The Empathy Advantage: Communicating Through An Empathetic Lens

The worst thing as a manager has got to be trying to encourage the right behaviours only to have it, not only fail to change behaviours, but for it to end up in friction and conflict.

It’s so important as a manager, or a communicator in general to ensure your message is received in a way that achieves your intended impact. It saves you time, effort, and a lot of discomfort by having your messages land with resonance.

One of the most powerful concepts you should know about is something I call communicating empathetically.

How It Works

Having empathy means being able to demonstrate understanding of someone’s feelings. But there is nuance in how it’s practiced.

Demonstrating understanding of someone’s feelings is not making assumptions or guesses about what other’s are feeling or experiencing.

But how then do you know what someone is feeling? That’s the point. You don’t.

Nobody truly knows what another person is going through. So keep in mind, the goal of communicating should be to find out as much as you can about what the other person is experiencing. Hint* you only find out by asking questions!

The opposite of this would be to speak through a close-ended statement or an attributive question (one that makes a judgement within it, like “isn’t that good?”, which seems like a question but actually demonstrates biases). Which makes assumptions and judgements about the situation.

Why Your Messages Break Down

Close-ended statements and attributive questions creates defensiveness and close-mindedness.

With defensiveness in the room. Anything you say, no matter how right you may be, or how wrong they may be, your message will not be received positively. It’ll definitely not achieve the behaviour change you were hoping for either.

Examples of close-ended statements:

• “I think you’re wrong.”

• “You are unmotivated”

Examples of attributive questions:

• “Why are you late on the report?”

• “Why do you think that’s wrong?”

• “Why are you late?”

Just think about the emotional response it creates when you get met with any of these questions or statements. You almost instantly become defensive. You feel like you have to fight your perspective.

Even if you are right, someone with a closed-mind and defenses up is going to disagree.

Forget Right & Wrong. Think Neutral.

Look, I know a lot of those statements don’t seem too “bad”. You’re right.

But remember, delivery is everything.

You’re not here to figure out who’s right or wrong, only to ensure your message is being received in a way that achieves it’s intended purpose. You’ll achieve that by speaking with neutrality.

You don’t know who is in the right or wrong - but you’d like to find out more information.

Communicating Empathetically

So here’s how to you need to communicate.

We’ve talked about the conditions you don’t want:

• Defensiveness, and close-mindedness

• Accusatory or close-ended statements

• Judgmental and attributive questions

We’re going for questions that are:

• Open-ended and curious

• Neutral

• Non-judgmental

Here’s what that looks like, and what it does.

Instead of, “I think you’re wrong”. You could say, “Could you explain how you see it?”

You still don’t have to agree. But instead of getting them defensive by prefacing they’re wrong, you leave it open-ended and allow them to explain their thought process.

Instead of", “You’re unmotivated”. You could say, “I’ve noticed your energy levels aren’t where I’d expect them to be. Is everything okay?”

You get the point across that their not performing at the expected level, while appearing concerned instead of judgmental, and without assuming they’ve intended to do so. “Is everything okay” is a curious question building toward next steps and solutions.

Instead of, “Why do you think that’s wrong?”. You could say, “Hmm, I didn’t come to the same conclusion. Could you share more about your thought process?”

You still achieve the same objective, you find out their thought process. Only this time, it is without any mention of who’s opinion may be right or wrong, purely that there are differences in points of view.

Conclusion

The empathetic way of communicating may take up more words. But those split seconds are nothing compared to the amount of time wasted when you’re message misses it’s intended outcome.

This week, work on how you phrase your statements of questions. Think about how you can phrase it in an empathetic question.

Try it out!

Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways that you can work with me:

1. Invite me to speak at your organisation:

→ If you want to help your people pick up some valuable skills, and perspectives on leadership that will help move your organisation forward, I can help you out with a short talk or workshop

2. 1-on-1 coaching for leaders with heart:

→ Are you a leader with a heart who’s never felt comfortable conforming to the corporate definitions of what a leader should be? I offer 1-on-1 coaching for leaders who want to make an impact, increase their reputation as a leader, and succeed without feeling like they have to compromise or lose out.

3. Explore My Relationship Accelerator program for leaders:

→ If you’re still struggling to unlock the potential of your people and would like to make some meaningful change - our relationship accelerator program helps your leaders learn all they need to know about building effective relationships to drive success - in one day. Check it out here.

Reach out to me at [email protected]