How to be an Empathetic Leader – 8 Powerful Methods

“The value that I really learned to appreciate deeply and which I talk about a great deal is empathy”

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

Empathy has become a key leadership skill for new-age business leaders. Top leaders are embracing empathy in their practices. 

Empathy adds many advantages to you as a leader. It helps you build a loyal workforce with increased collaboration and intrinsic motivation. It increases the overall productivity of your team.

A lot of top leaders are exploring methods to implement empathy in their organizations. We have seen the application of empathy in a lot of new-age companies and how it has benefited the business revenue and productivity.

Here, we will discuss how to implement empathy and how to be an empathetic leader. We will present 8 methods to practice empathy with your team or any other person. 

In this article, we are exploring a novel approach on how to be an empathetic leader. Instead of listing down generic points.

The first thing to know is that empathy is not a natural talent or behaviour. It is a skill set that anyone can learn and apply.

There is a process and methods that you can apply to learn empathy. But the first step is to believe that you can become an empathic leader.

8 Methods on How to be an Empathetic Leader

1 – Accept Differences 

Inherently, we expect everyone to think and act like us. But that’s not the case, and that’s the reason there is so much conflict and friction in our lives professionally as well as personally. 

There are so many instances where we are convinced with a particular thought. It seems like an obvious thing. However, some people don’t just get the same thought. We cannot comprehend the fact that how come the other person doesn’t get the same thought as hours. 

When we say every human being is different. It means they have a different belief system; they experience different feelings than us, their motivations and approach towards life are different. 

There is a need for Empathy because of this difference. It’s the process to understand the difference, tune our communication with the person based on that understanding. 

“Every change starts with acceptance”

Once we accept the fact that everyone will not see things the way we do, we learn to deal with them differently. We need to be okay with the fact that people may not agree with us and may act differently. 

2 – Understand Differences

Once you accept, people can think and act differently than you, next, you need to understand what the differences are.

These differences could exist in various areas. It could be as general as cultural difference, generation difference. Or it could be specific, as the difference in mindset, the perspective of life, and more.

Also, be self-aware of your set of values and behaviours so you know the areas where differences lie.

You need to study each team member or individual and understand their beliefs. Especially people with whom you have maximum disagreements.

Talk to them. Ask a lot of questions, especially areas where you see disagreements. Listen to their point of view. Understand their reasoning and logic behind their perspectives.

Know their personality traits and behaviour patterns. Understand the reason behind their behaviour and perspectives. Try to find their core values and mindset.

If you are heading a company, then set up corporate training for your leadership team on human psychology. Training programs like cross-cultural management could be helpful.

Practice – Make a list of 2-3 people. These should be the ones who disagree with your point of view. Try to understand how they differ from you.

3 – Don’t Judge or Be Aware of Judgement

When you understand each person, try not to judge them. As humans, we all judge others to some degree and it’s very challenging to remove our judgements. 

However, we need to make sure that our understanding of the user should not have any added layer of judgement from our side. 

Judgement is our perception of the person. To practice empathy, we don’t need to see the person from our context or perspective, but their perspective only. 

“Remove your perspective lens while understanding anyone”

Yes, it’s difficult to implement it completely. The other alternative is to be aware of what are the traits that result from your lens or judgement and what traits are facts about the person. 

By accounting for your judgement as to the actual understanding of the person, you won’t be able to practice empathy and could end up creating friction. It could end up in a biased understanding of the user and you would think that you are expressing empathy, but you will not be. 

Remember, all the data points of your understanding of the user should be validated by talking to them and observing them, without your inference into it. Whatever inferences you have about the person, keep it separate and be aware that’s your point of view only. 

4 – Create Personas in your mind

In marketing, we create a user persona to understand consumer behaviour and characteristics and to plan marketing communication or strategy based on that. 

The key reason to practise empathy is to manage our communications effectively with our team members. Similarly, as we plan marketing communication based on user persona, you can tune your communication with each team member based on their persona. 

Once you are aware of the differences and unique traits of your team members, you can create their user persona in your mind, we can call it a mental map persona. In this, you don’t need to get into details like characteristics, interests, triggers, or lifestyle. 

