No one sets out to make unfair leadership choices. But when you are facing difficult decisions it can feel like a no-win scenario. Someone is going to feel like they got the short end of the deal. But employing empathy in your leadership strategies can go a long way to making difficult decisions feel fair, even when the outcome isn’t what anyone would prefer.
Why Should Leaders Use Empathy in Leadership?
Empathy is a critical skill in modern leadership. One of the five facets of emotional intelligence, empathy is a leader’s ability to observe, understand, and connect with team members’ emotional experience or perspective. It’s the ability to step into someone else’s shoes or contemplate things from a different perspective. It can also include anticipating how news or decisions will affect employees’ emotions and sharing those feelings with them, helping them process what has happened.
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As a business leader, using empathy means taking the time to understand what your team members are experiencing and feeling. It is rejoicing with them after a big win and commiserating with them when you face struggles. If you commit to being an empathic leader, your team members will know you have their back, even when times are hard.
How Does Empathy Improve Leadership?
Empathy is so important to business leaders because it builds trust among your team members. Taking the time to build and maintain empathetic connections to your employees can:
- Improve interpersonal connections to and between team members
- Develop trust and vulnerability
- Facilitate a compassionate workplace culture
- Empower employee agency
- Support team members’ mental and emotional well-being
- Encourage commitment and accountability within the team
Developing empathy as a leadership skill can make you a stronger leader, improving your ability to connect with team members and encourage them forward. This leadership skill becomes especially important when your business is facing challenges and you are called on to make difficult decisions.
How Can Empathy Make Difficult Decisions Feel Fair?
The higher up the leadership structure you are, the more often you need to make difficult decisions for the future of your company. Often, these strategic decisions can affect the way things are done in the office, and by whom. Whether you are incorporating a new piece of technology or changing your team structure, these changes could negatively affect your team members, making their work harder.
Fairness starts with each person in the workplace dynamic feeling like their perspectives are understood and considered. Even though you can’t say yes to every request, as a leader, you can go a long way toward making decisions feel fair simply by taking time to connect with your team, listen to their concerns, and reflect on how difficult decisions make them feel. You can demonstrate compassion for the struggles they are facing. Empathy can help make those difficult decisions feel fair, even if your team members disagree or would have done something else.
For example, you can empathize with the impact the need for overtime will have on family commitments or tiredness even if deadlines demand people put in the work. You can also find small ways to accommodate those feelings, working together with your team to make the best of a bad situation. Maybe this looks like a potluck picnic during a mandatory weekend shift or celebratory coffee and donuts after the project is finally finished.
By taking the time to empathize with your employees and understand the impact difficult decisions have on their emotional wellbeing and practical working experience, you can mitigate the negative effects, and bring people along with you, helping them share your excitement for the next chapter instead of lamenting what they are losing.
Strategies for Empathy During Difficult Decision-Making
Depending on the size of your team, the work you are doing, and your workplace culture, empathy can take several different forms. Leaders can employ a number of strategies to employ empathy in difficult decision making without seeming soft.
Start By Showing Up
The first step to being an empathic leader in hard times is to show up physically, mentally, and emotionally for your team. If you are going to need them to put in extra time, you should be there too. If you are making a difficult call, do it in person, or at least in a virtual space where you are accessible to your team.
Empathy Must Be Genuine
Empathy is a skill that leaders get better at over time. But it isn’t something that can be faked. Saying the right words won’t build the connection you are looking for. You need to be honestly invested in your team’s emotional wellbeing. If your sympathy and compassion come off as forced, it could damage your employees’ trust in you and create new barriers when asking them to do difficult things.
Take the Emotional Temperature of the Conversation
Being empathetic doesn’t mean you need to be “always on.” Being an emotionally responsible leader also means taking time for self-assessment and emotional regulation. If you aren’t in a position to handle a difficult conversation – whether that is because you are slightly under the weather or just handling too many tasks – ask to delay it. If a conversation takes an unexpectedly emotional turn, consider putting it on pause so each person can process their emotions and regulate their behavior before continuing. As a leader, you should be measuring the emotional temperature of each conversation, so that you can facilitate and deescalate if things get too hard.
Ask Questions and Receive Feedback
Because empathy focuses on understanding others’ perspectives, it demands that you take the time to listen and learn from your employees. Rather than making assumptions about their response to a difficult decision, you should be asking questions about their experiences, challenges, and emotional state. As you start to implement changes, make yourself available for feedback and criticism, so that you can iterate toward a solution that respects everyone involved.
Recognize and Reflect Emotional Responses
In business, there is a tendency to shut down emotions as soon as they become disruptive. But this can work against your efforts to build an empathetic connection with your team members. Instead, acknowledge others’ feelings without jumping to shut them down or find a solution. Acknowledge that what you are saying is hard, and ask if they need a break to compose themselves. At the same time, be open to the possibility that you are wrong in your observations. Even if you miss the mark, recognizing and reflecting your team’s emotions will show that you care about those feelings, making them more likely to open up to you in the future.
Pair Empathy with Accountability
When you do need to take corrective action or make a decision that will negatively affect a team member, make sure to connect with them emotionally before delivering the bad news. If your team members feel supported by you, they will be more likely to rise to your high standards, rather than become resentful of your criticism. Pairing empathy with accountability encourages your team to commit to growth.
Celebrate Success and Appreciate Good Efforts
Empathy isn’t just for softening the blow of bad news. You should also be using it to build your team up when things are going well. Adopt a pattern of praise and appreciation. Tell your team when they are doing good work. Celebrate their wins and acknowledge the hard work they put in, even if the end result is less than perfection. By showing gratitude and appreciation, you demonstrate that you value the person, not just their performance, developing a stronger relationship with them and deepening their commitment to continuing the good work.
Developing the leadership skill of empathy can take time and practice. But by building it into your team’s working relationship, you can deepen the connections between team members, and motivate everyone toward greater growth and performance. Developing that deep level of trust will make it easier to communicate and empathize with your team members when it comes time to make difficult decisions, so that everyone feels like the outcome is fair.
David Stanislaw and Karen Sherwood are leadership and executive coaches with 70 years of combined experience. Together, they apply their psychodynamic training and extensive experience to help leaders, business owners, and employees develop skills to fight burnout and improve performance. Contact us to meet with Stanislaw Consulting today.
This post was written by a human without the use of AI. Stanislaw Consulting does not consent to the use of its online content to train large language models or other forms of artificial intelligence.
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