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#103 The E-Suite with Neal Frick
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"As we navigate the post-COVID landscape, the need for intentionally empathetic leadership has never been clearer.."
Neal and I delve into the profound impact of empathy on cultivating thriving workplace cultures and how we can scale this skill, particularly at more senior levels of the organisation.
Empathy is often referred to as a 'soft skill' but is actually one of the hardest to enact and is more than a soft skill—it’s a strategic advantage. Executives and leaders who embrace empathetic practices are witnessing tangible benefits in business metrics, marketing, and branding.
We discuss debunking common myths about leadership and collaboration in organisations and conclude that it’s time to challenge the status quo and embrace the paradigm shift. Engaging in courageous conversations, addressing conflicts with sensitivity, and creating a shared vision through empathetic confrontation can be powerful and strategic tools for organisational transformation.
Neal shares his experience, insights and research from his book 'the E suite' and from his operational daily life as CEO of Cybercore Technologies.
The main insights you'll get from this episode are :
- The shift in work-life balance during Covid saw people and empathetic leadership come first as opposed to empathy being considered a soft skill and not representative of ‘strong’ leadership.
- Executive leaders must seek to apply empathy and openness by understanding context and emotional states and making decisions based on this – it is not about ‘niceness’ and should be reframed as relationship building.
- The concept of business(-focused) empathy is about understanding the people you work with and using it as a tool to help with decision-making, e.g. how to deal with a diseased tree branch that impacts the tree as a whole.
- Strategically impactful decisions for a business involve the deliberate and intentional use of empathy as a leadership skill and lever - empathetic confrontation is linked to collective vision and organisational transformation.
- The most impactful transformations come from a place of safety and understanding the context so that transformation is not combative but involves all parties to solve a common problem.
- Create unity, not homogeneity by creating a level of trust - intense conversations in a trusted and safe environment can be very productive and senior leaders can create the conditions for empathetic discussion by saying transparently what is going on, inviting people to talk to them and creating psychological safety.
- Empathy is not always the solution but personal agency can be leveraged using effective communication, for example, by meeting with people for a disclosed reason; not letting emotional states come into play; monitoring reactions; looking for underlying issues and finding constructive solutions.
- Post-Covid, there is more openness to empathy generally but still many generational differences in terms of what makes a workplace successful, although it is clear that people-first policies affect the bottom line.
- Talent managers have an opportunity to inform leaders of the impact of empathy using bare metrics (e.g. the cost of firing/hiring v. retraining) or demonstrating the proven ROI of empathy.
- Leaders must hold themselves and others accountable and practice empathy until they are conversant in it – if they lend their voice to the conversation, people are more disposed to talking.
- Transformation instigates fear, which thrives in quiet and darkness, so it is important to talk to those who will be impacted, be transparent about the process and honest about the issues.
- Small changes within an organisation can transform an individual’s experience and future leaders should want to make the workplace the best possible place it can be.
Find out more about Neal here :
https://www.amazon.com/Suite-Empathetic-Leadership-Generation-Executives/dp/1626349940
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