Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #103
Show Notes:
In this week’s Research Revealed, Sara draws insights from a Harvard Business Review global leadership development study and discusses why empathy, active listening and emotional intelligence are becoming crucial in the current work environment. This episode has actionable steps to cultivate these human centric skills within your organization and team to foster a more collaborative, inclusive, and resilient work environment Subscribe today so you never miss an episode!
Below we are offering a transcript of the podcast for accessibility and reference.
Episode #103: research Revealed: Human Centric Skills
Do you know what you don't know? Well, unless you're like me, you're probably not steeped in the latest research on team effectiveness, leadership development, and organizational behavior. In this Research Reveal, I'd like to share with you a recent piece of research and reveal what it means to you.
In a global leadership development study by Harvard Business Review, they found that 76% of respondents say there will be more demand for human-centric skills, such as communicating with empathy and demonstrating high social and emotional intelligence. This finding highlights a significant shift in the qualities that are increasingly valued in leaders and underscores the importance of developing these human-centric skills to effectively lead and connect with teams.
So let's talk about the impact. As our workplaces are changing, there's a goal and increased recognition of the goal to have folks excel with human-centric skills. When we're talking about that, yes, technical and strategic abilities are crucial, but we need the ability and the capacity to communicate with empathy and demonstrate this emotional intelligence as well.
Leaders who excel are those who can do both. Not only have the technical ability and the technical strength, but are also able to build strong relationships, foster supportive work environment, and navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. This shift indicates, again, a broader trend towards more collaborative and more inclusive organizational cultures, which means, in turn, the technical component, while important, is not at the forefront anymore.
So what are some of the steps you can take? First, work on developing empathy and active listening skills. Now, active listening is not a new term, neither is empathy. However, there are so many more distractions that we have that take away from our ability to actively listen. There's chat messages and emails and project management tools that are all vying from our ability to really hear other people.
When we are active listening, thinking about what are the perspectives and the emotions that the other person is trying to share. What questions are we asking? Are they closed? Are they open-ended? And in the end, are we validating and hearing what our employees' feelings and concerns are? Are we actually understanding what they're trying to say, or just check the conversation off the list? By demonstrating empathy, leaders can build stronger connections with their team and create more supportive and engaging work environments.
Next, invest in emotional intelligence training. Now, some of the individuals on your team may already know about emotional intelligence. It's not a new concept and it keeps having a resurgence. That's because it's so important. The competencies in emotional intelligence are things like self-awareness, self-regulation, and how do we manage others' emotions, and ability to see their own selves. By investing in this training, leaders can learn about themselves, how other people see them, and how to navigate those conversations with a lot more clarity in what we're trying to accomplish. Again, this helps build the team and that individual leader's ability to see what other folks are working on.
Third, encourage a culture where there is feedback and recognition. We want to create environments where feedback is regularly given and done in a constructive manner. How can folks feel like we are helping celebrate their achievements, their contributions? And give them the honest truth around the support and the guidance that they need.
People want to do a good job at work. And I want to work in a culture that values open communication and in turn appreciates the work I'm doing enough to trust me with the truth. I want to know what I can do better and I want their help in doing them. This helps strengthen relationships across the organization.
So let's think about some questions to help move you forward. If you're thinking about implementing this on your team, how can you assess and improve your own skills to better connect and support you with your team? Again, this is something where we think that we're better at something than we usually actually are. So reflect on some of the areas in how you're connecting with others. Are you in touch with what your own emotions are and how they're impacting your decisions at work? Are you able to see interactions where you are getting triggered or where you are seeing comments change the way you react in that moment? Are you observing other folks and how they're reacting to highly emotional situations? Are they getting escalated? And how does that impact your ability to effectively work with each other? Again, assessing yourself first can help you see how others are doing.
Next, thinking about what are some of the strategies that you can implement to cultivate these skills within your team and your organization. Training is only one of those aspects, but thinking about how you might consider moving forward with these and integrating them into values and practices. If we really care about us doing a great job at work and that it matters how we do that work, we need to separate ourselves from just productivity mindset.
The second question to consider is what are some of the strategies that you can use to implement these skills into your team and organizational culture? Again, it's not just enough to work on your own skills. You want to be able to integrate this as a part of your practice. For example, empathy and emotional intelligence are typically one-on-one skills. We see them in the context and understand how they work. But these are all how skills.
What I mean by how is we think about how they show up in the work environment. It's the way that work gets done, not necessarily the work itself. A lot of organizations are really fixated on productivity, results, outcomes. It makes sense. That's what business is for. But at the same time, we also need to think about how that work got done. If we got a lot of work done, but it was done poorly, teams not working together, teams not collaborating, teams not talking to each other, and a toxic work environment, sure, the what was great, but the how was not.
If you want to incorporate these human-centric skills within your organization, you need to think about the what your team is producing along with how they're doing it. These things are connected. So thinking about integrating these skills will encourage you and force you to talk about which do you value? Do you equally value how people do it as well as what they're doing or does the what actually matter more?
By focusing on these steps and addressing these questions, leaders can enhance their ability to connect and support their teams. This is a more collaborative and a more resilient approach to effectively managing change. Embracing these skills is not just for now or a current trend, it's something we need to think about in the long term and in the future going forward.
This has been Sara with Research Revealed. You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on what other research you'd like to explore. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. We'll see you next time.