Lessons for Leaders cover logo

Why Empathy is Crucial for Great Leaders

26m · Lessons for Leaders · 03 Mar 06:30

This week I'm talking to you about why empathy is crucial for great leaders.

 

I cover :

What is empathy

Why does it matter in leadership

Whether empathy can be learned 

How it can improve performance, create connections and

What you can do to be more empathic.

 

Why empathy is crucial for great leaders and what is empathy anyway? Empathy is the ability to experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experience of others.  So it's about truly feeling what the other person is feeling.

You know I often talk about how we don't 'do' emotions.  But empathy is about connecting with emotions and feelings.

Why does empathy matter?

If we were to do a list of successful leaderships skills, empathy would rarely be included, but it's essential in my opinion.

 

I'm often asked the question "can we learn empathy"?  It's often thought that we either have it or have not.  You'll have to listen to the episode for the answer to this one!

 

Listen more for the ways that you can improve empathy.

 

Any questions on this, drop me an email at [email protected]

For further information on 1:1, group coaching or training get in touch.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient, less stressed in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you send me an email or use the online diary and arrange a time for a chat.

The episode Why Empathy is Crucial for Great Leaders from the podcast Lessons for Leaders has a duration of 26:48. It was first published 03 Mar 06:30. The cover art and the content belong to their respective owners.

More episodes from Lessons for Leaders

Celebrating 100 Episodes

Welcome to Lessons for Leaders.  Can you believe it’s episode 100?

The goal has always been to share lessons, learnings, tips and advice and even when things got tough with it, I’ve enjoyed it more and I’m proud to be able to say I got to 100.

Many of my regular listeners will know that my girls are the reason I do what I do and my eldest girl is about to make me a Granny next month so it seems like a good time to pause the episodes for a while.

This last one is a very special episode, with my other amazing girl joining me at the mic to ask some of the questions you, my listeners sent in.  I really hope you enjoy it.

I’ll be back in the autumn.  In the meantime, there’s plenty of topics in the back episodes for you to dive into.

Keep sending me feedback, loves, takeaways and requests for topics in the meantime. 

As always, thank you for listening 

 

I hope this is helpful for you. Please do share any feedback or any questions on this, drop me an email at [email protected]

For further information on 1:1, group coaching or training get in touch.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient, less stressed in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you send me an email or use the online diary and arrange a time for a chat.

How to Persuade Leaders to Invest in Wellbeing

This week I'm sharing top tips and conversations that I have frequently with people in organisations to help them know how to persuade leaders to invest in wellbeing.

We're covering:

What to do to persuade your leaders

The 3 R’s that I like to go with organisations I work with.

Why we need to look at revenue in different ways and I dive into specifics here to give you a head start.

How to highlight the risks to an organisation

Why it’s important to include reputation in this persuasive detail too.

It’s easy to say wellbeing can help to reverse employee burnout and reduce stress, turnover, and absenteeism.

Often dismissed or seen as nice to do.  Is it really essential.  Is it something worthy of budget or resources.

Promoting an environment where it’s ok to talk about mental health and encouraging good wellbeing is simply the right thing to do.  Unfortunately, some of your senior colleagues won’t agree or will be more focused on investing in business projects that they deem to have a clearer ROI.  The good news is that whilst not everyone will see wellbeing plans and training as a business critical issue right now… there are strong reasons that it MUST form part of your core business strategy.

 

You just need to find what IS the focus of your senior people so that we can determine how do we convince, persuade, or justify the time and expense on wellbeing.

 

Company executives want to know that any new program, including wellbeing, is going to support the bottom line of the business and its long-term growth.

 

I share in more detail how you can do that.  So have a listen.

If you’re looking for support for your wellbeing plan, coaching for your leaders or training programmes that not only helps your leaders, managers and employees enhance their wellbeing and performance but also gives you the tools and strategies to ensure senior buy in from the outset – get in touch.

Any questions on this, drop me an email at [email protected]

For further information on 1:1, group coaching or training get in touch.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient, less stressed in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you send me an email or use the online diary and arrange a time for a chat.

