Developing Empathy – Today’s Must-Have Skill

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells his daughter, Scout: “You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” What he was describing was empathy – the ability to understand another person’s experiences and emotions; to share someone else’s feelings.

Empathy has been called the most critical skill for the 21^st century.  With our increasingly diverse and global workforce, the ability to connect with others and consider varying perspectives are essential to effective leadership, high performing teams and strong customer relationships. 

In a study reported in the Harvard Business Review, a group from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism asked business leaders across the US to describe the attributes executives must have to be successful in today’s economy. The five critical attributes they listed were: adaptability, cultural competence, 360-degree thinking, intellectual curiosity, and empathy. A number of the leaders interviewed placed empathy at the top of the list.

Why is empathy so important? Making an emotional connection with someone through shared understanding breaks down barriers (differences) and helps build trust, which is the basis for any relationship. Trust between leader and employee, trust among team members, trust between client and sales professional.

Empathy is a key component of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which is defined by Psychology Today as the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. It has been shown to be one of the strongest predictors of performance.  Today EQ is considered just as important as IQ (if not more so) for career success. In fact, 90% of top performers are high in EQ (TalentSmart).

How would you rate your ability to empathize with others? And what can you do to increase it?  Here are some tips for becoming more empathetic:

Develop self-awareness. What internal/external barriers prevent you from trying to “climb inside another person’s skin?” Think about people in your past or present who have different backgrounds, experiences, education, opinions – what could you have done/do to better understand where they’re coming from?

Practice listening. Really listening.  Stephen Covey said, “Most of us don’t listen with the intent to understand, we listen with the intent to reply.”  Hold off on formulating a response, block out all other distractions and just listen. Try to do this with a variety of people so you get in the habit of listening to people with different perspectives than yours. Strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know. Give them your full attention. You’ll be amazed at what you learn.

Withhold judgment. It’s been said that we form an opinion of someone within the first 30 seconds of meeting them. Don’t. Allow yourself to hear their story. Try to picture in your mind the scenario they describe.

Look for the emotion. Body language says a lot. In fact, it accounts for 55% of the impact of a message. What might the person be feeling that they aren’t saying?

Change your lens. Now imagine how you’d feel in the situation they’ve described.  How would you have responded? What impact would the experience have had on your behavior, your view of the world? We all have our personal “perception ladders” based on our upbringing, education, and experiences.  Being able to view someone else’s perception ladder and understanding how it got that way will help you to adapt yours.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when emotions were a topic rarely discussed in the workplace. Not that they didn’t exist. We’ve all see the tirades of tyrannical leaders, and the tears left in their wake.  Thankfully, things have changed.  Today, the ability to identify, acknowledge and manage your emotions is seen as a highly desirable (and talked about!) skill.

Lead on,

Rebecca

People are Complex Beings, Not Types

Chances are, at some point in your career you have taken at least one personality assessment.  As a result of that assessment, you may have been categorized as a particular type – a “driver,” or an “expressive,” or an “introvert” or an “S” or an “ENFJ” or a “Green” or any of the other labels assigned by many of the assessment tools on the market.  Sound familiar? And how did being categorized make you feel? Like part of an exclusive group? Or did it make you hesitate before stretching yourself into something that didn’t quite map to your “type”?

“I’m an introvert so there’s no way they’ll consider me for a sales position.”

At Lumina Learning we don’t believe in labels. Humans are far too complex to be categorized as EITHER/OR, or abridged into one of a set of personality types.  Reducing the complexity of the human personality into such a narrow scope can limit an individual in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. It is both limited and limiting. And it’s not based on the latest research.  In a recent interview with one of my clients, Insigniam, Lumina Learning CEO Stewart Desson said, “It’s quite funny that so many people are attached to typing models in businesses when the scientific models say types don’t exist. People who use typing models, in my opinion, are dated, and they’re not looking at the latest scientific evidence.”

In addition to limiting someone’s potential, being categorized as a particular type also gives people an easy out when explaining their behavior. If someone is “typed” as a take-charge personality they may think it gives them license to step on toes or to be overly aggressive to get things done.

“That’s just who I am.”

Lumina Learning’s assessment, Lumina Spark, is a more innovative, comprehensive and realistic approach that focuses on traits, not types.  It recognizes the complex contradictions that make each one of us unique. For example, an individual may have both introvert AND extravert qualities; they can be tactical AND strategic; they can focus on results, AND also care about the people.

Based on the latest academic research in the “Big Five” personality traits, as well as certain elements of Jungian theory, the Lumina framework embraces the fact that each individual possesses opposing personality traits. It’s “AND” thinking versus “EITHER/OR” thinking. Lumina embraces the paradox. 

Lumina Spark achieves this more comprehensive view by looking at 8 aspects and 24 qualities, and measuring these along a continuum to create a unique portrait for each individual. And it goes deeper.  Each quality is measured for three personas:

1.       Your Underlying persona – who you are most naturally
2.       Your Everyday persona – how you “show up” based on what’s required of you at work
3.       Your Overextended persona – how you behave under stress

The Lumina model is built around understanding ourselves and others so that we can adapt our behavior and communicate and work better together. Individuals are complex, and should not be placed in boxes, limiting the beliefs about their effectiveness, their capabilities and their ability to develop and expand.

