This article is in response to a piece entitled To Inspire Your Team, Share More of Yourself by Gia Storms in the Harvard Business Review. You can find that article here: https://hbr.org/2021/09/to-inspire-your-team-share-more-of-yourself
I don’t know about you, but when someone begins a talk with a personal anecdote, I am listening. It is almost hard for me not to become interested in them, especially if they are particularly vulnerable.
My therapist drills into me over and over: “Have empathy! Develop personal empathy! It’s not enough to have professional empathy, of which you have plenty, but develop personal empathy.” I’ll tell you the difference, but first ... Huh????
As an Executive Coach, I have realized that keeping a hard bottom line by drilling down on facts and impressive statistics lose most of my clients quickly. As Gia Storms states in her article To Inspire Your Team, Share More of Yourself, via Harvard Business Review, it was once believed that scrubbing personal presentations of the self and regulating emotions was a no-no; however, research tracks a different story. The article states that three key drivers of trust in relationships are:
Authenticity
Logic
Empathy
And there is that word again - empathy!!
I am learning that while I can pinpoint, like nobody’s business I must add, what my clients need and should do next in their work and careers, I am often humbled by my lack of skill in addressing my wife and family. I seem to possess a knack for professional empathy, that is, really seeing my client professionally.
As with my family, I sometimes demonstrate a stubborn inability to see how they might feel when I say or do something. Hey, I’m working on it!
And resilience? Isn’t that the ability to get up, dust myself off, and begin again? Begin again and again and again, both at home, with friends, and with my work?
How many humiliations, humbling experiences and just plain old shame spirals have we all experienced? Brown suggests that we remedy this by cultivating our top three stories about failure.
She also recommends that we study inspiring stories from others. I want others to tell me their stories. To help me become empathetic in real time, another suggestion the author makes.
For me, the pretense of stoicism doesn’t work. Like the article states, breaking down this wall of separateness has allowed me to let my clients see a human behind a formerly business-focused leader. My success becomes your success, and my ability in this arena is directly proportionate to your willingness to allow my vulnerability to come out and play.
What about you? Do you want to dive in?