I was reading an article by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review entitled “The Right Way to Respond to Failure” where he talks about a visit to a friend’s house. He says, “My wife and I were visiting some friends on a Saturday when their 9 year old daughter Dana came home close to tears, barely holding it together. Her mom asked her “Dana, what happened at the swim meet?” Dana is supposedly an excellent swimmer, trains hard, practices every morning at 6. Her efforts are often rewarded, she wins events…. But here she was coming home close to tears. She replied “I was disqualified.” She swam the race well but dove in a fraction of a second before the starting gun went off – a false start.
Peter Bregman says that they were all in the foyer of the house. She sat on the bottom step of the stairs, swim bag still on her shoulder, staring into space almost expressionless. Her dad said, “Honey, there are a lot more swim meets in the season. You’ll have other chances to win.”
Peter Bregman told her, “The fact that you left the block prematurely means you were at your edge, trying not to waste a millisecond in hesitation. That’s the right instinct. You misjudged the timing but that’s ok. The more you lose it, the better you’ll get.” Then his wife joined in and said, “Every swimmer on every team has been disqualified at some point. It’s part of the sport. I’m sure your coach will help you practice your start before the next meet.” Her mom added, “And you’ll figure out exactly when to spring off the block so that you don’t waste a second, but you don’t dive too early either. You’ll get it.”
But nothing that they all said seemed to have any impact on her. Nothing changed her expressionless stare. Then her grandmother Mimi walked over, sat down next to her, put her arm around Dana and just sat there quietly. Eventually Dana leaned her head on her grandmom’s shoulder, after a few moments of silence, her grandmother kissed the top of her head and said, “I know how hard you work at this, honey. It’s sad to get disqualified.” And at that point Dana began to cry. The grandmother continued to sit there with her arm around Dana, not saying anything. Eventually Dana looked up at her grandmom, wiped her tears and simply said, “Thanks, Mimi.”
Peter Bregman said, “I thought every leader, every manager, every team member should have seen this. All of us, except her grandmother, missed what Dana needed. We tried to make her feel better by helping her see the advantage of failure, putting the defeat in context, teaching her to draw lessons from it and motivating her to work harder and get better so it doesn’t happen again. But she didn’t need any of that. She already knew it and if she didn’t, she would figure it out on her own. The thing she needed, the ting she couldn’t give herself and the thing that her grandmother reached out and gave her was empathy.
The empathetic response to failure is not only the most compassionate but is also the most productive. Why? Because empathy communicates trust and people perform best when they feel trusted.
Empathy. Sometimes we give a lot of sympathy --- and the key is empathy.
What is empathy? A formal definition of empathy is the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives. It’s our capacity to recognize the concerns other people have. Empathy means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes or seeing things through someone else’s eyes. That’s the definition that Bruna Martinuzzi gives us in her article ‘What’s Empathy got to do with it’ from her book ‘The Leader as a Mensch: Becoming the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow’.
Do you and I have empathy, enough of it in our workplaces, in the things that we are doing? Sometimes we dismiss the right brain activity in leadership and in management. Empathy at its core, is a right brain activity because it’s a ‘feeling’ thing. Yet at its very core empathy is the oil that keeps relationships running smoothly. And relationships are so important for the smooth running of companies.
Dr. Antonio Damasio in his book “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain” says, “patients who have damage to part of the brain associated with empathy, showed significant deficits in relationships even though their reasoning and learning abilities remained intact.” Why are relationships so important?
Dr. Daniel Goleman writing an article entitled ‘What Makes a Leader?’ isolates 3 reasons why empathy is so important;
I want to close with an article that I read by Rich Karlgaard. He says, “At the recent Forbes Global CEO Conference in Kuala Lumpur in SE Asia, my colleague Ferguson, editor of Forbes Asia, led a panel on leadership. What struck me, and not for the first time, was the variety of leadership styles that work and work really well. There is no single leadership secret. There are many; they are hiding in plain sight and we can learn from them. He then goes on to list 4 of them:
Looking at these 4 leadership styles I thought to myself that when we actually look at leaders, there seems to be a mix of all of them. There must be vision when vision is needed. There must be an ethical stand for a company to take. There must be an attitude of serving when required and there must be empathy.
The Bible says in Luke 6:31 “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. That’s the key. When you are down and out, when you’ve hit rock-bottom, when failure is staring you in the face, when a marketing campaign has fallen flat, you know all the reasons why it has happened. What you need at that time is empathy, for somebody to come alongside and let you know that they feel for you. Ultimately empathy brings back trust and trust is one of the key components that you and I can have in our relationships for an effective leadership style that will grow the companies that we work for.
God Bless You All.
Peter Bregman says that they were all in the foyer of the house. She sat on the bottom step of the stairs, swim bag still on her shoulder, staring into space almost expressionless. Her dad said, “Honey, there are a lot more swim meets in the season. You’ll have other chances to win.”
