Empathetic Leadership: How to Lead with Your Heart While Getting Results
When you think of the best manager you’ve ever had, who do you think of?
This is a question executive coach and author, Susan Steinbrecher, poses in her leadership development workshops. She then asks, “What made them the best manager?”
The response is often: they believed in me. They cared about me as a whole human being, not just a worker. They trusted me, respected me, empowered me.
They don’t say: they were a great strategic thinker, or they were a charismatic public speaker. It shows that interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence are more important than hard skills to employees.
That’s because our personal needs have to be met before we can be highly motivated to perform for a manager. Strategic thinking doesn’t drive loyalty, but feeling valued and respected does. From this, Heart-Centered Leadership was born; it is Steinbrecher’s response to realizing outdated, more autocratic leadership methods are less effective at engaging employees and producing results than leading with empathy.
What is an Empathetic Leadership Style?
Susan Steinbrecher’s journey into executive coaching was shaped by her early experiences as a successful young leader in the hospitality industry. Reflecting on this period, Steinbrecher acknowledges that her initial leadership style was heavily results-oriented, a common pitfall for many young, ambitious leaders.
The pressure to deliver results often led to frustration and impatience when her team did not perform to her expectations. This direct, no-nonsense style failed to bring her team along.
Steinbrecher learned through mistakes, that effective leadership is people-focused.
It’s all about the people, not just the results. The way to get lasting results is through engaging people.
Empathetic leadership is about inspiring and motivating people. Through authentically connecting with employees, allowing them to grow, and reaffirming their value, organizations reap the rewards with better business outcomes and more engaged employees.
The Core of Empathetic Leadership
Empathetic leadership is about meeting people where they are, inspiring them, and providing them with opportunities to grow and thrive. It is the difference between having someone want to work for you rather than have to work with you.
To get there, leaders need to develop strong interpersonal communication skills. Show your employees you care about them, you’re willing to let them learn and grow, and they will show you results.
Steinbrecher explains that autocratic leadership builds compliance whereas empathetic leadership builds commitment. Compliance is not sustainable, because “employees will perform out of fear, their hearts won’t be in it and their dedication won’t last long-term.”
An Executive Coaching Toolkit for Empathetic Leadership
For many leaders that hire executive coaches, the barrier is not their hard skills, but their interpersonal skills. Steinbrecher says, “No one wakes up intending to disappoint,” but that ingrained ways of thinking and unproductive patterns of resolving conflict can cause dissatisfaction for employees.
Steinbrecher uses various tools to break down these established habits, among them are three we wanted to highlight: (1) mental models, (2) 360º feedback, and (3) “Meaningful Alignment”.
What Is a Mental Model?
Creating a “mental model” for a leader involves digging into their life story and motivations. What has made the leader who they are? What beliefs do they hold?
Once a mental model for the leader has been formed, Steinbrecher explores which behaviors are no longer productively serving them. She plans how they can reframe their old mental model into a new one, leveraging the benefits of the old, but mitigating the negatives.
Collecting 360º Feedback
360-degree feedback gathers input from a leader’s peers, direct reports, and supervisors, providing a holistic view of their performance. Steinbrecher uses an interview-based approach to capture commentary on the leader’s pain points and strengths, using the collection of responses to pinpoint challenge areas to work on.
How to Facilitate Difficult Conversations with Meaningful Alignment
Steinbrecher describes Meaningful Alignment as “learning to have the conversation that needs to be had.” It is the ability to manage emotions and navigate high-stakes, difficult conversations with resilience.
Steinbrecher teaches her clients both the “inside game,” which involves managing one’s own emotions, and the “outside game,” which focuses on facilitating productive conversations even in the face of conflict. Through this dual approach, Steinbrecher equips leaders with the tools they need to maintain composure and foster alignment within their teams.
About Susan Steinbrecher
After working for 14 years in hospitality operations and training development, Susan Steinbrecher transitioned to providing senior leadership development and coaching. She has written five books, including Meaningful Alignment: Mastering Emotionally Intelligent Interactions at Work and In Life and Heart-Centered Leadership. Lead well. Live well.
Her clients include Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, Bank of America, Capital One, and CVS Health. In her coaching, she leads with empathy and accountability, striving to get to the core of communication issues and measuring her leaders’ growth.
