Sensing People's Needs The 2nd Role in Stage #1 of Neocharismatic Leadership - part 2

In this episode, Dr. Angawi continues to tackle role 2 'Sensing People's Needs' from a prerequisite angel.  A big emphasis on #empathy skills and how to be for others when they need you as a Neocharismatic #leadership
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Transcript

Introducer: 0:03

Welcome to this podcast series on Neo charismatic leadership with author, leadership expert and coach, Dr. Ghadah Angawi and executive leader Martin Hedley, where they will both explore the recently published book, Neocharismatic leadership and the coaching topics it covers.

Ghadah Angawi: 0:30

Martin, we are still with the search for opportunity stage, I know we have covered the first role of assessing the environment and culture, the role of sensing people's needs, there is a very important prerequisite to this role that I would love to explore further with you and the listeners. And that is empathy. The first thing that comes to my mind when I bring this up is the objection that you hear from many leaders. I don't need communication skills. People, I understand people, they understand me, they know what they need to be doing. They fulfil the work expectations and go home rewarded for their work, or suffer the consequences of not doing the work. Either way, this is enough to keep them going. What do you think of this objection?

Martin Hedley: 1:17

Well, okay, that is clearly a statement of leadership. But a particular style of leadership that I think is where we're trying to go away from, the way I see it, you know, we as humans, are social animals. And the more we learn about psychology, we're beginning to realise that we're actually primed for empathy, naturally, and it can be damaged as you grow up, and possibly nee s to be rebuilt. But we act ally can thrive on empathy. So, what is it? And why would the statement that you just made hav been a little different fro somebody who is empathetic? E pathy is ongoing, it's not just situation that is the s me today and the same in a month s time. I may be empathetic to something in your life today. Bu in a month's time, if you're not facing that same issue, it's not an issue for me either. So e pathy does add in and out of c anges often. It also talks abo t meeting each individual's eed. Okay, so what we're doing ith empathy is we're trying to nderstand and share feelings. T at doesn't mean I'm listening o your feelings, or I'm watchin you express your feelin s, it means I'm actually haring the very same feelings t at you have. And I'm trying to do it from your perspective. So f you are empathetic, what happ ns is you expand your moral universe. So in your book, in th s part on empathy, you point ou that the vision at the star is based on empathy. So can you elaborate on that?

Ghadah Angawi: 3:08

Yes, if you are altruistic, this means you can't ignore others in the decision making process. Or in every act of leadership. You suddenly realise listening empathetically is your major approach to this role sensing people's needs. I call the first approach to empathy, acting your vision, mind you, this is your personal leadership vision, not your organisational vision. And hence, this explains why vision is important in the role of sensing people's need, and is the first step to empathy.

Martin Hedley: 3:42

Indeed, so you're not leading a group that thinks the same way as you, they have to actually feel the same way as you, and vice versa in order to get somewhere. So jumping back to your first comment there, yes, if I communicate very clearly, I say this is the goal that we're going for. And I'm expecting everybody to just get there and be happy about it. That's not empathetic at all, though it is an aspect of leadership. So I think that acting your vision means some level of flexibility that, okay, so how you get to the vision may change based on the individuals that you're leading. But it also may change in a month's time, because the individuals you are leading are facing something different, and so you have to be in tune with them. And I think this concept of being in tune with others, is where we really need to dig in and practice.

Ghadah Angawi: 4:42

Yes, and I do speak about this in the book, in terms of how you are influenced by your followers vision, while you're interacting in this role. So you're open to be influenced and the second approach to empathy, just to elaborate more, which I mentioned in the book is your intention, you have to have what I call or what is called collaborative intention. And I borrowed this term from a great team coach James Stam, in his book, radical collaboration, you see, his approach is you cannot succeed in any conversation that you have with your followers, or with another person in conflict resolution, or in decision making, or even in a small meeting, business meeting without bringing the collaborative intention ahead of that conversation and maintaining that intention to the end. And when I look at neocharismatic leadership model, and the altruistic approach of these leaders, it's really important for them, that they could maintain the collaborative intention throughout their conversations with their followers. So in order for them to listen, empathetically, they bring ahead of them that intention, it helps them move into empathy easily. So that's my second approach to empathy, how do you train yourself as a leader, to maintain that vision, first of all, of the need of others to be, part of your conversation? And then the second one is, how do you bring that intention forward all the time, without losing sight of it?

