Empathetic leadership means having the ability to understand the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts.
Modern businesses are about people and relationships as well as sales and revenue. Empathetic leaders help employees and customers feel valued, which helps to create better relationships inside and outside of the business.
The following are some traits often seen in empathetic leaders and can be good inspiration for training needs to plan to meet within your existing leadership and management teams, for global business benefit:
- Taking time to understand things from other peoples’ point of view.
Empathetic leaders are skilled at reading non-verbal cues and assessing the emotional responses of others. Empathy can help managers to connect with their employees and understand their thoughts, feelings and emotions. In short, it can help managers to “read the room”. Empathic managers also tend to build better relationships with customers as they tend to take the time to understand the needs and wants of the customer. - High level of emotional intelligence.
Not only are these leaders good at recognising their team member’s emotions, but they can regulate and control their own feelings in a measured way that is appropriate for a particular situation. - Committing to their decision while also being flexible in their approach.
Empathetic leaders can quickly assess the needs and emotions of their team and adapt to the situation. This is especially helpful in a crisis or in a high-pressure situation. - Good at listening to and respecting the opinions or inputs of others while keeping things on track and in line with the overall business objective.
This can help to create an innovative and creative culture where people are free to make suggestions that managers will consider in line with the overall strategy. - Encourage collaboration.
Empathetic leaders build better businesses. Their leadership style builds good connections and strong relationships with others. This creates close knit teams who tend to perform better which, in turn, drives the overall success of the business.