Why a Good Leader Will Give Teams Autonomy

This week I'm joined by Gemma Woodward who is People & Culture Manager for Netsells in York.  We are talking about leadership and autonomy.  Listen in for:

  • What are the benefits of allowing autonomy.
  • How leaders can encourage autonomy in their teams.
  • Where leaders get it wrong with a top down leadership and how it can affect their people and the organisation
  • what's one key thing that people should remember about autonomy

 

Key comments and take-aways

A top down leadership can create a fear of coming forward and fear of making mistake, their ideas and decisions might be more beneficial than they think.

 

People have a valuable input to give a different perspective and do add value.

 

Businesses will tell you they trust you but don’t really demonstrate that.

 

If we want to retain staff, enhance talent and develop people it’s really worthwhile for organisations to create a team culture that also makes them an employer of choice.

 

Culture is not defined with free tea and coffee and ping pong tables anymore.

 

We need to move away from the thought process of ‘it’s quicker if I do it” because we create a bottleneck in the process and means you’re not passing on knowledge to the team.

 

Use mistakes as a focus to learn from rather than beat someone up about it.

 

How can leaders enable more automony in the workplace?

 

We need to recognise that everyone has a different way of working and different levels of creativity.

 

There is a saying that there is strength in numbers so I believe we should embrace that by working collaboratively and learning from each other.

 

Any questions on this, drop me an email at [email protected]

For further information on 1:1, group coaching or training get in touch.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient, less stressed in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you send me an email or use the online diary and arrange a time for a chat.

Connect with Gemma on LinkedIN

Why a Good Leader Will Give Teams Autonomy

This week I'm joined by Gemma Woodward who is People & Culture Manager for Netsells in York.  We are talking about leadership and autonomy.  Listen in for:

  • What are the benefits of allowing autonomy.
  • How leaders can encourage autonomy in their teams.
  • Where leaders get it wrong with a top down leadership and how it can affect their people and the organisation
  • what's one key thing that people should remember about autonomy

 

Key comments and take-aways

A top down leadership can create a fear of coming forward and fear of making mistake, their ideas and decisions might be more beneficial than they think.

 

People have a valuable input to give a different perspective and do add value.

 

Businesses will tell you they trust you but don’t really demonstrate that.

 

If we want to retain staff, enhance talent and develop people it’s really worthwhile for organisations to create a team culture that also makes them an employer of choice.

 

Culture is not defined with free tea and coffee and ping pong tables anymore.

 

We need to move away from the thought process of ‘it’s quicker if I do it” because we create a bottleneck in the process and means you’re not passing on knowledge to the team.

 

Use mistakes as a focus to learn from rather than beat someone up about it.

 

How can leaders enable more automony in the workplace?

 

We need to recognise that everyone has a different way of working and different levels of creativity.

 

There is a saying that there is strength in numbers so I believe we should embrace that by working collaboratively and learning from each other.

 

Any questions on this, drop me an email at [email protected]

For further information on 1:1, group coaching or training get in touch.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient, less stressed in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you send me an email or use the online diary and arrange a time for a chat.

Connect with Gemma on LinkedIN

Why Leaders Need to Get Back to the Floor

What on earth is back to the floor?

I start with that and why I'm covering the subject (it was inspired by my wonderful friend and leader Tina.  So I'm also covering today:

Why is it important to know first hand what’s happening on your shop floor

Some real life examples and stories of how back to floor worked, and how it didn’t

One really, really important question to ask yourself

 

I share stories from my experience in corporate and Tina's feedback too to give real life examples - some are funny, some are lovely, one is a little shocking!

Here's one of the key things ....

Without that interaction, engagement and visibility not only would you feel unappreciated and disconnected from the business, but you wouldn't know or understand your position in the organisation, what you should be doing and what outcomes you should be striving towards. 

Please do make sure you hit ‘subscribe’ so that don’t miss an episode.  

If you haven’t yet  left a review, please do go and find the little button to leave a review and let me know your thoughts, key take-aways and what you value from the podcast.

Join my corporate leadership and wellbeing newsletter HERE

If you want to be increasing your performance so that you’re more resilient in these current times, so that you can focus easily, use tools and techniques to deal with all the current and unknown challenges then make sure that you either drop me an email to [email protected].   Or head over to my contact page and either send me a email from there or book an appointment straight into my diary – saving all that to-ing and fro-ing that you get when we try to get space in people’s diary.

Every Podcast » Lessons for Leaders » Why Empathy is Crucial for Great Leaders