Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
We all know what it feels like when those around us genuinely care for our wellbeing. We also know what it feels like when they don’t. It’s why empathy for others is such an important skill for anyone running a home-based business, managing people or, frankly, wanting to enjoy a more rewarding relationship with anyone! I think that counts for pretty much everyone, besides serial narcissists.
Empathy is defined as our ability to see as they see, to feel as they feel. Studies find it’s the most important management skill that outshines all others.
Empathetic people feel genuine concern for others and are intrinsically motivated to help them thrive. And while empathy is important at all times, in difficult times like these, it is even more vital. If your employees don’t feel that you genuinely care about them when the chips are down, they’ll know you don’t care any other time. So while incentives can be motivating, they are far more impactful when coupled with the loyalty that grows when people sense you genuinely care about their wellbeing.
But let’s face it, empathy is not comfortable work; it requires allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and truth be told, that is never comfortable. It’s far easier to pull up our emotional drawbridge and retreat into our heads. After all, we have enough going on within ourselves to take on the emotional whirlwinds blowing around us.
Clearly, many people do just that. However, operating from our heads cuts us off from the hearts of those around us and can leave us disconnected from ourselves. In the midst of such intense uncertainty, we need to be deeply connected to the emotional landscape of those around us. We must be able to not just speak to their unspoken concerns and deepest fears of others, but reign them in, fuel optimism and rally their best thinking.
Taking care of employees and taking care of the bottom line are not mutually exclusive. The idea that one must be traded off against the other is a harmful and false dichotomy. As I share in this video, they are on the same side of one coin. Working with leaders and business owners over the last twenty years has taught me that decision makers who lack empathy not only fail to build trust in good times, but destroy the fragile threads of trust in turbulent times. This exacts steep hidden opportunity cost — in lost collaboration, innovation, loyalty and disengagement — long after the crisis has passed.
As businessman Mark Cuban shared in a recent interview:
“How you treat your employees today will have more impact on your brand in future years than any amount of advertising, any amount of anything you literally could do.”
Empathy gets to the heart of what success is truly about: genuinely caring about what sits on the hearts of others and wanting the best for them. People who haven’t done the inner work required to connect at the heart level may feign empathy, but their self-interest is always transparent. We’ve all met them, and it’s never pleasant.
If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you aren’t among their ranks. To that end, go out of your way today to check in on those around you, to put yourself in their shoes and to let them know you genuinely care. For as Albert Einstein said, “empathy is not learned in school, it is cultivated over a lifetime.”
