DISCUSSION

What Are The Keys To Empathetic Leadership?

April 21, 2023Written by Tom Ryan

Photo: EY

An Ernst & Young (EY) survey finds 86 percent of employees believe empathetic leadership boosts morale and 87 percent see empathy as essential to fostering an inclusive environment. Many, however, feel their own employer's efforts of this kind are disingenuous. According to the survey taken last fall of more than 1,000 employed U.S. workers:

Fifty-two percent currently believe their company's efforts to be empathetic toward employees are dishonest, up from 46 percent in 2021;
Forty-seven percent believe their company lacks follow-through when it comes to company promises, up from 42 percent in 2021.

EY cited past internal research showing flexibility in when and where employees work was a critical component of “fulfill[ing] the authenticity equation” regarding company culture. “What happens outside of work has a direct impact on how people show up,” said Ginnie Carlier, EY’s Americas vice chair – talent. Christine Porath, a management professor at Georgetown University and a workplace consultant, believes the best way to connect with and care for employees is to recognize their emotions — especially negative ones – and show appreciation. “Positive feedback or recognition makes community members feel valued, reduces power and status differences between them, and may increase everybody’s sense of belonging,” Prof. Porath wrote in a column for Harvard Business Review. Belinda Parmar, CEO, The Empathy Business, suggests using data-driven metrics (i.e., polls to measure empathy levels in online meetings); and starting small in implementing empathy in a business. "Empathy is not about grandiose gestures; it’s about multiple, small-scale ‘empathy nudges’, which are low-cost, high-impact measures," she wrote in an article for The World Economic Forum. In a column for Time Magazine, Anne Helen Petersen wrote that corporate empathy efforts often fall short because they involve accommodating needs that work at odds with efficiency and productivity goals. “So long as organizations view employees with different needs as sources of friction, and solutions to those needs as examples of unfairness, they will continue to promote and retain employees with the capacity to make their personalities, needs and identities as frictionless as possible,” she wrote.

Discussion Thread0