Leadership Skills
The Empathic Leader
By Brian Ward
Apr 6, 2007 - 7:12:50 PM

Listen Up! Most of us have difficulty in really listening. Although we live in a technology driven world, where the promise of faster, easier and better quality communications is made daily, the reality is that this outcome remains as elusive as ever.

Our span of attention has dwindled to ‘point & click’. (If you don’t believe this, try waiting for a computer program or a web site to load, and measure your frustration if it takes longer than 10 seconds.) Organizations of all types, profit, non-profit, government, non-government have been caught in this ‘faster is better’ myth. After all, speed is something tangible, something you can measure objectively. In addition to cost, speed as a measure of corporate performance has in many instances won out over quality. The latter, because of difficulty in measuring it ‘objectively’, in many cases has been given lip service and the inevitable kiss-off.

This heavy accent on speed does not allow us to slow down long enough to catch what another person might be trying to tell us. In the article The Timely Leader we cover the topic of ‘timing’, which is altogether different from ‘speed; but we sometimes get the two mixed up.

In this article, we will focus our attention on how to slow things down sufficiently to make intelligent and focused discussions a core competency for you and your organization, and in so doing strengthen the relationships that exist between people and between ideas. The art of conversation can become a major competitive advantage for you.

How good are you at conversation?
Imagine the following scenario. You are at a party, and are engaged in a conversation that is really stimulating. Not a heavy intellectual debate, just a conversation about a topic for which you have a point of view, an interest in.

You notice that other groups at the party are looking in the direction of your group, some in an apparently envious way. They may even be contemplating joining your fun group. Just then the host pops her head in and says “Stop having so much fun, you’re making us all jealous!”

Then suddenly it hits you.

Why can’t all conversations be like this? Why can’t we have conversations like this ALL THE TIME at work, instead of those interminable meetings that get nowhere and seem to take on a life of their own?

How to have quality conversations
When was the last time you had a really good conversation with someone? Hold on a minute…before you answer that, here are some conditions that would need to be met in order for that conversation to be “good”…

• No phone calls, no background noise,uninterrupted time, no preoccupation
• Open agenda
• Descriptive versus evaluative discussion (i.e. non-judgmental disclosure of thoughts and feelings)
• Acknowledgement of equal status of participants during the conversation
• Problem orientated versus controlling
• Spontaneous, rather than strategic
• Empathic versus neutral

Now, answer that question.

Are you surprised by your answer? It seems that in the rapid pace of our times and the nature of organizational life, we may have lost, or misplaced, the simple art of conversation. If you were to ask leaders or members of a team where the barriers are within their work place, the response you would likely get would be related to the lack of processes within the organization to improve the quality and effectiveness of communication.

Bringing the art of conversation back into your work life might be the answer!