Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #19: Lead With Empathy

Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #19: Lead With Empathy

For this week in Leadership, the exercise of the week was to lead others using empathy. The process was as follows (modified slightly for how I did it):

• Identify something you need done.
• Identify someone you want to do it for you (and it helps if you understand why that person in particular would be well suited to the task).
• Tell that person you notice that they are particularly good at [activity related to task], and ask them why.
• Begin the “Make people feel understood” exercise. Go through the clarification/confirmation cycle until you identify what the universal emotion behind it is.
• Politely ask if they could help you with [your task]

I found this exercise to be REALLY challenging to start doing. I spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of doing the exercise: is it manipulative? Is there a reason why this is morally wrong to approach someone with doing something this way? Why do I feel like I’m deceiving someone by doing this? But once I was able to overcome these thoughts and come to a satisfying conclusion to them, I was able to do the exercise with people I knew.

On Manipulation

The hardest part to get over for this exercise was a sense that I was manipulating people. I felt like “I’m telling people some things that make them more likely to do something for me” was a selfish thing to do. And in a way, I think that is valid.

In a way, it is manipulation.

But I don’t think it’s deceptive or morally wrong.

Here’s why. I think we manipulate people all the time. When I say to my daughter “Wow, you’ve really gotten better at volleyball! We should go to the park and practice some more so you can get even better!” to encourage her to practice more, in a way, I’ve manipulated her. I’ve made an emotional appeal to try to get her to practice more.

When I tell my wife “This dish is the best thing I’ve ever tasted! Can you make this more often?” I’ve manipulated her into making something I like more often.

Or when I ask my friend “Whenever we play games together, I have so much fun. Let’s play some more!” to try to get him to play with me more so I don’t have to play alone, I’m manipulating him.

These are all ways in which I’m manipulating people, but they’re not purely selfish. Sure, there’s a selfish component, but there is also a component that makes them feel good, both in doing the task, but also in terms of getting a deeper relationship and connection with me! This is a critical nuance to this exercise. We manipulate people all the time. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing to manipulate someone.

The term “manipulation” carries a pretty negative connotation, so I made an easy workaround to help me mentally get around the problem: you could easily use “influence” or “encourage”, but when I was doing the exercise, I tended to come back regularly to the thought “I’m not manipulating them, I’m just buttering them up before I ask them if they could do something for me”. I found that perspective to have a less negative connotation and it allowed me to approach the exercise with a positive mindset.

Doing the Exercise

I ended up doing the exercise with two people. The first was very difficult. The 2nd was far easier than the first, and now I’m actively excited and looking for a 3rd person to try it on.

After getting over the mindset part of the exercise, the next challenge was deciding on the thing I want done, who I’m going to get to do it, and what I notice about that person that makes them a good candidate for the task. This was surprisingly challenging. It really felt like I was coming up with a plan of attack, or a strategy to “use” on someone. I really felt worried that this planning was doing something morally wrong. That ended up not really being the case.

I wanted to make this exercise as approachable as possible, so I decided to start with things that are easy to do. For the first, I decided to see if I could get a coworker to write an email for me. I selected a coworker, and thought about what I like about his emails. Once I had all this identified, having the actual conversation was actually pretty easy. I pointed out what I like about his emails with a simple “Hey, I’ve noticed when you write emails, I like how you always…” and asked where he learned to do that. I continued with the process until I described his feelings and I got a “Yes! That’s it!” After that it was just a simple “I’ve been trying to figure out how to reply to this email…Do you think you could take care of that one?” He agreed and seemed happy to help! The conversation was very casual, didn’t feel like an exercise, and he wrote the email.

After that experience, I thought “Oh okay, this isn’t really that different from when I’m asking people to do things for me at work already…But instead of just asking them to do it, I’m making them feel much more appreciated for their work before asking them to do it, which makes them feel really appreciated and cared for!”

I decided to try something more difficult and had a similar conversation with my daughter to see if she would help me with washing the window screens at home. Again, she was happy to help. The second time doing this exercise was far easier than the first, and now I feel pretty confident to do it anytime I need something done.

My Thoughts on the Exercise

Overall, I found this exercise to be really challenging on try #1, but it got easy really fast. One thing that helped me a lot in my conversations was I added one piece that is pretty personally important to me: a good leader will not tell someone else to do something that they wouldn’t be willing to do themself. So when I asked, I added something to be sure that sentiment came across. “No worries if you’re busy, I can take care of it if you don’t have the time right now” or “If you want, we could do it together!” I found that this didn’t take away from the conversation and in both cases, they still agreed to do it on their own – most likely thanks to the conversation we just had where I recognized a related something that I appreciate about them.

I felt better asking people to do things after giving them some time to appreciate them, and they certainly seemed to feel much happier to oblige. I think that going forward in my life, I probably will use this every single time I need to ask someone to do something. It increases the chances of them doing it, increases the connection in the relationship, and makes me feel better in asking.