Martin Hedley: 6:28

Yes, it was useful for me to hear from one of my mentors, this phrase, he said to me, you're not selling your vision, your way, what you're doing is you're offering your vision, our way, and the our, being you and the people that you're leading. And I always found that to be a very simple way to understand what I needed to do. Empathy sometimes get's confused for pity or kindness. And really, it's not, you can be kind, but not empathetic, you can also have pity on somebody and not be empathetic. But for a leader who wants a group of people to follow them to create a particular vision, there's got to be some give and take, there's got to be some flexibility. And while the vision itself, the end point, may never change, infact, it probably shouldn't, how you get there, and the actual journey is going to change. And the empathetic leader knows that it will change based upon what everybody agrees needs to be the focus of the day, or the focus of the month. Now, that's empathy across the entire team. But you've also got to think about empathy with the individuals, and one individual might have had a death in the family, another individual might be facing financial difficulties. Yet, another one may just be feeling that this is too much for them, and that they're really struggling. So what you have to do as a leader is you have to identify that, it means you radar has to be out because nobody says, "Oh, hi, I've got financial problems", or"you know I don't think I can do this job", that never happens. But people do give you clues, and you've got to sense that something isn't quite right, and then go and share with them. The feeling, now sharing that feeling is not just saying, "Oh, yes, I went through that once, I know how you feel!" Well, actually, you don't know how you felt back when you went through it. You don't know how that individual is feeling right now. So what you've got to do is say"I have been in a similar situation, how is this affecting you now?" and then listen to what they say, and sort of share what you do remember, that's common from the past. And things that you felt yourself, they don't matter, just ignore all those and work with that individual. What will happen, of course, is you will bring them around, and you will bring them around to high productivity once again. So what are the other approaches?

Ghadah Angawi: 9:07

Yeah, so when I look at empathy, from a coaching perspective, I think there is three levels involved in empathy. The level number one is the ability to listen actively, while not focusing on your own world, just trying to imagine what it feels for them to be in that situation, getting out of your own world, getting out of your own comfort, and just, you know, imagining what it feels like when they're talking to you about their experience. And this is just the first approach or the first level of empathy, active listening. Now you want to go beyond just active listening into what I call understanding and gaining clarity of how they are experiencing that situation. What is the significance for them? What is the main emotion that is being the vehicle that's taking them from one spot to another, and this is further than just experiencing what they're doing or what they're going through. And it's further than visualising it is trying to really dive into the details, by probing them, by asking them, and how does that make you feel? And how does it reflect on your own personal experience? And does it affect your world here, at work or with the team? Is there anything else that you want to tell me about, don't just take what they say the first moment, as their experience, dive more. And this is really coaching, more than just listening, as you know, one on one individuals, friends or colleagues, you as a leader are responsible to coach your followers, away from their emotional disturbances and into positive emotions. So this is level two, trying to gain clarity and understanding, and then you have to take the extra step ahead of any amazing coach and support your followers as a leader through navigating their own thoughts and emotions with them. And this means you're taking a roller coaster ride across their different emotional colours, I'd say. It's not just one emotion, emotions always come in groups, they never come as individually, you have to deal with an anxiety, stress, fear, sadness, anger, frustration, it just comes together. And if you are an expert listener, empathetic listener, experiencing the empathy as it should be, you are able to point these emotions as they show up to them. And once you point them out and acknowledge them, they fade. And that is when your follower starts to acknowledge reason and come up with solutions and lighten up. And all of a sudden, these emotions are like balloons, you pop, pop pop in the air, and all of a sudden, there is no more emotions. It's just like, Okay, I know what I'm what I need to be doing. There is options, and there is solutions. And this is how, and maybe you don't say much because pointing out is enough.

