In relation to the research for Regan and I's presentation on emotional intelligence tomorrow, the topic of empathy came up. Similar to emotional intelligence, empathy is defined as "the ability to recognize and share other people's feelings." I was interested in finding out how this trait plays out in a manager role. I found an article called "Why the Empathetic Leader is the best Leader" (link below), which went into the importance of exhibiting empathy as a leader. The article explained that true leadership is about empowering others to be successful and about having the willingness to put other people's needs before one's own. What really struck me about this idea was that truly, the main goal of being a manager should be to empower, inspire, and guide your subordinates to achieve great things. In doing so, your business will have a better likelihood for success. I have heard before from guest lecturers and experienced managers that the best managers spend much of their time outside of their office. While they could spend all day cooped up in the office doing paperwork, they don't, because taking the time to know, understand, and inspire the people they manage is so critical. Emotion and human connection plays so much more of a role in management than people realize, and that is something I have been starting to really take away from this class.
I was just commenting on someone's blog and saying that I often refer to human beings as herd animals, like the article, "Homo sapiens developed a herd instinct; thanks to those cooperative chemicals, we find comfort when we’re part of a group."
ReplyDeleteVery good article. What Sinek saw is pretty standard in the military. There were many times when I went without sleep or without eating because I was a leader and my priority was to ensure the soldiers got fed and got to rest. There is a risk there - you need to sleep and eat, too, or your performance falls and the whole unit suffers. Ask me about the time I lead a portion of my unit on a five hour tour of the Mojave desert in the middle of the night because I was so sleep deprived I kept reading my compass wrong.