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Dear Reader,
'Leading with Emotional Intelligence E-Zine Issue No. 32' coincides with the 3rd birthday of this series of articles.
In February 2006, Sebastien Henry started writing articles on Emotional Intelligence for Leaders and he has kept up the good work until today - month by month with very few exceptions.
If you want to read all of them, feel free to visit http://www.progressu.com/resources/e-zines/e-zines.php
Now, Sebastien is working on his first book on Emotional Intelligence which is expected to be published later this year. It will be particularly practical and will assist the reader in understanding how to make best use of Emotional Intelligence in the Asian business environment.
Thanks for being among our readers for the past years and we will endeavor to continue providing you with valuable articles month by month going forward.
Let's keep progressing!
Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor
Developing Empathy - A Lost Cause?
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By Sebastien Henry, Executive Coach & Trainer Emotional Intelligence Expert for Progress-U Ltd.
 As a leader, have you ever had several people telling you that you should develop more empathy, that is, become better at understanding people’s emotions? Perhaps you even received this feedback from a 360-degree assessment, and this came as a shock to you. If so, you were probably left wondering how to develop empathy.
This question is of course at the heart of Emotional Intelligence, and there is no easy answer. A lot of research in the field of neuro-sciences suggests that our level of empathy is determined by the structure of our brain. For example, people who have lesions in certain areas of the brain lose any empathy. There is also growing evidence that autism, characterized by a severe lack of empathy, has a physiological origin as well.
Some people seem naturally good at empathizing, and some others absolutely hopeless. So is developing empathy a lost cause?
From my experience working with leaders, my own answer to this question is: developing empathy is not an easy ride, but some significant progress is possible through consistent effort and discipline.
And it all starts from an unexpected place: your beliefs about empathy. Many leaders I work with believe deep inside that developing empathy will somehow bring them more trouble. By becoming too attuned to their people’s feelings, they would end up being too “soft”, and lose the decisiveness in their leadership style This belief may not be very conscious, but it can be uncovered pretty rapidly through a conversation. Of course, with such a belief, any effort to develop empathy is doomed to failure. Why succeed in developing a trait that will bring more trouble?
So developing empathy starts with checking your own beliefs. If you have this belief that developing empathy will eventually impair your leadership, I encourage you to consider that being highly empathetic is fully compatible with being very enforcing and decisive. In other words, there is definitely a way to be empathetic and at the same time to make tough decisions. For some familiar with the Harrison Assessment, this combination is called “compassionate enforcing”.
I have dedicated a whole chapter about how to achieve this combination in my forthcoming book, and you will hear more about it in the coming months.
For now, let’s assume that you are convinced that developing empathy is going to serve you well as a leader. You are just wondering how to do it.
Basically, there are three simple ways.
The first one was not my favorite, but a book I read recently makes a good case for it, and sparked some new determination to reconsider it. In his very interesting book called a “A Whole New Mind”, author Daniel Pink suggests that we develop our empathy by becoming more skillful at reading emotions from the faces (and more generally bodies) of people we interact with. He refers to the work by Paul Ekman, author of “Emotions Revealed”. This book is a classic on deciphering emotions on someone’s face. If you like the book, there are also two interactive CD-ROM tutorials that are, according to Daniel Pink, fascinating. To learn more about Paul Ekman’s work, you can check www.paulekman.com.
The second way is to grow awareness about our own emotions by keeping an “emotions log”. This means making the effort to keep a daily record of emotions we experience, so that we can both uncover patterns and appreciate the immense variety of emotional nuances. How does that contribute to increase empathy? By becoming familiar with our own emotional landscape, we also become more sensitive to emotions in others. “If my emotional inner world is so rich, it should be the same in others” becomes the underlying thought, and our emotional radar gets more precise. Keeping an “emotions log” can be done in five minutes a day, and is definitely a good investment.
The third way is to make it a habit to be an explorer of emotions, that is, asking your people to share with you their emotions. The first and second ways were about guessing people’s emotions, but here we take a shortcut. After all, the best way to understand how people feel is to ask them! It is certainly not common in Asia, where emotions tend to be kept private and getting honest replies certainly requires a lot of trust, which you can develop by consistently caring for your people and developing your empathy for their benefit as well as yours. Then, making it a habit to genuinely “explore” their emotional landscape, you will be rewarded beyond your expectations. But don't be satisfied with answers like “I am fine” or “I am OK”. Be more curious. Remember that there is a fascinating emotional landscape, like a Japanese garden, in each of us. “Tell me more, I am truly interested in how you feel” is the key to developing empathy.
I hope that you will enjoy these three ways to developing your empathy. None of them takes a lot of time (at least not the last two). But they all require persistence and discipline.
Warmly,
Sebastien
Feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss the content of this article. I am passionate about this issue and always enjoy sharing views and ideas.
For more information related to Progress-U Leadership Training and Coaching, please click here.
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