9 suggestions for using empathy actively and confidently as a manager

What is empathy? I have heard and experienced a lot about this in my work with teams and managers. Here are a few highlights:

• “Empathy is like failure.”
• “Appreciation is everything. My employees should feel good. Feel Well!”
• “This forced empathy powdered sugar about a lack of performance is annoying.”
• “This old white man should learn empathy first. Although – that’s not going to happen with him anyway.”

What is this thing – “empathy”. Seems to be important. Sometimes. But sometimes it also seems to get in the way.

My view: Empathy is something fascinating and complex. It is something that managers can (but don’t always have to) use confidently, actively and consciously and which has great potential for greater satisfaction, quality, performance and employee loyalty. Truly “high-performing” teams can only be built with empathy as an active leadership tool.

Empathy in leadership can be learned. Here are nine concrete suggestions to try out and some thoughts on empathy itself.

Empathy is about taking a holistic view of what moves and drives people and teams, and not just about feelings.

Feelings are not just there. They always have one or more triggers: objective reasons (e.g. content preferences, lack of knowledge), hard needs (e.g. material fears) or softer desires (e.g. belonging and affirmation). Feelings can have origins in the team’s previous history. Feelings can be triggered consciously or unconsciously and can be articulated or concealed. Feelings can mask each other – anger, for example, often conceals fear.

As a manager, empathy helps you to see these complex relationships and thus better understand how you can change the performance of the team and employees.

My first exercise is apparently quite simple. In suggestion 1, “pause“, take a mental break in tense situations and conflicts. Press the “stop button” and observe how quickly you and the person you are talking to come to conclusions, judgments and reactions – often accompanied by strong feelings (anger, fear). Take a deep breath, observe what is really happening and only draw conclusions, evaluate and act after you have taken a deep breath.

You may find that the difficulty here is that strong feelings “overtake” your conversation partner and you – you want to pause, but your feelings, your automatisms have long since reacted. This seemingly simple suggestion requires calm, composure – and a lot of practice.

The second exercise builds on this. In suggestion 2, the “conclusion ladder”, you use the pause to understand the conflict situation in more detail, for example, by following a simple structure. Take on the role of an observer and consciously go through the following three steps one after the other.

Step 1: Take time to observe the situation in all its facets without explaining or judging it yet	What do you hear and observe in others and in yourself? What happens on a non-verbal level (body language, tone, volume)? What feelings do you sense in the other person? Are you sure that the other person has these feelings, or are they perhaps your own feelings that you are projecting? What feelings do you sense in yourself? Are they your own feelings or do you absorb them from the situation (you then introject)? Where do you feel the temptation to explain or evaluate directly? Why?
Step 2: Take time to explain the situation without judging it yet	What are the triggers, the background to the wishes, feelings and statements? Are you sure that your explanation is correct? Try formulating two other possible explanations in your mind Ask those involved which explanation is the ‘right’ one You will find that many of the interesting situations are resolved when those involved realize that they were simply working from different, unspoken explanations
Step 3: Take time to understand assessments of the situation , only after observing and formulating possible explanations:	Why do you rate them like that? What is the background to the value scheme? How do the other parties involved assess the situation? Why? Ask if required. Here, too, you will find that situations are resolved when the parties involved realize that the actual issue of the conflict is different value systems and when these differences are dealt with.

Try out the pause and these three steps. Then reflect on what new perspectives and opportunities for action you have gained by pausing. Two simple tools for more empathy, with focus and a simple structure: pause – and: Observe, explain, evaluate!

A good manager actively and consciously decides how much empathy to use and when.

As a manager, you have goals (performance, quality, profitability, etc.). You use empathy and give your employees space. But you also work for the company and want to ensure that the defined goals are achieved. The team needs objectives, a defined framework and a playing field.

Here are two further suggestions on the subject of empathy:

Suggestion 3: Use empathy consciously, actively and in a situation-specific way

Be aware of what you want to achieve as a manager and how you want to develop your team, your employees and yourself in terms of content and relationships. Decide actively and confidently when and how much empathy you want to use depending on the situation:

• What is the set framework, the focus, the task?
• Where do you want change? Where are there external changes (projects, transformations, reorganizations, new employees or managers)?
• In which areas do you want to set a clear framework, clear boundaries?
• What are the issues at relationship level that need to be addressed? (Trust, constructive handling of conflicts, solution orientation, motivation, commitment, etc.)

