Leadership principles, skills, and competencies are widely discussed nowadays, and the fundamentals of leadership have been among the most debated organisational topics over the last decade.
Define & differentiate
In short, leadership involves guidance and influence and leading a team or people towards a common goal. However, empathy in leadership is a relatively new concept – particularly from a historical perspective – and is now dealt with by many organisations as part of their training and development programmes. This is highly relevant, especially concerning policies and regulations on equality, equity, diversity and inclusion.
However, empathy is subject to several misconceptions and is often confused with sympathy and compassion. Before discussing empathy in leadership, it is thus essential to define and differentiate.
Sympathy is not fully understanding someone and feeling sorry for and/or pitying them. As a result, one can understand how this can be misinterpreted as condescending in a team or leadership context, potentially leading to resentment and toxicity rather than fostering unity and providing psychological safety. In comparison, compassion is more about showing concern for someone, which may also involve pity for their situation and challenges.
Empathy, conversely, is about understanding someone and why they feel the way they do. For a leader, this is an invaluable skill and something one must possess to successfully build healthy teams and organisations while fostering an energising and rewarding environment where people can thrive and perform. How can a leader expect to influence and guide others without the ability to understand someone?
Empathy in leadership is demonstrated though:
- Providing necessary support
- Asking questions and showing genuine interest
- Active listening and effective communication
- Being flexible and adaptable
- Showing understanding and acknowledgement
- Offering freedom
Leadership in history
Historically, empathy has not been seen as a component of leadership, largely due to misconceptions about the differences between leadership and management. As a result, leadership has often followed an authoritarian style with little consideration for individual needs or requirements. It has been a one-style-fits-all mentality driven by authority, obedience and discipline. This, again, has led to a lack of engagement, conflicts, poor communication, and decreased employee retention.
However, this is not always the case, as the authoritarian style works well for some organisations and people. On an individual level, it can often strengthen and develop resilience and self-discipline.
On the other hand, some organisations and leaders lean too heavily on empathy, leading to a decline in efficiency, effectiveness, direction, focus and performance. Excessive flexibility, understanding, and freedom can indeed allow the needs of a select few to jeopardize the productivity of the entire organisation. In such cases, the benefits are limited to individuals rather than the team, and an egocentric attitude of entitlement can become the primary focus.
This is where the leader may overidentify with others or become a pushover, for lack of a better word. Overidentifying takes place when a leader embraces others’ feelings to the point of experiencing stress or emotional strain. On the other hand, a “pushover” might be the result of fear, often influenced by what might be described as “woke” culture. There is also the danger of empathy for a certain person or group being perceived as favouritism.
Gen Z controversy
Consequently, a conflict occurs between an authoritarian leadership style and leaders becoming pushovers due to the gap and misconceptions between the two extremes. Therefore, one could argue that both perspectives —those of Gen Z and past generations— are valid in the current debate about what is right or what is wrong.
However, finding some sort of common ground is essential to ensure proper knowledge transfer, learning and training. Both sides and all generations have invaluable lessons to offer to each other, and by working together through mutual understanding and acknowledgement, organisations will thrive. Remember, it is about mutual understanding!
By adopting an empathetic leadership style and embedding it into their organisational culture, leaders will enhance employee retention, communication, engagement, well-being and satisfaction. It will also strengthen relationships within the organisation, while improving external relations and supporting equality, equity, diversity and inclusion.
This is what success looks like moving forward – with mutual understanding through empathetic, strategic leadership.
Source: Abramson, A. (2021). Cultivating empathy. 52(8), 44.