You’ve probably heard all of the hype in the last few years about emotional intelligence and how important it is for leaders to be effective. But if you are a more logical or non-emotional personality, you may be wondering if it’s possible, or even desirable, to become more emotional in your leadership. If you’re one of those types who leads through the strength of rational thought and careful consideration, you may have concluded that empathy and emotional intelligence is too soft of a skill for you, or maybe just out of your reach.
Empathy is a powerful tool for connecting with and motivating the people you work with. So, before you write it off, consider how you, as a logical leader, can leverage empathy to become a more effective leader. Here are three practical ways you can become more empathetic without being emotional.
Pause Your Conclusions
The first is to push pause on your conclusions. Empathy does not require you to enter some emotional twilight zone and abandon your connection to facts and data. You are not giving up facts, you are just pausing the process of drawing conclusions from those facts.
Being empathetic to another person’s experience and point of view means that you become willing to consider a different set of conclusions from the same set of facts. If you pause the process of drawing conclusions, you create space for the other person to sense that you are open to seeing it from their perspective.
The opposite of empathy is being locked into a single perspective - your own - and being unable to see the situation from anyone else’s point of view. But the moment you pause your conclusions and accept the possibility of someone else’s view, you demonstrate empathy.
Reflect Their Experiences
The second practical way to show empathy without becoming emotional is to reflect back to the other person your recognition of their experience. You don’t have to agree with them to be empathetic, you don’t even have to feel what they feel. But they do need to hear you say back to them what they are saying about their own experience.
For example, if an employee tells you an assignment is difficult, or they are having a hard time with it, an empathetic, yet non-emotional, response is to say, “I can see how this is assignment is difficult and giving you headaches.”
A non-empathetic response is to dismiss their experience with your own words by saying something to the effect of, “This shouldn’t be hard,” or “It shouldn’t be difficult for you,” or “I don’t understand why you can’t get this done.” Those are all non-empathetic responses. The empathetic response vocalizes back to them what they are saying without you having to get all mushy or even feel that way yourself.
Acknowledge Their Experience
The third practical way to demonstrate empathy and logic at the same time is to take the other person’s experience into account when you are making decisions and explaining your decisions.
As a logical leader, you may not be able to accommodate everyone’s feelings, but you can acknowledge that you took them into account when making your decision. For example, if you know an employee doesn’t like to travel out of town for work, but your business needs them to travel, you can acknowledge the challenge it presents to them and demonstrate empathy in the way that you communicate the decision.
The decision itself may not change, but you can let them know that you took their feelings seriously. Consider something like, “I understand that you have been traveling a lot for work lately, and I know this puts an additional strain on your family. I appreciate your willingness to do what the company needs right now. Is there anything we can do to support you?”
A non-empathetic response would be to dismiss their feelings about it by saying they knew there was travel involved when they took the position and they just need to buck up and do it without complaining. It may be true that travel is a requirement, but a non-empathetic response will be perceived as dismissive and uncaring. You can demonstrate empathy by acknowledging their experience and showing that you care even without becoming emotional.
Empathy without Losing Facts
Finally, logical leaders excel at facts, data, and rational analysis. These are valuable leadership skills. But they do not always serve a leader well when trying to express empathy. However, logical leaders can demonstrate empathy by pausing the process of coming to conclusions, verbally reflecting back to others the reality of their experience, and taking into account others’ feelings and concerns when making and explaining decisions.
None of these practical actions requires the leader to become emotional or speak or act with emotion. It only requires the leader to be purposeful and show concern in how they speak and respond. Our words are powerful. And words that demonstrate empathy can serve to earn trust, deepen rapport, and gain commitment from others.
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