By Disha Solanki, Managing Partner & Business Strategy Expert
Being empathetic is a business strategy that is often overlooked. Being able to put yourself in another’s shoes will not only allow you to connect with your team and become more human to them, but will also strengthen the effectiveness of your and your team’s engagement with customers, delivering them a more personalized and genuine customer experience.
Business owners who come across as emotionless humans will be difficult to trust, making it hard to gain loyalty, leading to high staff turnover with lower involvement, less communication and a less productive workforce.
Priorities are different depending upon who you are, and where you fit into your corporate structure.
As a leader, your number one priority is your team. Your team’s number one priorities are your customers – and each other.
Everyone has a bad day: we are all human, and the likelihood is that your team will see the best and the worst in you. Ensuring that they see the best in you more often than they see the worst will ensure that they empathize with you and will allow them to be your biggest support at times when business threatens to become overwhelming. YOUR team will see you through those times.
Taking the approach with your team that “the world does not revolve around you” is completely counterintuitive to what you tell them when a client walks through your doors, makes a call or drops you an email. The motto of most businesses is that the world revolves around the client.
The truth is each member of the team will be thinking that THEIR world does actually revolve around them.
It is THEIR life and most of the time they are thinking about their lives, their families, their hopes, their aspirations, their health…
Meanwhile you are thinking about YOUR life and how YOU are feeling: you have too many jobs on the go and an endless “to do” list. But YOU are not more special than your team; being part of their world is critical to business longevity, performance and work satisfaction.
Be open, willing to listen and encouraging. Your employee retention rates will be better and company morale will increase. There is nothing worse than anyone waking up in the morning, facing a family emergency they need to attend to, and instead being forced to think about how their boss will react. Fostering an environment of mutual respect, trust and boundaries is a culture that will be respected by all, including yourself.
As the leader of a team with varying emotional needs, developing your empathy skills is crucial if you want a better connected team while building rapport and trust.
You will be able to see situations from multiple perspectives and make better decisions as a result. When leaders can empathize with their team, they create a safe and supportive environment where people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, many of which could be game changing or might elevate your business in completely unforeseen ways.
THE most amazing environment can be created when you have a business full of smart, talented, giving people wanting to help each other as well as clients. It takes time to build a business full of givers and the likelihood is you may never reach 100% but when you have a team of generous, grateful individuals, magic happens.
If being in business was easy, everybody would be Entrepreneurs and Business Owners – and most people aren’t (or shouldn’t be).
The question to ask yourself is, would you like to be working for you? Be honest.
Yours in success,
Disha
PS: Would you like to see what over 150 businesses who have worked with Hill & Co. are raving about, including some of the largest retailers, brands, jewelry & diamond manufacturers globally from Blue Nile and Rapaport to fashionable newcomers like Futura and Cast?
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