Exhibitor News

In all my years of working, I have come across very few truly empathetic leaders who are genuine in their treatment of their employees and customers.

Some I wish I can work with longer when I choose to move on for other reasons as I know they would have taught me a lot more than I know now in terms of thinking, doing and communicating with empathy.

Empathy is something not every senior management has unfortunately and it’s very telling in their behind-the-scenes speech and actions.

It’s undervalued simply because these management layers don’t really get rated on their ability to connect with their employees and treat them with empathy.

I have witnessed many failures in terms of management in 1) not communicating empathetically to their people, 2) not showing true empathy in trying to understand the challenges faced by their workforce and 3) not listening with empathy when their employees provide feedback through forums.

It ends up being lip service or more trying to appear to do what is expected of them to look good and not because they genuinely care.

Classic examples are when there are organizational layoffs or restructuring.

The onset of how decisions are made have nothing to do with empathy but rather the bottom line of cost, profitability and returns.

That is why things never really change for the better in the longer term for most organizations and their management that make decisions without empathy.

Over the years, I have been privy to how such decisions are made, sometimes callously and without even sound logic. Rather, it’s more a stop-gap and band-aid approach where true impact on the people are not even considered in the decision-making process. People are merely faceless numbers unless these decision-makers themselves personally know the employees they are keeping or letting go.

What is worse though is the way such changes are communicated or not communicated to the workforce.

They talk about stock prices, shareholders equity and the pretext of how these changes will help their customers. They forget their employees, the backbone of the company carrying that mission on their shoulders and believing in the promises made during the town halls, leadership emails and pep talks.

Poorly worded communications, which is as clear as mud and clueless management sitting around trying to find the right things to say or lend some insights to their team doesn’t help either.

Good, solid, reliable and empathetic corporate communications is a dying art in this sense.

For any self respecting CEO, my advice is to at least make sure you have a solid and empathetic communications advisor if you, yourself are not empathetic by nature. Do not hide behind the excuses of the people under you by delegating the responsibility to them with poorly worded talking points or supporting information that comes in drips and drops.

Also, if you do choose to engage a professional consultant to help you with restructuring, do ensure they are not using a cookie cutter formula to templatize the reorganization and make that decision wholly for you.

Empathy might not bring you immediate revenue but it will have longer term benefits to the organization as you will make decisions that actually solve problems for both your customers and employees for the longer term.

Less attrition, less churn and more sustainable growth.