How to Start Developing Empathy
If you don’t naturally have a capacity for empathy, don’t feel like your progress as an Engaging Executive is limited. You can easily develop empathy over time, until it begins to feel natural.
But where do you start?
There are three key stages to developing empathy.
The first is ‘Identification’, being able to observe someone else’s verbal and non-verbal cues to determine how they’re feeling. What does their posture say? Their tone of voice? Their eyes? The way they use their hands and feet? What does all of this tell you about their current emotional state?
The second is ‘Understanding’. Once you have an idea of someone’s emotional state, begin to ask questions so you can thoroughly imagine their perspective. Remove your perspective entirely. Just focus on them.
The third is ‘Reaction’. Once you understand someone’s emotional state, you can relate to them and join them, and then use Engaging Executive tactics to lift their energy to a more useful state. You lift them out of their misery, so to speak.
Empathy makes you a better leader, find out how right here.
How Empathy Can Enhance Your Career
Empathy plays a very large role in your career.
You might think, ‘Oh, empathy is for dealing with emotional people and emotions don’t belong in the workplace.’
However, we’re all human, with human emotions, and so those emotions will inevitably pop up in the office. If you can respond to them appropriately, though, then you’ll find that those emotions in the office can help your career.
People without empathy are often perceived as cold and self-absorbed.
Those who can display empathy toward their colleagues, though, inspire feelings of gratitude. The person with empathy is seen as a person who really “gets” people; they seem kind and selfless, a real team player.
Out of those two people, the one who can display empathy and the one who can’t, who do you think is more likely to win the respect of their peers? Which one do you think will have an easier time becoming a leader in their department?
If you ever want to learn how to best deal with people, influence them and lead them, then you have to develop empathy. It’s the only useful way to deal with negative emotions that others are feeling.
Read here for an example from one of our success stories and see how empathy took part.
Two Mistakes to NOT Make When Giving and Receiving Feedback
Both giving and receiving feedback in the workplace can be tricky. However, if you can avoid these two mistakes you’ll be that much closer to giving and receiving valuable feedback that makes your company culture stronger.
1. Don’t take it personally (whether good or bad)
If you’re on the receiving end of feedback, don’t take it personally. View the feedback as a gift. Maybe it’s useful and you like it a lot. So put it to good use. Maybe it’s terrible and you hate it; is it still useful? Then use it. Not useful at all? Throw it out. But whatever you do, don’t take feedback as something that defines you, good or bad.
2. Don’t use the feedback sandwich model
Avoid the popular feedback sandwich model that “sandwiches” one piece of negative feedback between two pieces of positive feedback. Instead, use a three-step formula that simply includes “What Worked, “What Didn’t Work” and “In the Future.” It packages up your feedback into a simple, easy-to-understand and future-focused bundle that covers the positives, the negatives and a plan moving forward.
If you would like to read on giving yourself a review, click here.
How to Give Better Feedback
Have you ever considered that there might be right and wrong ways to give feedback? Make sure that you’re giving the best, most useful feedback to your team possible. Here’s how.
1. Be Honest
Don’t give your team mindless encouragement. Give your team members the truth, but if there’s any negative feedback to give, frame it as developmental. Make sure any negative feedback is focused on a solution, not the problem itself, all while being honest.
2. Be Specific
Just saying “Oh, good job” is meaningless. If you want your words of praise to actually matter, specifically let your team know what about their performance you liked. Likewise, you can’t expect your employees to improve in needed areas unless you’re specific about the issue at hand and the results you’d like to see.
3. Be Valuable
If your developmental feedback isn’t valuable to your employee, how do you expect them to actually take it to heart? Frame your developmental feedback in such a way that it offers something to the employee (a roadmap to a raise or a promotion they want, etc.).
If you would like a free assessment of skills against the ENGAGE model, click here.
How to Ask Your Employees for Feedback
Many managers are very familiar with giving feedback to their employees. Even if feedback isn’t a common part of their company’s culture, they usually at least do yearly reviews or something similar. But should those managers also be asking their employees for feedback?
Absolutely. Everyone has room for improvement and, not only will asking your employees for their feedback on your performance give you keen insight into your own leadership skills and employees’ perception of you, but it will also set a great example.
When you do year-end, month-end or even week-end reviews (yes, some companies do performance reviews even that frequently), ask your employees to likewise give you some feedback. Ask them to tell you one thing that you’ve been doing that’s working, one thing that isn’t and something you could do differently in the future. Then, wait for the answers to roll in. When there’s a consistent theme across the board, then you have your answer. There’s something you need to work on in your daily work life.
