empathetic, and about half (51 percent) feel that organizations and companies as a whole are not empathetic.
Just over one-third of employees (37 percent) believe their company doesn’t keep up when it comes to empathy. And specifically, women (45 percent) are more likely to feel this way than men.
Six out of 10 employees (60 percent) would be willing to take slightly less pay if their employer showed empathy, and 78 percent of employees would leave an employer for equal pay if the other company was empathetic.
Over three-fourths (77 percent) of employees would be willing to work longer hours for an empathetic employer.
A lack of empathy could cause more employee turnover as 72 percent of employees would consider leaving their current company if they displayed less empathy. Millennials (78 percent) are more likely than Boomers (66 percent) to consider this.
The very essence of being "inbound-y" is to be empathetic. To not only see things from the other person's perspective, but to approach things from that person's perspective. When I think of some of the mistakes I've made in hiring, the person wasn't very empathetic. They weren't selfless. Empathy was notably absent.
In this day and age, I think empathy is more important than ever. As we scale our company, what will differentiate us in the future is what has differentiated us in the past: We fundamentally care about our customers and each other...
So, in hopes of making empathy a core value, up-front-and-center, I proposed replacing ‘Effective’ with ‘Empathy’ in HEART. By sharing the idea on HubSpot’s internal Wiki and encouraging employees to share their feedback, HubSpotters confirmed that ‘Empathy’ was the right move. We also got some strong ideas for future revisions to the deck to make sure we don’t lose ‘effectiveness’ completely. (I think Flora on our Sales Engineering team put it best in her Wiki comment, “People are more likely to bring their authentic selves to work if they know their co-workers are accepting and empathetic. That in turn will build the environment where people can be the most effective!”)
Just like building muscle at the gym, it’s uncomfortable and a little painful. But the results are worth it.
So here at HubSpot, we’ve put in place a training regimen to help everyone on our teams flex their empathy muscles.
Here’s how.
START BY MEETING PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE
ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEES TO TELL PERSONAL STORIES It’s not easy to train one person to be more empathetic, and it’s even more difficult to do the same for 2,000 coworkers across seven global offices. As we contemplated empathy building at scale, we decided to host “Humans of HubSpot,” a live storytelling show focused on sharing personal anecdotes, which conventional office settings might not always leave room for.
LET YOUR TEAM WORK REMOTELY FOR A WEEK
ASK YOUR EMPLOYEES TO DO A LAP IN THEIR COLLEAGUES’ SHOES
How do you learn to be more empathetic? I have developed what I call the Empathy Self Audit. It is a way to assess your empathy and do some self-reflection in this area. Ask yourself the following:
Are you aware of how others are feeling?
Do you try to avoid hurting the feelings of others?
Do you respect the way others feel, or do you put them down or tease them?
Do you care about the feelings of others?
Does the display of strong emotions bother you, or do you understand and appreciate what they are experiencing?
.............
Learning the skill of empathy is in demand, and working with an executive coach can speed up the process. If you are not aware of your own emotional state, then your emotional self-expression will be weak as well. To begin this journey, I suggest taking an emotional intelligence assessment to discover your skill gaps. Your success as a leader is dependent on developing empathy and self-awareness.
Most of us are solving sales and marketing problems. But instead, we need focus on solving customer buying problems with empathy. Why?
Because buying is harder today than ever been. You need to think about what your customer is thinking/feeling. According to Brent Adamson, Principal Executive Advisor, Gartner, 'empathy' is the one word that matters most to sales success.
This is part two of my interview with Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. You can read part one here: New research: Boost organic growth from current customers Does empathy capture everything your book, The Challenger
“When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.” – Stephen Covey
Empathy allows us to help set others up for success. Everyone struggles, faces obstacles, and feels excluded on occasion. Everyday leaders create an environment of inclusion and support where every member of the team can succeed. Through their empathy, everyday leaders make an impact on the lives of those around them.
Liz Stincelli is passionate about recognizing and inspiring the leader in each of us.
The new fund, which he is tentatively calling Luv Ventures, will invest in "extraordinary companies that will literally revolutionize the world." He named synthetic biology, food and enterprise software as areas of interest.
But the main focus will be connecting with CEOs and helping them learn empathetic leadership.
But empathetic leadership isn't only better for society, it's better business."
Dalgaard insists that CEOs can't understand how to sell products if they don't understand how to speak the language of their customers.
Being able to read and interpret your own emotional reactions to people as you interact with them provides information you can't get anywhere else
Knowing how to read yourself and then what to do with you the information is a skill that takes some development and practice. But the investment is well worth the effort since your own responses to people will provide you with information about them that you can’t get anywhere else.
Take empathy as a prime example. As I've explained elsewhere empathy is absolutely critical to leadership—it’s one of five essential character traits and cognitive capacities a leader responsible for the fate of people and enterprises must have.
Empathy is a great way to climb the career ladder.
If you want to move up the career ladder, it is not enough to have great technical abilities or know how -- you need to have personal skills as well. Think about a manager who is great at technical details but cannot get along with his/her team, then how can this manager manage a project if her or she cannot even manage a team? For this reason, if you want to become a better manager or a just a better co-worker, you should work on improving empathy. Below are three simple ways of doing this.
Empathy might seem like an unnecessary skill for technology leaders, but being able to see things from another point of view can make you significantly more effective.
From an IT leader's perspective, at first blush, empathy might sound like a virtue deserving of one of my five-year-old daughter's favorite quips, borrowed from a recent movie: "A bunch of hippie-dippy baloney." However, empathy can make you a more effective leader, and broadly accelerate your career growth. Like many "soft skills," part of the reason empathy gets a bad rap is overly complicated interpretations of how one practices empathy. For our purposes, it's the simple ability to see the world from someone else's perspective.
In order to be a successful leader, it is important that you are aware of your own and others’ emotions.
A result of this emotional intelligence is the cultivation of a meaningful working relationship with those around you.
Empathy, self-awareness and authenticity are just some of the traits that make certain leaders stand out. '
1. Empathetic Empathy is the ability to understand how another person is feeling. Great leaders are able to look at issues from many different perspectives and to consider the effects from other points of view. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when viewing a problem can be invaluable to finding a solution and gaining consensus. With a bit of effort, there may even be a solution where everyone ends up happy.
How to practice: Make a concerted effort to visualize yourself in the other person’s position. What would the problem look like? What would your attitude be? How would it differ from yours? This helps validates and understand their perspective. Even if the answer to a problem is not the best outcome from any given viewpoint, acknowledging the positions and feelings of others can go a long way to creating acceptance and understanding.
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