I really do like people. Honest. I’m such an introvert, though, that focusing on others can leave me feeling drained.
However, it’s hard to be a leader without accepting the responsibility that leadership is about serving and empowering others – not yourself.
Leadership is about relationships and relationships require trust.
Relationships also require an ability to focus on others. Uh oh. I’m seeing a circular pattern here. I’m already feeling drained!
Daniel Goleman wrote in his Harvard Business Review article, “The Focused Leader,” that leaders who focus on others are people “who find common ground, whose opinions carry the most weight, and with whom other people want to work.”
That sounds about right. However, in order to focus on others, we need to understand and have a high degree of emotional intelligence.
In my last article, we discussed emotional intelligence in the context of focusing on yourself. In this article, we will discuss emotional intelligence in the context of focusing on others.
In his article, Goleman breaks down the components of empathy into three categories: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern.
Cognitive empathy is “the ability to understand another person’s perspective.” Emotional empathy is “the ability to feel what someone else feels.” Empathic concern is “the ability to sense what another person needs from you.”
Leaders demonstrating cognitive empathy have an “inquisitive nature.”
Goleman says we see the trait of cognitive empathy in people who are lifelong learners, who want to better understand people, and who are interested in how other people think.
If I heard him correctly, a leader with an “inquisitive nature” is someone who shifts their focus from the question, “What’s wrong with you?” to the question, “What happened to you?”
In other words, leaders with cognitive empathy want to know what a person’s life or background was like that led him or her to act or think a certain way. Unlike leaders with low emotional intelligence, leaders with cognitive empathy do not assume the worst about a person.
To read the rest of the article, please click here.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Comments (0)