Advice from our Executive Coaches on How to Develop Emotional Intelligence

One of the key elements of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is Empathy, which, put simply, means appreciating how other people feel. Research shows that demonstrating Empathy can have a significant impact on leadership effectiveness and the ability to inspire followership. The good news is, Empathy as a competency can be developed and improved, so we asked our Executive Coaches to provide their best advice for putting Empathy into practice. 

One of our coaches recently coached a client leading a large-scale product launch for his company.  The complexity was high, as numerous stakeholders across many functions were working on this project.  Unfortunately, things were not going well with the launch.  People were missing deadlines, showing up late for meetings and just plain failing to give it their time and attention.  During a coaching session, the client lamented, “Why can’t I get people to just do what I’m asking them to do – is that so hard?”  When the coach pressed the client further about how people might be feeling about the project or what might be happening with them that was causing them to miss deadlines or to not engage in the process….crickets.  He hadn’t asked.  He had all kinds of data about the financial impact this launch would make for the company and had all the project steps outlined and communicated.  What he lacked was an understanding of what people working on the project thought or felt about it, or how it might be impacting them. 

According to McKinsey, 70 percent of large-scale change initiatives or transformations fail to meet the stated goals.  They indicate that “sustaining a transformation’s impact typically requires a major reset in mind-sets and behaviors – something that few leaders know how to achieve.”  In our increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) work world, managing change effectively is not only an important competency for leaders, it is an imperative. 

So, how can leaders get better at managing change in their organizations?  Empathy. 

Our coaches support many leaders managing large-scale change and frequently see them gravitate towards getting people to understand the change intellectually.  Lots of data, lots of reasons, lots of graphs and charts and numbers, and the list goes on.  All minds, no hearts.  All that information is important, but it’s not what will get people to do what leaders want them to do.  In order for change to be effective – for people to change behaviors, to give discretionary effort, to keep plowing away when things get hard or painful – leaders have to get people to engage their emotions about the change. 

According to a 2016 study by the Center for Creative Leadership, the ability to understand what others are feeling significantly contributes to effective leadership.  Merriam-Webster defines empathy as, “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”  The phrase “vicariously experiencing” is particularly important, in that it isn’t just important that the person asks the question about how the other person is feeling. Rather, being truly empathetic requires that you put yourself in that person’s place – to “walk a mile in their shoes”.

To be empathetic as a leader, to understand others deeply, requires a time commitment that leaders are often unwilling to make.  Back to the story about our client struggling with his product launch: after the first phase of the launch didn’t go as he had hoped, he was getting set to kick off the second phase.  When asked in a coaching session what he learned about the first phase that would help in the second phase, his response was all about more command and control.  “Maybe get people’s managers involved to provide more accountability, or include the additional “stick” of putting the project on people’s performance reviews,” he said.  When the coach asked, “What impact might it have if you instead took a few steps back and took some time to talk with people to understand their concerns and frustrations?”, the client said he didn’t have the luxury of doing that. It would be too time-consuming to go back and have conversations when the project needed to keep moving forward.

How much time is wasted on projects, change initiatives, process improvements in your organization when people won’t do what a leader is asking them to do?  How might it be different if those changes came on the heels of really understanding your employees – what matters to them, what motivates them, what scares them and what keeps them going?  The time not spent on the front end asking these questions creates exponential amounts of time on the back end related to lack of adoption, engagement and follow-through. 

So, how do leaders put this important skill of “walking a mile in their shoes” into practice? Here are a few tips:

1. Foster better relationships.  Interpersonal relationships are the close cousin of empathy.  Really taking time to get to know people on a personal level will not only give a leader a better understanding of what they care about; it also builds trust and mutual respect.  Solid interpersonal relationships can weather the storm of conflict and change and build the foundation where true empathy can be demonstrated.

2. Just have the conversation.  There is no way around it: to foster empathy, leaders just need to get out and talk to people one-on-one.  Focus groups, individual meetings, and town hall meetings with lots of time for Q&A are all ways to get into conversation with your employees.  Top down, formal communication has its place in change management, but absent the feedback and input loop, it will eventually fall on deaf ears.

3. Seek to understand.  So often, when leaders do get into conversation with their employees, it is about the “tell.”  Empathetic leaders ask more questions and give fewer answers.  They take the time to understand people’s points of view, how the change is impacting them and what concerns they have.  Rather than being at the ready with an answer, they take the time to just listen.

4. Share what’s in it for them.  When employees are going through considerable change, the main questions they’ll be asking themselves are, “what is going to happen to me and why should I care about this?”.  If a leader can’t answer those two questions for people, you might have their minds invested in the change, but you won’t have their hearts.  In order for people to change long-demonstrated behaviors, they have to understand why it is important TO THEM, not just to the organization.

5. Demonstrate compassion.  Leaders that embody empathy are servant leaders.  This means they see their leader role as a support function. They ask themselves questions like: “How I can I help support people through this change?”,  “What tools, resources, and information will help them be successful?”, and mostly importantly, “How can I show them I care about them as people?”.  Change is hard, and it often feels personal.  Leaders that don’t acknowledge that it’s OK for people to feel feelings, to be at different places in their adoption and to speak about their concerns, will find that employees may robotically do what is asked of them, but quality, discretionary effort and innovation will suffer.

At The People Side, we are on a mission to re-humanize the workplace because we understand the impact this shift would have on engagement and human performance. Our team is ready to help you get to the heart of your business and put this learning into practice.

This “Putting It Into Practice” article is part of our Top 10 Gamechangers for Leaders series.  Every month, our Executive Coaching Team will share our best advice for developing this gamechanger capability. If we were coaching you on this topic, what would we be talking about?  What experiments would you be running?  What questions would you be asking yourself? 

If you are interested in learning more about Executive Coaching and how it might help your leaders focus on building this or other key leadership competencies, please visit The People Side at www.thepeopleside.com/executive-coaching.