Martin Hedley: 12:41

That's right. I once felt that I had spent almost four days of our week doing nothing but listening to everybody on the team's problems. I remember talking about this to my mentor. And all he said was good, good. And I said, Well, no, no, that's not good. I mean, only if I spend the whole of Friday now just doing my work. I've still only done 20% of my work towards the vision this week. And he said, No, you haven't. He said you still done 100%? Because clearly, you can't do this all by yourself? I would agree with that. And he said because you are motivating your team, this empathy will generate a lot more productivity out of them. Now, of course, after a while I realised, well, of course, okay, what am I doing here? I am being sympathetic. I'm being forceful. I have integrity. So the team is still following me, and they're happy to follow. But again, I wasn't quite being empathetic. And when I realised that empathy might take my whole week, sometimes, and that's okay. That's when I began to really get a huge amount of productivity out of people. I noticed when I was trying then later on to coach, three different charities in a very small town in America, and these three charities, we're all doing the same thing. Well, obviously, you could imagine that if all three charities got together, they're in the same town anyway, if they all got together, they could probably be achieved tonnes more than they were achieving. Right, now all of them are passionate. All of them were dedicated, and they really liked what they were doing. But what I could see was that they weren't listening to each other. They didn't understand how the other team was attacking the problem and why they felt that way. So what we started to do was start to get the teams together and talk about their shared experiences. We never even mentioned the goal. What we mentioned was, why is it that you feel that it should be done this way and let's explore that, and after a very long time, and I'm talking maybe 15 to 16 months, two of the groups actually decided to merge into one, and it was a bit rough, but they did it. But we could never get the third group to be interested in it. And the fact was, they wanted to do it their way, somehow they wanted to glory, or just the self satisfaction of delivering a particular vision, but they didn't want that shared satisfaction that the other two groups did, and that's why they merged. So I think that we have to take into account as a neocharismatic leader, we have to take feelings into account at all times, and really consider it to be your number one job as the leader. And if you've got a very big team, then you need to develop empathy in your next level, so that they can spread that down through the organisation. And without it, you're never going to get that premium, outstanding work that people are capable of.

Ghadah Angawi: 16:05

Yes, so I had this encounter with a leader, who had a leadership team, and one of the members, were not collaborating enough with the other members. He was stopped somewhere, we didn't know what was going on. And every session with this leader, he brought that issue up, and they kept saying to me, "so and so, I tried this and I tried that, and I brought him in, and I tried to, to understand what is he going through". So I took it on me to coach that person, that member of the team, and after three months of interval coaching, we reached a point where the trust level between me and him as a coach was very high. And they shared with me, their fears, their deepest fears. Trust building is important before any person in your team will open up, because there is always fear of judgement, fear of being pointed out, fear of sharing your mistakes and your flaws, and that person takes it against you, fear of comparison between you and them, there's a lot of fears that go into people in workspaces. And as an external coach, it was easy to establish, the next step was to get him to talk to his leader, the same way he was talking to me. So I had to train the leader in my coaching sessions to do the empathetic listening part, the way I explained it here, and they followed through and he was going in parallel while I was coaching that team member, but they followed through, they perfected it, and at one point, we were able to bring that member into the team coaching space, and they opened up about their fears in front of everyone, and it was easy, it just flowed, and then everyone considered it. Everyone didn't know what they knew, was wrong. They didn't know it. When he opened up and spoke, it was easy to collaborate, it was easy to establish connections. And all of a sudden, the problem that was going on for two years, was suddenly solved, in three months, it took three months, but it was solved and that member was very productive.

Martin Hedley: 18:43

Yes it's worthwhile, isn't it? The outcome is much, much better.

Ghadah Angawi: 18:46

Yes, it makes your meetings easier. It makes the work flow, less complaints from the colleague, that person feels more comfortable and less inclined to leave the work and find another opportunity, you maintain and you create new solutions, just through empathetic listening. Yes, so I wanted to bring the this part into our conversation, so that our listeners would feel related to what we're saying. It's not just neocharismatic leaders in large organisations, it's also between you and your team members, between you and the people you work with, your colleagues, the friends, you can actually lead anyone through empathy, by using the approach that I just explained. So to conclude this, I would like to hear from our listeners about what they see as empathetic acts of leadership in terms of this role and its implications, from their own experiences. So I would encourage them to reach out to us and share some of these experiences. And if there's any also enquiries, we can bring them into our next episodes. Me and Martin, work with individuals, teams and organisations to support them in making neocharismatic leadership a reality. And my book is found on the website to, send us your comments, and we will be very happy to weave them into new episodes. Thank you very much for listening to us today.

Martin Hedley: 20:24

Yes, thank you, Ghadah

Introducer: 20:27

Ghadah and Martin, hope you enjoyed this episode. There is more information available at Neocharismaticleadership.org and if you would like to discuss coaching or training for yourself or your team, you can contact Ghadah and Martin through the website. We look forward to your participation next week. Until then, goodbye.