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By attuning to non-verbal emotional clues of people and responding with empathy, Leaders make

connections, build consensus, develop teams, relationships says M R CHANDRAMOWLY.

Sigmund Freud said Mortals can keep no secret. If their lips are silent, they gossipwith their fingers; betrayal forces its way through every pore.

Emotions are mostly expressed through clues than in words. When you noticefidgeting of a listener it indicates disinterest. If you are able to pick up suchemotional clues like tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions, you can understand

the concealed true feelings and life in the business world.

Empathy is the ability to understand how others perceive situations and seeingthings from the value and belief system of others. The crucial element of empathy isthe capability to fully immerse oneself in others view point and yet be able toremain wholly apart.

Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard psychologist has devised a test on empathy, the PONS(Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity). In this test, they play recordings of emotionaltalks of various situations. With the operating electronic filters, the listener canhear the emotions but not make out the words. Candidates are asked to identify ifthe man was talking about divorce or arguing with subordinate, thus differentiatinganger with irritation. The research data shows that the scores did not differ by race,

sex or educational background indicating the accuracy of identifying the ability tograsp the other persons perspective. The benefits are being able to read thefeelings from non-verbal clues for getting adjusted for better sensitivity andempathy.

Most of us spend 70 per cent of the day in communicating and 45 per cent of thattime listening. We all know what it means to really listen. It is truly understandingand accepting the other person. Empathy is like walking a mile in another personsmoccasins. To be able to sense feelings of others, we must be capable of sensing

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Empathy as Relationship Builde

Published Articles of Chandramowl Leadership Competency Series

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those of our own.

When I was heading HR of an IT company, the new CEO, in his own style wanted tobring about a practical team building of General Mangers. He shifted us to newcabins which were rebuilt nearer to his chambers, moving us away from individual

functional groups. His intension was to ensure all the functional heads see eachother regularly. More than this, he wanted to bring the two GMs together, who werenot getting along well with each other. Few weeks later, we noted that theirrelationship worsened more after this new set up. I spoke to both of themseparately to highlight the seriousness and consequences of their behaviour. Afterrepeated attempts I could find out the reason. It was a big shock and surprise to me.One of them did not respond to the morning greetings of the other. The person whogreeted and did not get the response, thought this is the end of his relationshipwith the other one. I told the other person the fact that it was unwitting act and thathe just did not notice the waving of the greeting hand in an unmindful state. Itopened a window of dialogue between them. After the storm and norm they realisedthe importance of eye contact and courtesy of exchanging greetings.

Sensing others perspective

If you want to get to know another person, you need to be empathic, tolerant andgenuinely concerned about his/her welfare. If one is not really concerned about thebest interests of a person better not to pretend to be. The key element of empathyis reflecting to what the facial expression conveys. A Leaders effortless tuning toreciprocate posture, movement and facial expressions of others is the behaviouralindicator of empathy. Such leaders are seen as more accepting and less critical or

judgmental.

Attributes

A Leader with this competency, understand the sense of teams, their intensions andtensions, needs and deeds, what they value and thus know what motivates them.Empathy is a positive emotion which helps you to know what a person believes, whyand what he/she could do in a situation.

Parents are primary teachers of Empathy. If they discourage aggression and aresharing, caring and empathic themselves they are more likely to produce altruisticchildren (Kohn, 1988). Altruism depends first on your liking and accepting others,second on your being concerned for others welfare, and third on your feelingsresponsible for helping others in need (E.Staub). Research has documented that awarm, friendly group or environment encourages more helping responses than acold, suspicious, punitive situation. The easy way to develop emotional empathy isto observe and spend more time with people who are considerate and generous to

others.

Building relationships

Why are so many relationships unhappy? Sydney Jourard and Ted Landsman (1980)say, a healthy relationship has (1) Open, honest communication (2) Reasonableexpectations or demands of each other (3) Concern about the others well being and(4) Freedom for both to be themselves - which are empathic attitudes.

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What interferes with health relationship? Hamachek (1982) says, (1) Weunderestimate the changes we need to make but push too hard other people tochange (2) Not liking ourselves is unusually associated with not liking other people(3) Shyness inhibits closeness and intimacy with others and (4) Playing deceptive,self-serving games will drive others away. What can be done about these barriers

of empathy?

Games people play

Eric Berne (1964) contends that three undesirable needs motivate the games weplay with other people which actually interfere with friendship and closeness. Thedestructive needs are (1) Expressing hostility or putdowns towards others, (2)Expressing self-hatred or self-criticism (3) Ego-boosting by exaggerating onesassets or someone elses faults. It is an unconscious, mean and selfish game weput on designed by the child in us. Suppose you volunteer to help a workingcolleague to solve his toughest office problem. If there is a part of you (child) whichunintentionally makes the solution more difficult or confuse him than it needs to be,then you are probably playing a game. You are not really helping although you may

consciously think, that is your motive. When a friendly person says I really likeyou, what he could be hinting is Notice how wonderful I am. You are reallygreat means Now, like me and say you too. If one says Women are soemotional it means we males are superior.

Dance of deception

Self-deception is another factor interfering with our relationship with others.Lerners book The Dance of Deception describes many ways of avoiding truth andtheir consequences. Excuses are an excellent example of deception. We giveexplanations when we have goofed, to make us look as good as possible under thecircumstances. I didnt do it, I did it but its not so bad, I didnt think it was

serious is what we say when we fail to be helpful. Excuses are meant to say I ambetter or more able than you might think, based on what you just saw me do.

Empathy enhancement is possible if we avoid inaccurate reflection while respondingto others. Our statements like You will feel better tomorrow or the real problem issomewhere else indicates I know better than you response. An executiveapproaches you as a Leader and shares with you his concern about work pressure. Ifyou respond by saying Oh, everyone has this pressure, dont worry about it, it islike saying Dont talk to me about it any more. Empathy, the Leadershipcompetency can be developed by learning its five sub-sets; (1) Sensing andunderstanding the feelings and expectations of others, (2) Recognising strengthsand developmental needs of others to coach and boost their abilities, (3) Grasp acustomers perspective with a service orientation, (4) Relate well to people of varied

background converting diversity into opportunity and (5) Reading the social andpolitical currents accurately to develop sound networking. Empathic response is noteasy to learn, but is possible. Competencies can be practiced and learnt though noone can master all the knowledge and life experience involved.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that itbehoves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.