This time is very challenging for business due to the market which is full of uncertainty. The ongoing recession and pandemic have impacted people’s mental health and personal lives. It also affected the workplace dynamics, making it more unstable for employees, and hampering their growth and performance. In this stressful time, one thing that employees need from leaders is empathy at the workplace which can help them to cope in this situation. This a tough time and employees need their leaders’ support who can understand their situation.
Empathic leadership can also help employees remain abreast during these tough times. In this article, we have discussed some more reasons why empathy is important in the workplace for better employee productivity.
WHAT IS EMPATHIC LEADERSHIP
Empathic leadership is leadership in which leaders foster empathy among their team. An empathic leadership helps leaders to cater to the professional as well as emotional needs of their employees. Leaders who have empathy allow them to listen to their employees, understand their situation, and then help them to find a constructive solution as per ther needs. Empathy is considered very important in leadership because it helps to foster trust, communication, and better understanding among the teams. Leaders with empathy are good at understanding the emotions and feelings of their employees which also helps them in increasing emotional intelligence at the workplace which is an important skill to lead a team.
CHARACTERISTICS OF EMPATHIC LEADERSHIP
ACTIVE LISTENING
One of the most important characteristics of empathic leadership is active listening, listening means not only listening to what one is saying, but to understanding what message and needs a person is trying to convey through that message, and while listening trying to understand others not to respond. Active listening is most important to foster empathy among team members.
CATERING TO NEEDS
Empathic leadership revolves around the leader who caters to the needs of their employees, needs are not only professional needs but also emotional and personal needs. Leaders who understand the personal needs of their employees and respond to them with care and affection, experience more trust and respect from their team members
FOSTER A COMMITMENT
Empathy helps to develop a sense of commitment among the team members, if employees know that their leader is concerned about their life issues, they sense a feeling of belongingness and acceptance which helps to increase their commitment to the work. When employees remain committed to work it helps to improve productivity and results also.
8 REASON WHY EMPATHY IS KEY TO LEADERSHIP
It has already been proven that empathic leadership is considered to be the most important leadership skill to lead a team. If one wants to have a productive team with good results, so one needs to master these skills for better results. so let’s dive into some more reasons why empathy is important in leadership roles and how empathic leadership helps in fostering team growth.
- FOSTER INNOVATION
The most important part of maintaining a healthy work culture at the workplace is that all employees should feel heard and listened to, and when leaders allow practices where all employees are heard and their opinions are valued then employees are also able to develop a sense of creativity, productivity and motivate employees to come up with better ideas. It has been proved in a survey that employees who are respected for their opinions at the workplace tend to be more innovative and bring more ideas to the table which helps to foster innovations.
2. ENGAGED AT WORK
Employees who are treated with empathy and experience empathic leadership at the workplace tend to be more engaged at work. Empathy helps to develop a sense of belongingness and acceptance which makes employees feel that office work looks personal, so as a result they try to give their 100 % and remain engaged till the end of the work while enjoying work.
3. MORE WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Empathic leadership helps employees to balance their professional and personal commitments with ease. An empathic leader in the workplace can understand the employee’s real-life situations better and also help them to find solutions to their problem, which allows employees to focus more on ther work and get better results at the workplace. When employees are assured that they are heard and their situation is understood they can easily accomplish their professional and personal goals due to emotional support at work.
4. BETTER COMMUNICATION
A team with empathic leaders fosters good communication among the team. Good communication is key to success in many aspects of life including professionalism. When team members know that their voices are being heard, and valued, it gives a sense of authenticity to employees to foster healthy communication in the team. Due to good communication and connection with leaders, team members can easily reach out to leaders to discuss their problems and to find out their solutions for same, they do not feel shame in that due to trust in the leader, it fosters a healthy practice of active communication.
5. CONFLICT RESOLUTION
The most important role empathy plays in solving conflict at the workplace. Leaders need to be good at empathy and emotional intelligence to resolve the issues among team members. Resolving the issues needs mindful listening to all team members without judging them to reach the right solution and this ability can only be found in an empathic leader.
6. DECISION MAKING
Empathy helps in fostering effective decision-making. When the team is led by empathic leaders then it will lead employees to communicate with ease to convey their problems and to find solutions. A team of empathic leaders will allow team members to discuss the different issues affecting the path of goal achievement and can come up with multiple opinions and options to resolve issues. This practice helps in making the right decision because this type of team will have multiple options to reach the right decision.
7. GREATER RETENTION
It has been seen that workplaces with empathic leadership have fewer resignations from the company because employees all emotional and personal needs are met at the workplace which helps them to stick and continue at a company for long. It has been found that employees in a company with better pay and less emotional support tend to leave more as compared to people with less pay and more emotional support. For any human being, emotional support is important both for personal and professional lives.
8. INCLUSIVE WORKFORCE
People with empathic leaders are tend to more inclusive at their workplace. Most probably a team with good empathic leaders has trust in their leaders which allows employees to understand the goal that their leader wants to convey and for them to accomplish as a team. They become more obedient to their leaders which helps the leaders to convey goals clearly to their employers and accomplish them.
These are all reasons why empathic leadership is considered to be an important aspect of the workplace to develop a good team. Empathy is something that not only helps professionally but also personally, empathy is the most important life skill one needs to build deep human relationships whether at the workplace or personal life. So empathy is the most important skill that should be mastered by everyone to excel in all aspects of life.