SUMMARY 

• In this episode, I'll cover a couple of techniques that you can use to grow your empathy muscle because in order to be successful as a leader you need to understand and appreciate others, which involves developing empathy.  
• I used to coach a CEO on his leading ability. Part of the process was asking for feedback from his loved ones and colleagues and the consistent answer was that he had the right answers, but needed to show more empathy.
• The first thing you can do when faced with the same situation is to acknowledge what the other person is going through. We can acknowledge them by repeating what they said to us. It shows understanding, puts you in the same position as they are, and creates an empathic link.
• After creating that empathic link, pause and ask yourself, "How would the most empathetic version of you reply?" While you are finding that empathic response, you are allowing yourself to reflect and respond with wisdom.
• When you do these two simple techniques, you will see that there are more and more opportunities to be empathic in your business and life. Repeating these techniques will create a more empathic connection, which will result more successful and stronger leadership.

TRANSCRIPT

As a leader in business or at home, one of the most powerful skills that you can develop is empathy; empathetic communication, empathetic understanding, empathetic leadership. And unless you develop that empathy, you'll never lead properly either in your home or at work. And so today, I want to talk to you about a couple of techniques that you can use to grow your empathy muscle.

Several months ago, I was having a conversation with a CEO, coaching him on his leadership ability, both at work and at home. And one of the things that we did was ask him to go and solicit feedback from his spouse and his kids and from his colleagues at work, and the feedback was super consistent. Everyone said that often he had the right answers and he knew what to do and he was great at providing advice, but that the edges were a little bit too sharp. He needed to soften those edges, and what we zeroed in on was that he needed to show more empathy.

And there's two simple things that you can do to immediately engage and practice more empathetic communication, both at home and at work. And the first thing that you can do is when anyone ever asks you for advice or is struggling, first seek to acknowledge before you advise or before you begin to coach them. And we acknowledge by simply replaying what it is that they said to us. We acknowledge by making sure that we go to the same place that they are. So if they're feeling a little bit down and depressed about something, we want to create that empathetic link by saying, "Yeah, I can see why you're feeling down or depressed about this. Yeah, I can understand why this is a bit of a challenging or a tough time for you." We need to make that acknowledgement, that empathetic link to them. So first seek to acknowledge.

And the second thing that you can do is just pause. So after you've acknowledged, after you've created that empathetic link, that empathetic connection acknowledging where they are, perhaps replaying what they said, then just seek to pause before you respond. And ask yourself, "How would the most empathetic version of you reply?" Because there will be a response that you could associate with the most empathetic version of you, and all the other potential responses. And if you just pause and allow that wisdom to come in, you'll develop that empathy muscle.

And if you think about developing empathy in this way, every single day presents a whole bunch of opportunities to you. It's sort of like somebody's handing you a dumbbell, a weight, that says empathy on the barbell. And every conversation that you have is a chance for you to both acknowledge what the person is saying and then to complete the repetition by pausing before you respond, asking yourself, "What is the most empathetic way I could reply to this?" And then completing the rep, to develop your empathetic muscle, to develop your empathy muscle. And the more you do this, the stronger you'll get at it, the more empathetic your communication will become, and the more you will successfully lead, both at home and at work.