Empathy and Leadership: Multiple Tools that Lead to Organizational Improvement

In the business world we often think of the tough nosed boss that takes no excuses and hits the nail on the hammer until they get the results they want. This often leads to higher levels of turnover and toxic behaviors that can decrease the overall performance of the organization. Low empathy environments encourage quite quitting and toxic short gains while higher empathy can create adaptive teams and stronger  long term group outcomes. Empathy can have serious impacts on business and its long term financial and market impact value through developing people to their highest performance zone.

Consider some of the benefits of empathy....

Empathy in leadership leads to increased efficiency (88%), creativity (87%), job satisfaction (87%), idea sharing (86%), innovation (85%) company revenue (83%)." Employee Empathy Expectation and Leadership.

It is possible to hold people to results while doing so in an empathetic way. There are multiple paths to improving performance through understanding others emotional states and underlining mechanics. If you understand you can encourage and overcome and if you do not understand you are stuck with one tool. You are forced to use this tool no matter if it is effective or not (Unempathetic leaders struggle to see, understand and utilize alternative tools. We sometimes see this in some leaders who can't switch approaches when outcomes are lack luster.). 

Quality and outcomes can improve when we understand our employees and can use applied psychology to raise their total long term performance. While some employees may eventually succeed and some may eventually fail, having multiple paths to encourage performance provides adaptivity. Matching that with communication and strategy and one can manage larger organizations through new adaptive methods.