8 tips to listen well and build empathy with co-workers
There's one word that separates today's good leaders from great ones: Empathy. Claria Partners has talked to many of our clients about how empathy plays a major role for leaders. Here's a quick guide with eight practical steps to help you build, or regain, empathy in the workplace:
Get emotional. This one flies far from conventional business wisdom. But I have seen trust and relationships form faster when leaders share how they really feel. Show your heart.
Set connection goals for leadership. Require executives to meet with one different employee (across the entire company, not just their own team) every week. If you have five executives, that's 260 employees in one year.
Listen, listen, listen. People desire to be known. If you aren't asking them what they think or feel, you're shutting them down.
Assume positive intent. You hired your team members to do great things. Assume that they come to work each day to do just that.
Care personally. Have you had dinner at an employee's house with their family? Get to know team members outside of work.
Show individualized appreciation. Survey your company to find out how each individual prefers to receive appreciation. In the form of quality time? Words of affirmation? Discovering each individual's preference helps you to avoid a one-size-fits-all empathy approach.
Invest in a People team. I'm not saying scrap traditional HR processes, but it's pretty important to have one team solely focused on supporting your people and culture.
Drop the worst sentence in business. Finally, can we all agree to drop the whole "it's nothing personal, it's just business" saying? Business is always personal. Trying to remove the "personal" often sterilizes culture and pushes barriers toward empathy.
Adapted from Inc.com