Five Things You Need to Know About Empathic Listening

Empathic listening is an interesting topic, and it’s a topic that also does not get the attention it so rightly deserves. What is empathic listening, and what does it mean to listen empathically? Also, what impact can it have on your team’s performance?

Empathic listening is the skill of listening to someone else, and really seeing things from the other persons perspective and feelings. I think Stephen Covey of the 7 Habits fame said it best, you want to describe the other persons point of view better than they can. Most people when listening to others, they just listen with the intent to respond with their own viewpoints or stories. Which is okay for most conversations, but when you really need to influence someone positively, or when someone comes to you that is having some challenges, you need more than just surface level attentive listening.

I had a team member once, who was struggling a bit in life and in his work. We had a chat, and he revealed that he was having some issues in his personal life. I tried to look at things from his perspective. I was understanding from him that he was taking care of all his family members before taking care of himself. I tried to counsel him on the metaphor of the air masks in planes, where you need to put your mask on first before putting others masks on. Meaning, if you don’t take care of yourself first, you will ultimately be in a lesser position to then take care of those around you. If I hadn’t been open to listening empathically to him, he probably would never have opened up to me about his challenges to begin with. That is why this stuff is so important.

When focusing on empathic listening with others, there are many benefits to yourself, your team, and your organization.

Below I relate five benefits that you need to know about listening to others empathically. In the future I will write about the how to and some good tactics to use.

1. Increases team performance-

When you are able to listen empathically to others, your team will know that you care about them as people and the challenges they are going through. This in turn will encourage them to buy into your vision as the leader. Which will then improve your team’s performance overall. It will certainly have that ripple effect. When you listen to others, it does not even need to be in a formal mentoring or counseling session. Usually, if you listen carefully, even to small talk chatter, you will get to know your team better, which will then enable you to find the resources to allow them to perform at a higher level.

2. Builds trust-

This is a major deposit into the emotional bank account of the person you are mentoring. It can also open yourself up to other points of view, and maybe build on some ideas that others may have. When you listen empathically, people will know that you care about them and their wellbeing, which in turn will build that trusting rapport that is so important to success.

3. Builds team cohesion-

As stated above, when you listen to others and put yourself in their shoes, you will be available to hear insights into others lives. This will then allow you to be in a better position to then know how to help your team get better. You cannot help your team get better if you don’t know exactly where they are coming from. And if you don’t know what makes your team tick, then you will never know, or experience the kind of team cohesion necessary to fulfill your vision.

4. Increases emotional intelligence-

When you listen empathically, you will also be leading by example for your team members. Which will then influence them to use the same skills with their own leadership team. It’s a downstream effect. This will then influence others to then listen empathically to their team and so on and so forth. Can you see how this would have a major impact on everyone’s emotional intelligence in general, and your team’s performance specifically?

5. Reminds us that we are human-

No matter what happens, in life or your business, we are just humans on this earth trying to get along with all the other humans we encounter daily. When you listen empathically to others, you give them psychological air so to speak. What that means is, everyone just wants to be heard and understood on a human level. We all get so busy with our lives; we sometimes forget to stop and realize that we need each other. For everything! So, don’t take that for granted, and listen to your teams’ problems and issues. You can’t fix all their problems, and that’s okay too. They just want to be heard, handled with respect, managed with dignity, and treated like the human beings that we all are.

And there you have it, some things that are important about empathic listening, and that will help you to improve your team. If you found this article helpful, please share it with others.