Many people have been quoted as saying versions of this, but Maya Angelou is probably the most recognizable person to have said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”<\/p>\n
She said it in 2003 which was only a handful of years after University of Toronto researcher, Dr. Wendy Levinson, published her study about why some doctors get sued for malpractice far more often than others.[1] What made the study particularly interesting is that doctors who had never been sued didn’t give higher quality information, didn’t make significantly less mistakes nor did they give more information about the medication they were prescribing. But the ones who had never been sued did these four things differently:<\/p>\n
A Gallup poll[2] on workplace engagement found the impact of a manager who was empathetic – not having above average empathy, but just regular old empathy – found employees were less likely to call in sick and more likely to stay at their job longer. Which is big business considering, according to the study, employee turnover can cost $25,000 to $100,000 and absenteeism can cost upwards of $9,000 per employee per year.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant is one of the greatest players in the NBA today and despite his sometimes snarly attitude in the press, other professional basketball players clamour to play with him? It makes you wonder why that could be.<\/p>\n
In the 2013\/2014 season, Kevin Durant, then a member of the Oklahoma Thunder won the league MVP. The award was given to him during an off-day during the first round of the playoffs and even though there was no game that day, fans packed the arena. What made the day special was who he chose to thank and what he said when thanking them. The average NBA MVP recipient thanks six people during their acceptance speech[3]. Kevin Durant thanked 42 people and took almost 20 minutes to let them know how he appreciated them and understood the pressure they were under being part of an NBA franchise.<\/p>\n
Empathy. It keeps you from getting sued, it helps the bottom line and it draws the best of the best to you.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately Edwin Friedman, in his book A Failure of Nerve, thinks empathy is standing in the way of great leadership.<\/p>\n
It’s somewhat forgivable as A Failure of Nerve was published in 2007. Friedman passed away in 2006 but if he had lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, would he dedicate a chapter to the fallacy of empathy? Maybe he still would because his argument that empathy has no place in leadership is based on it existing in hostile environments[4] and uses single cell organisms as an example of for how thriving must take place. Appreciating that it is an analogy, it’s a stretch to compare the dynamics of a workplace and the effectiveness of leadership to that of a malignant cell.<\/p>\n
Friedman suggests the great myth is that empathy prevents others from growing themselves because it takes responsibility from them [5] and in particular he cannot understand parents who cannot make consistent stands against a misbehaving child[6]. Ah, spoken like someone who themselves has no capacity for empathy.<\/p>\n
Those who can’t do, teach! I suppose.<\/p>\n
Curious to what studies or research he had done to base this claim on I went to the back of the book for a bibliography. There is none. Surely he must have cited a few scholars or other leaders after noting the word empathy only came into the English lexicon in the past 100 years where as sympathy and compassion have been around for over 400 and millennia respectively. But no. There is nothing other than his fairly impressive resume including 25 years as a marriage therapist and having served in the Johnson administration.<\/p>\n
Empathy is a disguise for weakness, anxiety and the rationalization of failure, he writes and you cannot have empathy when you should be “promoting responsibility for self in another through challenge.” But it’s simply not true. As Levinson, Gallup and Durant have proven, empathy is a key ingredient to having nerve as a leader.<\/p>\n
Questions to ask myself:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1] https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/article-abstract\/414233<\/p>\n
[2] https:\/\/www.gallup.com\/workplace\/351545\/great-resignation-really-great-discontent.aspx<\/p>\n
[3] https:\/\/leadingwithnice.com\/the-significance-of-kevin-durants-mvp-award-acceptance-speech\/<\/p>\n
[4] A Failure of Nerve, page 147<\/p>\n
[5] page 143<\/p>\n
[6] page 152<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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