How Empathy Makes Better Managers

Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another as defined by Meriam Webster Dictionary. On the surface, empathy may not seem relevant to most industries, where action and behaviour are paramount. But this mostly untapped management resource may be one of the keys to a more effective management because of its ability to connect managers with their team and managers with their external stakeholders. Internally, empathy is empowering. Externally, empathy facilitates the delivery of meaningful results. As managers, it will become evident that as we feel deeply will be like a “accidently striking oil”.

By Charlotte Canales Chung | Chartered Managers Canada

One of the managers’ important goals is to link the team’s goal and the team member’s goal. To inspire action and sustainable motivation, a manager must enable the team members to “see” the team’s vision. In essence, the manager is the compass directing the team’s movement towards the intended destination. Inherent in the manager’s task is the formation of the staff to a level of understanding about the stakes of the goal and the estimated cost of achieving the goal. Here is the niche empathy plays in management.

Empathy allows the manager to understand the staff enough to “translate” the team’s vision in a way that is understandable to the staff. At the same time, the manager understands the staff on a deeper level by getting to know the staff and how the staff feels and thinks about the team’s goal. Believing the staff’s potential and possible unique contributions, the manager explores the capabilities of the staff to “fit” the staff into the team. This is an ongoing process as the manager shapes the whole team composed of connected team members.

Outside the team, the manager’s goal is to understand the requirements of the stakeholders who have broader goals. The manager’s understanding of the external stakeholders’ feelings and thoughts about the team’s and broader goals allows the manager to deliver an above and beyond result because of the creative aspect of understanding the feelings of the external stakeholders. Here is the niche empathy plays in management in terms of delivering meaningful results.

Empathy allows the manager to understand the external stakeholders’ needs and desires and to make a deeper link between the team’s goals and broader goals. This deeper understanding enables the manager to craft the team’s goal in a way that serves the broader goals. More importantly, it enables the manager to communicate the broader impact of the team’s actions with the team. Empathy facilitates this depth of cohesiveness both at the level of the teams and the teams’ broader organization.

The use of empathy believes that individuals desire meaningful and satisfying work. People at any level of the organization have feelings about their work and their organizations. With this understanding, managers have the task of facilitating connections at the level of “feelings”. When achieved successfully, managers provide personal cohesion when the staff’s thoughts, feelings and work align towards a common goal.

The manager’s skill of empathy can be learned and harnessed by listening to one’s thoughts, feelings and its alignment with one’s work. Curiosity is another tool that a manager can use to explore oneself, one’s staff, one’s team and one’s organization. Fundamentally, a manager’s role is the formation of one’s people including oneself. The management of the team is to create a unique team that never existed before; a team composed of individuals individually empowered to deliver results that serves the broader goals of the organization. Empowering the staff is understanding that the thoughts and feelings of the staff are equally important, not only to address wellbeing, but that because they provide valuable information about reality.

This reality is the culture of the team which is the real producer of results. One of the keys to this culture is the manager’s empathy, that is perception and understanding of what lies below the surface of behaviours and actions. The domain of “feelings” may be subjective, but with growing curiosity and a listening heart, a manager can grow in understanding oneself, one’s team and one’s organization. As managers, we would not be able to inspire our staff to bring their whole selves to work when we have not brought our whole selves. Growing in empathy is like “striking oil” and the work begins with us as we dig deeper.
 

About the Author:

Charlotte Canales Chung C.Mgr. is a Consulting Manager at Big 4 accounting firm. She has more than a decade of supervisory and managerial experience from multiple jurisdictions (Philippines, Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Canada). She trains, guides and coaches her team to their full potential. Outside of work, she is active in the non-profit sector and is completing her Ph.D. in Theology with Asia Graduate School of Theology AGST Alliance in Malaysia.