Empathy to be good leaders

There is a competition that we usually ignore when it comes to leadership development: empathy. This is the ability to understand the emotions and motives behind people, identifying what is important and being able to contribute something of benefit.

Being empathetic does not imply that we are always in agreement with others, but that we understand those emotions and be able to contrast them with our own, without distancing ourselves from reality. But how does this competition help the leader's success?

Much can be said about empathy and its great potential to help leadership in the challenges of everyday life. Let's look at several relevant aspects.

Empathy allows a more effective and transparent communication

An empathic leader can communicate in the most appropriate way with each person. The speech and the way of expressing ideas adapt quickly and effortlessly, which increases the possibility of success in each conversation that the leader has with the members of his team.

Who listens, putting himself in the other person's place, can capture the information faster. Likewise, the empathic leader has great ability to avoid hostility and reduce tension during more complicated cases.

Empathy inspires people

Effective leadership manages to inspire people to pursue more ambitious goals, work harder and achieve goals through effort. This sounds wonderful, but it's not easy to get. Probably, the difficulty of being an inspirational leader is due to the same lack of empathy.

When a good leader is empathetic, people feel good around him, listen carefully and have a genuine desire to learn from him or her as much as possible. Few executives have enough empathy to be interested in others, something that often leaves them in evidence.

Empathy strengthens relationships

The success of a company depends on the relationships between its workers. By knowing how to listen, understand and stimulate the emotions of the work team, the empathic leader can achieve a huge improvement in coexistence and cooperation.

It is necessary to consider that the talent of some people is diminished by the bad relations that they have with their companions. In these types of situations, the leader has a fundamental role as conciliator. Likewise, empathy guarantees the leader enriching relationships with others.

Empathy allows you to act more intelligently

Many executives rush into making decisions within their organizations without foreseeing how their work team might react. This is because they are unable, when they lack empathy, to properly understand what others feel and think.

When the team leader is empathetic, productivity shoots up. Decisions are always made considering the possible reactions of other workers. This in turn increases welfare, energy and performance. Keep in mind that many managers do not have the empathy between their fundamental pillars, earning the rejection of their own human resources.

Click to Executive Coaching to discover how coaching can help develop your empathic and other skills needed to be an even more successful leader.