On Saturday, February 27th, more than 350 people of all ages who live in our small, close-knit San Francisco Bay Area community came together to honor the memory of a very special young man whose life was accidentally taken far too early, at age 23.  I met his family when he was 10-years old; he and his little brother joined my two children when they were the same age at the small private elementary school they attended.  All four kids became close, and 13 years later we consider the entire family to be among our dearest friends.  One can only imagine how devastated this entire community felt about loosing one of its own, especially someone with such a long and promising future.  The pain and heartbreak was excruciating.  The love and empathy that surrounded this family, and the entire village for weeks, was overwhelming for everyone involved.  The line to attend his memorial stretched around the block, and dozens who arrived too late to sit inside the church stuck it out for two hours outside, peering through the windows during the service, without being able to hear a single word the speakers were saying.

Among the heartbreak and denial of this unbelievably surreal situation, I listened to several people (including my own daughter who was asked to share her memories of their friendship) talk about how this young man always made them feel.  “Like I was the most important person on the planet,” or “he always knew what I was going though” or “his friendship was unconditional” were common themes.  Clearly his unique empathetic ability stood out.  So much so that it inspired his many friends to ‘pay it forward’ – several vowed to the community to share his story with others their age in order to honor his memory and help educate them to prevent future accidents.  It was both heart wrenching and amazing.  The power of empathy to invoke social change was being played out right in front of me.

 Using Empathetic Leadership to Drive Change in the Workplace

In your own organization, have you ever considered using empathy as an effective way to help drive change, or get stalled initiatives moving again, or align people toward a common goal?  I recognize not every leader has the same empathetic abilities as my young friend to make everyone feel special.  Many leaders don’t even recognize the value of being empathetic.  Which begs the common question, is empathy a skill that can be learned, or a natural personality trait that some people have and some don’t? Having reviewed dozens of Lumina Spark portraits where I notice how often this quality shows up strong, or not, my own personal belief is that it is a little of both.

Having a high EQ (defined as a natural measure of a person’s adequacy in such areas as self-awareness, empathy, and dealing sensitively with other people) is no doubt helpful, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a leader will naturally choose empathy as a strategy for engaging or driving change. Empathetic leadership means one must be open to asking questions, to listening deeply and being vulnerable, to being curious and non-judgmental toward finding a common ground and to being influenced by another’s point-of-view.  Frankly, to live in another person’s shoes. That’s a lot more effort than simply making people feel good. Yet, it was a good enough legacy for my young friend.

If I have still not inspired you to intentionally add the skill of empathy to your leadership repertoire, I hope that the words of Theodore Roosevelt will: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Warmly,