Happy Thanksgiving!
Posts
A 15-minute a day habit that your teams will thank you for!
I get it - you're busy! It's the end of the year. Performance reviews are due (or late!) Holidays are coming up. Projects are in critical phases. End of year "spend it or lose it" time with budgets. Probably some annual planning work in there somewhere too! Busy, busy, busy! I can't think of a better time to pause, take a moment and reflect... "Am I being an empowering, transformation manager/leader, or am I being a command and control manager?" I can tell what you're thinking already! " Ugh Coach Dan! Are you serious??? Time to reflect, NOW? It's one of the busiest times of the year." Yup! This is the perfect time to pause and reflect... because if you're as busy as I think you probably are right now - you've probably been oper ating on "manager / leader auto-pilot," and you've been showing your true management colors! What better time to take a critical look at how you've been acting...
I feel you brother - Empathy doesn't need to be a mystery.
Empathy, I think, is one of those things that is easy to define and hard to employ. You can pretty easily find a consensus on what the word means - I'll even save you the trouble and Google it... It's the ability to make a connection to a feeling someone else is having about a situation, and being able to experience that same feeling yourself. It's hearing about a sick child at home, and feeling a little worried, scared, and sad yourself. It's hearing about a won lottery ticket, and feeling excitement yourself. As with anything worth doing - it can be harder to do than it sounds. It IS however, a critical skill to employ if you are truly interested in understanding what someone is trying to communicate to you. Forbes recently published a short article outlining some of the positive business outcomes when comparing companies whose employees reported that their leaders were empathetic vs those who didn't. Innovation . When people reported their leaders ...
