2.    Empathy

If any of my coaching clients were in the room right now, you’d hear an audible groan.  I can, and do, bore for Australia on the subject of empathy.  I don’t mean woolly-minded, tell me your troubles type empathy.  I mean strategic, focused listening, and then applying your analytical skills to what you’ve heard.  Learning to hear the unspoken language in what other people are trying to tell you.  The ability to put yourself behind someone else’s eyes, and see what they’re seeing.  The skill to intuit why they are behaving the way they are.  If you understand the motivation, you can influence the behavior.

My first demonstration of the importance of empathy came when I was promoted to National Sales Manager of Family Circle magazine, my first foray into the wonderful world of print.  It was my first time being responsible for a sales team in another State.  The Melbourne manager had been significantly under-performing for some time, and one of my first acts was to move him on. 

This move was greeted in the Melbourne market with deafening silence – by which I mean that all our clients just stopped talking to me, and it took me months to figure out what had happened.

Well actually, I never did figure it out, someone took pity on me and told me – “You should never have fired him.  We knew he was hopeless, but he was our mate, and we made sure you got your fair share of whatever money we had to spend.  We looked after him, and you shouldn’t have moved on him without checking with us first.”

At the time, of course, I was outraged that they should have the impertinence to think I should have asked them first, but of course, in a weird sort of way, they were right.  I should have brought them with me.  I should have explained what I needed to do, and why, and I shouldn’t have surprised them. 

I’m astonished as I listen to my coaching clients at how frequently we still don’t take the time to understand what’s motivating the people we need to influence.  Younger people in particular can verbalize their own feelings with alacrity, but can seem genuinely bewildered when you ask them how their colleagues may be feeling about the same issue.

Empathy is a learned skill.  Anyone can learn how to do it, and like everything else, the more we practice, the better we get at it.

Someone who is really skilled at empathy can make you feel like you’re the only person in the room – it’s a great management technique, and a really rewarding social skill.  We would all benefit by being better at it.