It’s Time to Bring Empathy Out of The Closet As A Professional Skill
I recently completed the first leg of executive-coach training, as reviewed in my last post. My aim was to develop new leadership skills before diving into my next business venture. As it turns out, the skill I needed to improve the most was empathy — or more precisely, my attitude towards empathy.
Here’s what happened: The instructors, sniffing out a weak spot, told me to practice being extra “warm & gooey” for the entire second day of the course. I winced at first. Then I stepped up my level of warmth and empathy as genuinely and as earnestly as I could. It was hard. By the end of the day, a funny thing had happened: My coaching sessions improved. My clients got better results. I bonded more with my classmates. I felt more connected.
The experience reminded me of the importance of empathy as a personal and professional skill. I mean, I’ve always understood this intellectually, but I guess I haven’t taken it seriously at a gut level. It’s not that I’m not capable of warmth and empathy, it’s just that I don’t often display it in a professional context.
So I’ve been asking myself:
Why is this?
Why do I keep empathy in the closet, even though I recognize its value?
With some reflection, I’ve started to confront some of my (barely conscious) biases against it. Here’s the ugly truth: There’s a part of me that’s always viewed empathy as a warm, fluffy poodle of a skill, something soft and not masculine.
Like many men, I think I was raised to show empathy and warmth selectively, in intimate personal relationships if at all. Although I grew up in an era of “Oprah,” maybe I’ve been conditioned to view empathy as a weakness, something inconsistent with ambition and results. Emotional reserve equals strength, some reptile part of my brain insists.
Am I alone in this?
It’s time for our professional culture, especially among men, to catch up with what we all know intellectually: That as a leader, a friend, a board member, or coach, empathy is a critically important skill. That empathy can be productive. That the vulnerabilities that come with it betray strength not weakness.
Here’s how Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership, puts it:
Empathetic people are superb at recognizing and meeting the needs of clients, customers, or subordinates. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They listen carefully, picking up on what people are truly concerned about, and respond on the mark.*
A number of studies have tied empathy to increased sales, improved morale, greater retention, and other business outcomes. At coach training, I saw firsthand how empathy could drive better results. In past business experiences, empathy helped me worked through tough people issues, the few times I brought it to surface. Lack of it sometimes created those people issues!
I’m not suggesting being “all empathy, all the time.” Sometimes you need to be a hard-ass, a closer, or a problem-solver.
But I firmly believe that you can’t be an effective leader, coach, or team member without having empathy in your toolkit. So why, then, does it still carry a whiff of soft and weak as a professional skill? It doesn’t make sense.
It’s time to reframe our perception of empathy and revalue it in our culture. It’s time, in short, to bring empathy out of the closet. This is easier said than done, but I’ll be giving it a shot.
- For more on empathy as a leadership skill, check out Daniel Goleman’s HBR article, “What Makes A Leader.”
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