If you’d like to learn more about Lumina Spark, please contact me at info-us@luminalearning.com or 888.827.8855.

Leading from within,

Rebecca

Leveraging the “Hidden Gems” on Your Team

In my last blog, I gave you some tips for assessing your team in the areas of communication, effectiveness, openness, work efficiency, and respect among team members.  I hope by now you’ve had a chance to evaluate where your team is in these areas, and collectively decide on the things you need to do as a team to move forward.

In my work using Lumina Spark with teams, there are a couple of things we discover that provide tremendous benefits when it comes to team performance, team communication and managing team conflict. Lumina Spark looks at three persona: 1) the Everyday, which is how you show up at work based on your role and what’s expected of you; 2) the Underlying, which is how you behave more naturally, and when relaxed; and 3) the Overextended, which is how you behave when you are under stress.

Recognizing the Underlying persona and identifying the qualities associated with that persona can reveal some “hidden gems” that may have lain dormant because they were not perceived as needed in the current environment. This may provide an opportunity to move forward from an area where the team has been stuck, by leveraging one of those hidden gems. Not only will it help the team, it will help the individual become more engaged and motivated by having the opportunity to use a strength that has been idle.

Learning how team members behave when they are Overextended, and identifying the triggers that put them “in the grip” is extremely helpful in managing team conflict. As team members become more self-aware in recognizing their own triggers, they can learn to manage their responses (Emotional Agility, launching April 1 in the US) and avoid nonproductive conflict. A certain amount of conflict is healthy in sparking creativity and new ways of thinking, but when it’s not managed it has a detrimental effect.

Take a look at your current team initiatives. What are your goals, challenges, and needs?  Are there hidden gems within your team that could raise your effectiveness in meeting these goals? In addressing some of your challenges? As an answer to your needs?

Would you recognize the strengths someone on your team might bring to the table if, in fact, those strengths seem opposite to their currently recognized strengths and job role definition?  Are you aware of how to find the power of passion for your individual team members?  If you can tap into this, you don’t ever need to worry about employee engagement.

When the going gets rough, are you aware of how you, as a leader, respond? What are your triggers? What are the triggers for the individuals on your team and how do they respond to stress?

What can you do, as the leader, to get your team “out of the grip” and back to high performing?

You can learn the answers to these and more questions and begin to propel your team forward with Lumina Spark.  Contact me at info-us@luminalearning.com or 888.827.8855 to learn more.

Taking Your Team to the Next Level in 2016

January is typically the time when we reflect on the past year and plan for the new one. What went well last year? What needs to change? Where do I want to be, and what do I want to be doing by this time next year? How will I get there? Goals. Objectives. Plan of action.  We do this as individual contributors, and as leaders.

But how often do we do it as a team?

If you want to take your team to the next level, it’s important to take a step back and assess what the team needs. How do you, as a team member or as the team leader, rank the team in areas that contribute to team success – communication, achieving goals, openness to ideas, work efficiency, respect?

When I engage with an organization to use Lumina Spark with one of their teams, I begin by asking the team 5 key questions. This gives me a baseline, and helps identify the areas where the team is most in need of development.  In order to move the team forward, we need to know where it’s been. I then ask each team member and the leader, to write down one thing the team could do to develop to the next level.  The data and ideas resulting from this exercise add context to the work we do during the Lumina session, and help us arrive at a team initiative by the end of the session. The work is practical and relevant.

If you want to move your team to the next level in 2016, I suggest you go through this exercise to rate your team on the 5 key areas of highly successful teams. You may be surprised at what you find out. And it will help you identify and prioritize initiatives to make things better.

Rank your team on the 5 Key Areas for Team Success:

Use a 1-5 scale ranking with 5 being the highest score.

1.       Effective communication of the team

2.       Team’s effectiveness toward task/goal completion

3.       Team’s openness to team members’ ideas

4.       Work efficiency on the team

5.       Respect among team members

Then, ask each team member to answer one qualitative question on the team: What one thing could this team do to take itself to the next level?

On one team I worked with recently, nearly every person identified “clear roles and responsibilities” as ‘the thing’ that would help move the team to the next level. This was also reflected in the scores from the 5 questions, where “work efficiency” scored the lowest, no doubt due to confusion around roles and responsibilities.

The most successful teams are those made up of individuals with diverse skills and experience, different personalities, and varying points of view. Lumina Spark helps identify differences and similarities and provides insight to any gaps on the team. For example, if the majority of the team is strong in “big picture thinking” the team may generate a lot of ideas, but have difficulty executing on those ideas.  Lumina Spark produces breakthroughs for team transformation. A Spark team assessment will not only highlight the gifts and talents of your team members ‘collectively’, it will uncover the “hidden gems” on your team – those strengths that lie dormant because they were perceived as not required or not of value in this situation.   These hidden gems can be leveraged to make the team more effective and achieve the team initiatives in an easy way by getting into the flow.  Qualified Lumina Practitioners are helping teams get into their flow every day.  It’s easy once the team becomes self-aware.    

If you’d like to learn more about Lumina Spark and how it can help your team, please contact me at info-us@luminalearning.com or 888.827.8855.