Digression: some employees use empathic managers to create a stage for themselves – they take up space – and steal your time. Or employees with narcissistic tendencies use the empathy argument to plot against you or others. Recognize such situations and consciously prevent manipulation.

Suggestion 4: Cobbler, stick to your last!

If you open yourself empathetically (pause, inference ladder), you will find that strong feelings are often related to beliefs and dysfunctional behavior patterns of your employees (possibly also of yourself). We all carry our own backpacks.

As a manager, focus on your tasks, topics and goals. Give space to beliefs, inner unconscious drivers and dysfunctional behavioral patterns when talking to employees. Try not to belittle and push away your employees’ beliefs and behavioral patterns – that never works. Give them space.

But don’t try to work on your employees’ backpacks yourself – you are not their therapist. You don’t have the time for this and you have a different role. If necessary, the company or the employee concerned can seek specialized help (therapist, training, coaching).

Conflicts have a benefit. Empathy is a means of illuminating the connections behind conflicts, not “conjuring them away”.

Behind the fairly widespread false belief (“Conflict is bad. Empathy must make conflicts go away.”) is the opinion that conflicts are bad and only when things are harmonious, always nice and friendly between the manager and the team and within the team, then the manager and the team are ‘good’.

Conflicts are neither good nor bad. Conflicts have an essential function: they change teams and organizations, they resolve old, outdated issues and replace them with something new. As a manager, you consciously want to trigger or intensify some conflicts!

My suggestions:

Suggestion 5: Understand the conflict.

Use the pause and the conclusion ladder (suggestion 1 and 2) to better understand the conflict. Here are a few additional questions you can ask yourself:

• What is it about? And what is it really about?
• And what is behind it?
• How do the participants act? Are goals set or open?
• Is the conflict exploratory or rather absolute, often based on strong evaluations?
• Is the communication only sending, or is there communication in two directions?
• Is the dispute specific or rather generalized?

Suggestion 6: Decide confidently how to deal with the conflict.

• Perhaps you even want to intensify the conflict on a content- and solution-oriented level in order to use the different experiences in the team to find the best solution?
• And then you might also want to identify and resolve dysfunctional, toxic parallel processes and hidden issues at the relationship level?
• And use your empathic skills for this?

Excursus: Klaus Eidenschink has dealt with the topic of conflict much more systematically than is possible here in the newsletter in his fantastic booklet “The Art of Conflict”.

For here and now, under the heading “Empathy”, it is enough to remember: conflict has a purpose. As a manager, look at the “conflict anatomy” and then decide with confidence how you want to deal with the conflict.

Empathy starts with empathy for you as a manager.

External situations are reflected in our own world of feelings, thoughts and behavior. Or we reflect our own inner world to the outside world (“projection”). We resonate and allow others to resonate with us. This is completely natural, normal – and the basis of true empathy.

As a manager, you cannot and must not ignore the feelings that arise within yourself, the behavioral patterns and processes that take place and how you resonate with them. Only when you understand yourself empathetically will you find the peace of mind to use empathy for your employees and teams with confidence and actively.

Hence the last three suggestions:

Suggestion 7: Allow yourself to observe yourself. As a manager, you are always part of the system, the team, the situations and usually part of the conflicts. What emotions arise in you as a result, and when? Why? What is the background? What needs or imprints may lie behind it?

Suggestion 8: Act confidently, even if you feel positive or negative emotions in certain situations. Recognize when you are perhaps referring to external things too often, too quickly or too soon. If beliefs such as “he thinks I’m bad!”, “he’s against me!”, “he doesn’t appreciate me” are at work in you. Draw a clearer boundary between your feelings and the situation and thus avoid the “ego trap” or “introjection trap”.

Suggestion 9: Also be aware of the situations in which emotional processes spill out into the outside world. Know your feelings, fears, anger, their backgrounds and what energy any beliefs give you. Observe and understand how you reflect these inner patterns to the outside world.

Try out these suggestions in your day-to-day management work. Perhaps they will open doors to confident, calm leadership and greater success and satisfaction.

I hope you enjoy actively using empathy!