It is your job, we will have a meeting at 8:00 am because it is within working hours, someone else can take your child to school.
I was hearing this from a friend, a single parent, who was told this at a remote, purpose-driven company.
Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.
Compassion as the perception and understanding of the suffering of others as well as the desire and action to alleviate, reduce or eliminate the painful situation.
Importance
Leaders need to be able to step back from their position and understand what their subordinates and their clients are going through to meet the needs.
Leaders should strive for these attitudes to exist within the work area as this will lead to:
- their subordinates having a better performance
- their clients having a better experience and greater satisfaction
- having an improved work culture in general.
Just think about this:
MY problems are the most serious for ME even though they seem tiny compared to yours
My context and yours are different.
Empathy and Compassion for Employees
There are many ways leaders can show empathy and compassion to their team members:
- actively hear them
- create positive work environments
- give support
- give adequate feedback
- offer training and education resources
- take care of your well-being such as health or free time
- take care of the balance between life and work
But the most important thing would be making decisions together.
A question to always keep in mind is:
Why is my employee my employee?
Empathy and Compassion for Clients
It is necessary to understand that customers are not only looking for products and services, but companies with which to identify. Like an employee, they want to feel cared for, understood, and respected.
Why is my client my client?
Concluding
The question they always ask me is:
How do you manage to be empathetic? How do you learn to be compassionate?
It’s very simple: Talking
The most practical way is to talk; discuss in the channel of the service that you use, maybe do some video call, whatever, but talking and sharing ideas brings us closer and makes us know the context of the other person: it familiarizes us.