WHY EMPATHY IS PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT FOR EXECUTIVES NOW
The ability to perceive and understand the thoughts and feelings of others
Numerous studies have shown that empathic leadership significantly increases motivation, cooperation, satisfaction and loyalty. When you know how your team feels, you can act and react accordingly and make decisions that are acceptable to everyone. In our digital, hybrid and globalized world of work, where people from different continents, cultures and generations work together, this is critical to business success – but also challenging in many ways.
Executives: internally under great pressure
In addition to increasingly complex decision-making processes, tighter deadlines, rapidly changing markets, technologies and business models, leaders are also challenged by a completely new understanding of their role that goes beyond traditional models. While employees today (rightly) expect respect, transparency and participation as part of an appreciative corporate culture, management must be equally visionary, decisive and emphatic. In daily life, however, there is often not enough time for the latter. Stress, as many executives experience, has been proven to blur the view of others and reduce the capacity for empathy. So what to do?
Learning empathy through professional coaching
Although the ability to empathize varies from person to person, it can be learned. The prerequisite for this is self-reflection. After all, only those who understand their own strengths, weaknesses and emotions can do the same for others. This is especially difficult under great long-term pressure: professional coaching can therefore provide managers with useful support in recognizing their own patterns and behaviors. Empathic behavior is developed and trained in different situations to respond to employees’ circumstances, motives and goals and build a strong rapport. This makes it easier, for example, to recognize and promote potential, or to anticipate and de-escalate conflict more easily.
Lead and live better with a good feeling
Professional Coaching helps not only to reflect on leadership skills and sharpen emotional intelligence, but also to develop adaptive strategies to deal with the pressures and complexities of modern working life. It enables executives to find their own work balance in a confidential environment: For only those who remain true to themselves and authentic come across as credible to others.
