By Alex Shootman |
CEO at Workfront
Note: This post pulls
from Done Right,
a leadership book from Workfront CEO Alex Shootman.
You may be surprised by the answer if you ask
the world’s most senior executives what skill is most needed to survive and
thrive in today’s digitally connected workplace.
These executives are all chasing digital
opportunities and pushing for digital transformation — and they’re all
feeling the inertia of analogue systems and thinking slowing them down.
But the skill they prize most is empathy.
That’s what academics at the University of
Southern California found on a three-year, continent-hopping quest to tap the
wisdom of C-suites from Beijing and Shanghai, Rome and Paris, to New York and
Los Angeles. The dictionary may say that empathy is the vicarious
experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. But
practically, what leaders around the world all seemed to prize most was the
ability to look at the landscape from someone else’s perspective, whether a customer,
employee or company stakeholder. Can the leader actually understand the terrain
just as someone else might – particularly when that terrain looks tough to
navigate?
Sadly, the researchers also concluded that if
empathy is in high demand around the globe, it’s rare in supply.
Describing the team’s findings in Harvard Business Review, Professor Ernest
J. Wilson III, who was then the Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication at the
University of Southern California, noted that “though empathy is almost
universally seen as desirable … [it] is most lacking among middle managers and
senior executives: the very people who need it most because their actions
affect such large numbers of people.”
Likewise, separate research by the
consultancy group Korn Ferry has “repeatedly found that
executives with high empathy are among the most successful and
engaged.” So, if empathy is a vital attribute in a leader, how do you
cultivate it? And how does it play out in practice? If you are not born
empathetic, can you build the skill?
Start by changing how you listen
Tips on leadership communications tend to
focus on what to say, when, and how. But what a leader says is only one half of
the communication equation. The other half — and an often neglected half
— is how they listen. According to Brian Carroll, founder of Markempa and
author of the best-seller, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale,
most leaders make the mistake of “tuning in for 18 seconds” to what other
people are saying as they look for a shortcut to a decision. They never
really park their agenda.
Instead, Carroll advocates a change of
mindset: listen fully and be curious as a leader. Watch your team’s non-verbal
cues and micro-expressions. Read your people. “Stop listening with the intent
to reply, and start listening with the intent to understand,” Brian advises
‚ and he’s right. There’s a simple sequence you can follow that will
improve your own empathy — and set a pattern of empathetic listening in
the workplace for others to follow. Repeat aloud what you’ve heard to ensure
you’ve understood what’s been said. “So, you mean this …” is a useful empathy
skeleton key.
If you’ve misunderstood, you’ll be corrected.
If you’ve interpreted correctly, your willingness to double-check shows you’re
taking the point and person seriously. Either way, whoever was talking will
know you’re striving to take-in their point of view.
How empathetic listening pays back
More than 80 years ago, the American writer
and academic Dale Carnegie revealed a truth: “To be interesting, be
interested.” Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence
People, said famously that you’ll make more friends in two months by being
interested in other people than in two years of trying to get people interested
in you. Apply that to business and you’ll see how empathetic listening will
increase the chances that everyone will listen when you do need to provide your
point of view. In today’s full-tilt workplaces — where information flies
faster than at any point in history … and via multiple channels — leaders
can’t take it for granted that an email “from the CEO” will be opened and read
by everyone who needs to see it. If you want to positively influence workplace
behavior and performance — get stuff done right — you
need an attentive audience. The pay-off of listening to
understand is when you need to be heard they might be more inclined to
listen to you.
Quick test: are you listening enough to
influence behavior?
But wait, leadership is supposed
to influence. So how do I listen with the intent to influence?
There’s a simple 2x2 grid you can use as a roadmap.
On one axis, plot “advocacy.” On the
other, plot “inquiry.” If you rank high for
inquiry, but low for advocacy — you’re listening. If you rank high for
advocacy, but low for listening — you’re telling people what to do and
asserting how things should be. How about the top right quadrant where high
inquiry and high advocacy meet? That’s when you’re influencing and consulting
rather than telling people what to do. Great communicators and empathetic
leaders understand what’s required in the moment. They pick the right quadrant
to be in, based upon the needs of the team at the time. Sometimes, you just
need to listen; at others, you need to assert an opinion to make your view of
the world clear — particularly if the way forward seems shrouded by fog.
Sometimes you just need to keep your counsel, be watchful and observe.
Input is not a vote
The benefits of empathetic listening are
easily lost if your subsequent action as a leader pays little regard to what
you’ve taken the time and trouble to understand. That doesn’t mean you always
need to agree with what you’ve heard. One of the most important maxims I have
learned to convey is “input is not a vote.” If I genuinely receive your
input, appreciate it, and then explain to you why I cannot act on it, you
will still respect the honor in which I have treated your perspective.
So why do today’s global leaders prize empathy
so much? According to Professor Wilson and his USC team, the answer lies in a
demographic shift and the rise of the Millennial generation (born 1980 to
2000). The professor described them as a “confounding cohort” — that can
both think of ‘self’ and crave meaningful work and social
responsibility at the same time. Personally, I think that sounds like
humanity since the beginning of time. And yet Dr. Wilson's main
point resonates with me: “Leading and managing [Millennials] requires
understanding them individually — the kind of genuine understanding
provided not by broad-brush depictions but by empathy.”
What will you do next?
Here’s your first test. If your instinct after
reading this is to hit the keyboard and post a quick-fire reply, maybe you
ought to pause. Have you read to understand or read to reply? Same principle as
listening, just a different format — and one that you encounter every day
in messages by email, social and messenger channels.
Or maybe you have questions you’d like to ask?
Ask away. I’d be delighted to explain and
repay your interest with mine in return. And I’ll count to sixty before I
respond.
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