If you would like to read more about leadership and feedback, click here.
Why Feedback is Important in the Workplace
The best people I’ve ever worked for or with are those that not only are trying to bring out the best in themselves, but that are actively working to bring out the best in others. One crucial part of both of those (becoming your best and leading others to being their best) is feedback.
Feedback in the workplace is vital. If you’re a manager or leader in your office, it’s your role to pass on your observations (kindly) about others’ strengths and development area via feedback. Similarly, any smart leader will take feedback from others on their own opportunities to improve.
And if you think that your employees don’t want your feedback, you’d be wrong. A PwC study found that nearly 60 percent of employees would prefer to receive feedback on a weekly or even daily basis, and that percentage increases for employees under the age of 30, to 72 percent.
The impact of all this feedback is substantial. Those who receive feedback are able to calibrate their behaviour in the absence of hard metrics and become more engaged with their workplace.
If you find this helpful, there’s more here.
Are You Using Your Body Language Effectively?
In any given conversation, if your body language does not appropriately match your words, you’re more likely to have an incongruent message. This is why it’s so important that you use your body language effectively. What are your hands and facial features doing when you talk to someone else? Does your face ever contradict your words?
What is your body language telling others when you confront a colleague? Ask for a promotion or a raise? Or even just tell a story at the company get together?
The first step to effective body language is to make sure your words and body language aren’t contradictory. Then it’s time to add some pizazz to your body language, so you have the power to hold your listeners’ attention. Practice telling a story in the mirror. Note what your eyebrows, mouth, eyes and hands are all doing. What could you improve to be more congruent in your message?
Check out this story from a client who once had the most abhorrent storytelling skills but now, can dazzle and captivate audiences.
For more tips check out our Engaging Executive blog and LinkedIn posts.
How to Harness the Power of the Technically-Skilled Introverts on Your Team
There are introverts in every office, but what do you do when you have an introvert on your team that really has potential? You can see that they could really go far, with their technical skills, and so much further if they added engaging social skills to the mix.
Firstly, make sure your office is an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas and offering input. If someone is on the verge of speaking up, they might not work up the courage if Bill from Sales is constantly interrupting and speaking over everyone on the team. Foster an environment where everyone can — and is expected to — contribute.
Then, provide them with information on building their social and public speaking skills. Whether it’s taking advantage of the many Engaging Executive resources made just for these types of employees, or taking a public speaking class, provide the tools necessary for these introverts to gain new skills.
If you would like to learn how you stack up as an Engaging Executive, then take the free questionnaire and get an instant report.
What is Your Voice Saying that Your Words are Not?
Think you’re saying all the right words, but still feel like you’re not getting your message across? It might not be that your words are wrong. It could be all in your tone.
There’s quite a lot that makes up the human voice. There’s volume, intonation, tonality, tempo, timbre and rhythm. One of the most important things to learn is how to manage your volume. If you’re too soft, your message falls on deaf ears. If you’re too loud, you come off abrasive and people might just steer clear of you. Once you know you’re not too loud nor too soft, you can start modulating your volume within a conversation to place emphasis on certain words.
As for the other aspects of your voice, think of them like aspects of a symphony. When used correctly, they all come together to make beautiful music that will delight your listeners.
Take a recording of yourself talking. Your volume, speed and tempo should all differ according to your message. An effective communicator can master the art of the voice in this way.
If you would like to know more about the impact of your voice, click here.
Are You Choosing the Right Words for Every Situation?
I work with a lot of individuals who are in very technical fields. A big hurdle for them is learning when to use technical language versus social language. There’s a big difference between the two.
Technical language is a bit dry. It’s full of facts, figures and nothing but the rigid truth. If your endgame is to get people to like you and to win friends and influence your coworkers, then you have to ditch the technical language while you’re in social situations.
How can you begin to add a bit of sparkle to your daily vocabulary?
A good place to start is by simply switching up how you answer the daily question, how are you? Start livening things up with a fun response. Instead of ‘good,’ go for ‘glorious.’
Along these lines, begin smattering your vocabulary with descriptive, fun language. Don’t choose anything overly ridiculous, but do make an effort to liven up your conversations. There’s no need for your chit-chat at a party to sound like you’re reading a textbook aloud.
If you find this interesting, there’s more here.