Demonstrating Empathy and Building Stronger Teams

What role does empathy play in communicating effectively as a leader? And when you put yourself in the shoes of other people, how do you adjust your communication accordingly to accommodate their style?

Yeah, empathy is key. We’ve heard a lot about it in the last couple of years, and I’m so happy to have that be at the forefront of communication styles these days. I would say, part of my success has been always putting myself in the shoes of somebody else, especially if I’m trying to drive a decision. Because you’re going to have to be able to persuade somebody why a certain policy, a certain direction is necessary.
And if you could put yourself in their shoes and see how that policy or that that direction for the company could affect them and their teams and discuss ways you’re going to mitigate that, or perhaps maybe tell them how it could actually be better, I think there’s going to be much better success in terms of influencing them to go down a path that you’re trying to persuade them.

Yeah, that makes sense. What about collaboration? How do you foster collaboration on your team, especially in today’s increasingly virtual and distributed work environments where people really are spread all over the place?

Collaboration is tough, especially in light of pending deadlines. I always feel like collaboration is a wonderful way to get buy-in to ensure people are being heard, to ensure that as decisions are being made that people are truly going to help you implement those decisions. So, that collaboration time is really, really important for the buy-in.
Having said that, we all work in a world of deadlines and there’s not all the time in the world to get everybody to collaborate. I know that in the product development world, there are deadlines to launch products and you’ve got key customers waiting for those products or you want to be the first to market. So, collaboration would probably be the first to be sacrificed.
I would just say that again, using good judgment, balancing out deadlines against collaboration, engaging key stakeholders, knowing who those key stakeholders are, because you’re just not going to be able to get to everybody you want to get to, to ensure the collaboration. So, understanding where the impact is going to be affected the most and making sure you get to those key stakeholders and communicate with them beforehand.