Peter Bregman told her, “The fact that you left the block prematurely means you were at your edge, trying not to waste a millisecond in hesitation. That’s the right instinct. You misjudged the timing but that’s ok. The more you lose it, the better you’ll get.” Then his wife joined in and said, “Every swimmer on every team has been disqualified at some point. It’s part of the sport. I’m sure your coach will help you practice your start before the next meet.” Her mom added, “And you’ll figure out exactly when to spring off the block so that you don’t waste a second, but you don’t dive too early either. You’ll get it.”
But nothing that they all said seemed to have any impact on her. Nothing changed her expressionless stare. Then her grandmother Mimi walked over, sat down next to her, put her arm around Dana and just sat there quietly. Eventually Dana leaned her head on her grandmom’s shoulder, after a few moments of silence, her grandmother kissed the top of her head and said, “I know how hard you work at this, honey. It’s sad to get disqualified.” And at that point Dana began to cry. The grandmother continued to sit there with her arm around Dana, not saying anything. Eventually Dana looked up at her grandmom, wiped her tears and simply said, “Thanks, Mimi.”
Peter Bregman said, “I thought every leader, every manager, every team member should have seen this. All of us, except her grandmother, missed what Dana needed. We tried to make her feel better by helping her see the advantage of failure, putting the defeat in context, teaching her to draw lessons from it and motivating her to work harder and get better so it doesn’t happen again. But she didn’t need any of that. She already knew it and if she didn’t, she would figure it out on her own. The thing she needed, the ting she couldn’t give herself and the thing that her grandmother reached out and gave her was empathy.
The empathetic response to failure is not only the most compassionate but is also the most productive. Why? Because empathy communicates trust and people perform best when they feel trusted.
Empathy. Sometimes we give a lot of sympathy --- and the key is empathy.
What is empathy? A formal definition of empathy is the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives. It’s our capacity to recognize the concerns other people have. Empathy means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes or seeing things through someone else’s eyes. That’s the definition that Bruna Martinuzzi gives us in her article ‘What’s Empathy got to do with it’ from her book ‘The Leader as a Mensch: Becoming the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow’.
Do you and I have empathy, enough of it in our workplaces, in the things that we are doing? Sometimes we dismiss the right brain activity in leadership and in management. Empathy at its core, is a right brain activity because it’s a ‘feeling’ thing. Yet at its very core empathy is the oil that keeps relationships running smoothly. And relationships are so important for the smooth running of companies.
Dr. Antonio Damasio in his book “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain” says, “patients who have damage to part of the brain associated with empathy, showed significant deficits in relationships even though their reasoning and learning abilities remained intact.” Why are relationships so important?
Dr. Daniel Goleman writing an article entitled ‘What Makes a Leader?’ isolates 3 reasons why empathy is so important;
- The increasing use of teams, which he refers to as cauldrons of bubbling emotions. That is so true. When teams get together, emotions are at a high and empathy is crucial in getting these teams to function together.
- The rapid pace of globalization with cross cultural communication easily leading to misunderstanding. The global village or ‘The world is flat’ as Friedman says. There’s so much that rests on relationships and how important communication is to keep those relationships intact. Leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with people around them; they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle but important ways.
- The growing need to retain talent. In today’s world of high attrition, how do you keep good talent with you? You keep it by maintaining good relationships as well.
I want to close with an article that I read by Rich Karlgaard. He says, “At the recent Forbes Global CEO Conference in Kuala Lumpur in SE Asia, my colleague Ferguson, editor of Forbes Asia, led a panel on leadership. What struck me, and not for the first time, was the variety of leadership styles that work and work really well. There is no single leadership secret. There are many; they are hiding in plain sight and we can learn from them. He then goes on to list 4 of them:
- The visionary leadership style and how Helmut Panke of BMW epitomized that. During his tenure, vision and brand became one and the same thing. Steve Jobs of Apple, John Mackey of Whole Foods, all examples of visionary leaders.
- The humble servitude leadership style as demonstrated by Wal-Mart chairman S. Robson Walton. He has taken Wal-Mart to a new level from $55 billion when his father was leading to $400 billion from 1962 to now. The leadership style that Rob Walton has developed is one that listens, even to critics, and has prospered.
- The moral or ethical style of leadership, Francis Yeoh, head of Malaysia’s YTL Corp, which builds utility plants, high speed rail service in hotels. He was an outspoken Christian in a Muslim majority company. In other words, there’s no room for ethical lapses and yet Yeoh says the moral way is the only way to go.
- The empathetic leadership style. That is so crucial. Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, was a legendary empathetic leader. He would roll up his sleeves; inspire his engineers, walking the floors listening to their concerns. Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines was another; today has some of the happiest flight attendants in the skies.
Looking at these 4 leadership styles I thought to myself that when we actually look at leaders, there seems to be a mix of all of them. There must be vision when vision is needed. There must be an ethical stand for a company to take. There must be an attitude of serving when required and there must be empathy.
The Bible says in Luke 6:31 “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. That’s the key. When you are down and out, when you’ve hit rock-bottom, when failure is staring you in the face, when a marketing campaign has fallen flat, you know all the reasons why it has happened. What you need at that time is empathy, for somebody to come alongside and let you know that they feel for you. Ultimately empathy brings back trust and trust is one of the key components that you and I can have in our relationships for an effective leadership style that will grow the companies that we work for.
God Bless You All.
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