All you need to do is come up with 5 keywords that clearly define those differences. Create a mental thread of each individual and branch those 5 keywords to it. 

There is a mental thread for each individual in our mind, which includes our perceptions and memories of that person. You need to add those 5 keywords to that mental thread by just thinking of that person and associating those 5 keywords. 

This mental map will help you tune your communication whenever you will talk to the individual. 

Practice – Do this exercise for the shortlisted 2-3 people in the second point based on your study. 

5 – Add Visualisation Elements to your mindmap

Once you have created the mindmap, you need to take some steps to strengthen the memory cell of each mental thread so that it stores for a longer time and it’s easy to recall. 

As per research, visuals have been found to improve learning up by 400%. Visual memory has more memory span and recall value. To strengthen your mental thread for each person, it’s better to add visual associations. 

For those 5 keywords that we added to a mental thread, think of visual elements. Imagine the mental thread as a chain that starts with the image of the person and branched to 5 visual elements corresponding to those 5 associations with that person. 

This will strengthen your recall value on the key unique characteristics of each person and will make you better at practising empathy. 

Practice – Add the visual elements for the shortlisted 2-3 people.  

6 – Apply the Mindmap

Here is where it gets interesting. Once you have done all the above steps for a group of individuals and have created the visual mental thread for each one of them. Now, it’s time to use and apply that mental persona map. 

The following practice could be challenging in the beginning, but with a few conversations, you will get a hang of it and empathy will come naturally to you. 

For every person, you have a set of characteristics with their visual elements stored in your mind. Whenever you start a conversation with the person, activate that mental thread and in a moment visualize all the elements.

Now, In your conversation, be mindful of those characteristics and elements. Align your tone, speak based on that. 

If you are trying to convince someone, then pitch from their point of view or reasoning. Give reasons they can relate to and feel is important. 

If you are trying to understand someone’s point of view, then question the logic that they can understand getting an answer that clarifies your doubts. Sometimes, the issue is not the answer, but the question asked. 

“If you ask the right question to the right person in the right manner, then you will surely get the answer you have been looking for.”

As you follow these pointers, people will start seeing a certain level of empathy from you. As you keep repeating this, the process will become autonomous. With time, your empathy skills will improve. 

Practice – Next time, when you talk to one of the shortlisted people, try to apply your mental map persona.

7 – Determining the intention behind a message

Sometimes we get furious at something that someone said and later realise it was coming from a good intention. 

Sometimes we don’t value someone’s action or dialogue, and we simply ignore it without understanding the feeling behind the action. Thus, maybe hurting the person’s feelings. 

In our regular communication, whenever we get furious or ignore someone’s action or dialogue, we should first think about the intention behind it. If the person is coming from good intention, then the person deserves a respectful response. Here, while trying to understand the intention, we can apply our mental persona map of that individual. 

As everyone is different, not everyone will believe in the value of empathy, which is fine. Thus, they will not practice it. But you need to practice it from your side to make sure your communication is clear and you can deal with the person effectively. 

Remember, empathy is your way of doing things and not everyone’s. That’s why it is a skill set that is available, but not everyone will be interested in learning and applying. 

8 – Be Aware of Deep Emotions

All the points that we have gone through are mostly related to the conscious mind of people. 

However, our subconscious mind is far more complex and has layers of emotions and characteristics. The steps discussed above will help you practice empathy for your regular conversation. But then there could be times where emotions play a bigger role than the logic we mentioned above. 

To practice empathy in such scenarios, you will have to connect at a subconscious level with the individual.

For this, there is no direct or simplified approach. One thing that has worked for me in such scenarios is to use intuition. If while communicating all your psychic energy at that moment is directed towards that individual then your intuition will guide you. 

If you have any additional ideas or approach to practice empathy then do share with us in the comments below. If it fits into the article we will surely add to it.

Also, while practising if you learn something new then please share with us in the comments below, it will be helpful for other readers. 

POPULAR READ – WHY EMPATHY IS IMPORTANT IN LEADERSHIP

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