Tweet

Empathy Performance: Why It Is Important For Sustainable Team Cultures

Written by: Dianne Crampton

Article Overview: This article addresses hiring criteria that minimizes the effects of conflict and communication on team cohesiveness. In this issue, we explore the universal team value, empathy, and why empathy skills are important for reducing conflict and improving communication for sustainable team cultures.

Empathy Performance: Why It Is Important For Sustainable Team Cultures

It was one of those good days. A day when a former client calls and says, "That empathy performance question we put into our employment interviews probably saved us thousands of dollars and a lot of conflict."

"Really? How's that?"

"The candidate's resume was stellar. He looked great and presented himself very well. But when we asked him how he demonstrated empathy in the last six weeks with friends or family, he was stumped." So, what does empathy have to do with a potential team member's job fit?

Empathy is a universal team value. It is the ability to understand another person's perspective or circumstance whether you agree with this person or not. Empathetic people are curious and possess a desire to know and understand others. It is important to successful conflict resolution because understanding diverse perspectives allows collaborative solutions to rise from chaos.

Likewise, the ability to beam your self into another person's shoes lays the foundation for moral decisions and is a condition for peace. Like Obama's grandmother who, when counseling the moral character of her grandson, said, "How would you feel if that happened to you?"

People who lack the capacity to flip situations and try them on for size are doomed to shallow relationships, deeds of shady moral character, cruelty, or a psychological condition known as narcissism. Narcissists are often poor listeners and poor communicators because they are unable to comprehend or listen to another person's emotional pain. And, when taken to extreme they are unable to recognize the shame and pain they pile onto others because they are unable to access and face the shame and pain within themselves.

Bad things that happen are always another person's fault. And, narcissists tend to do well in hierarchical power positions because success is proof they are better than others. From a team perspective, however, they drive the people around them crazy, which justifies their thinking that everyone else is the problem --- certainly not them.

In Emily Yoffe's Slate Magazine's article, But Enough About You: What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder, And Why Does Everyone SeemTo Have It?, Yoffe names a host of leaders that fall into the narcissistic category. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, and former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich are a few. And she reports that an article posted in the New York Timesclaims that Blagojevich's self pity he demonstrated on multiple talk shows after being ousted for allegedly trying to sell a senate seat "did a better job illustrating narcissistic behavior than any psychological text book."

Maybe so. However, from the psychological research and studies that underlie the TIGERS Team Culture Model(trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success), if you have a narcissist on your team, you are well aware how lack of empathy cultivates morale problems which in turn sparks conflict, resulting in lost productivity.

So, why would Yoffe insinuate that everyone is narcissistic? From TIGERS research, socialized behavior starts at birth and advances throughout life. There is a period of time in the maturation process where the child is fully dependent on caregivers for assistance and well being. And, there is a turning point when the child matures from self involvement and need gratification (narcissism) to recognizing the needs, wants and comforts of others.

However, according to brain researcher, Bill Harris, when needs are not met and events not reconciled and left behind, the emotional and cognitive maturity level of the individual stalls. For example, if a small child is not comforted when he or she is hurt, it is difficult for this individual to comfort and have compassion for others as an adult. If children are ignored, left behind, or tumble into insignificance when new siblings are born, they will do anything to gain attention to feel important. If feelings are ignored or a child is shamed for having feelings or must stuff them to appease an anxious parent, they are unable to access their feelings, develop compassion for themselves and others or develop emotional intelligence. If rich lessons that come from frustration and failure are used to shame a child, it becomes difficult for them to comprehend what frustration and failure means for others, to emotional resilience, and learning from mistakes.

As a result, anger, shame and guilt form blocks that build a wall of emotional pain. Sometimes the blocks are small and self reflection, self understanding, self compassion and forgiveness make it easier to reconcile and mature. And, if these smaller emotional blocks do not impede a person's ability to understand the feelings and circumstances of another person, I take issue with Yoffe's assertion that everyone seems to be narcissistic. That said, blocks on the extreme side, however, often require a ground shaking event, personal humiliation and serious loss to crack the wall to dismantle the blocks to access the pain, to forgive so a person can grow.

According to Yoffe, "people with narcissistic personality disorder act as if they are special beings who are exceptionally intelligent, accomplished, beautiful, or sexy (or all of the above), to whom lesser people (pretty much everyone else) must bow."

Since most job interviewers lack the professional psychology credentials to identify narcissism or other empathy disorders, a few simple questions that shed light on a job candidate's empathy skills have a better chance in exposing accomplished people with the empathy to contribute to sustainable team cohesiveness.

Therefore, what other questions could you ask in a performance interview to glimpse a job candidate's empathy skills if maintaining excellent morale, good conflict resolution and superior team communications are a job recruitment goal? Here are three.

• 1. What did you learn from your last failure?
• 2. When was the last time you chose to be happy rather than right?
• 3. From your experience, what have you found that resolves conflict the fastest?

Empathy and the curiosity to understand others is a measurable selection criterion for team member recruitment. And, it is important to screen team culture applicants for emotional maturity and the ability to empathize before hiring them whether their resumes and prior work history looks stellar or not.

Related Articles
  The Power of Empathy
  What Sales Leaders Don't Know about Ego and Empathy
  What Makes Fast Teams Too Slow?
  Sales Coach: High Level of Empathy In Selling Important?
  The 5 Major Skills you need to become a Great Manager

Article Tags: business cultures, business team culture, conflict, cultures, empathy skills, improving communication, team cohesiveness, team culture, universal team



Related Forum Posts
She Wins, You Win: The Most Important Rules Every Businesswo - She Wins, You Win: The Most Important Rules Every Businesswoman Needs to Know Gail Evans, 2003 Also author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman Inside jacket: Every time a woman succeeds in business, every other woman's chances of succeeding in business increase. Every time a woman fails in business, every other woman's chances of failure increases. Gail realized that one of the most important elements of the men's game, which was missing from the women's, was support: The boys know how to take care of one another. In order to create lasting success, women need to help one another and band together as a team. TOC The Woman's Team Why you must play on the woman's team How to join the team Tips for the team 1. Be a mentor 2. Rainmake 3. Uncover and share information 4. Keep quiet 5. Unite with all women at all times 6. Make team-related choices 7. Weave a female web Challenges of the Team Twelve team members to watch out for The eleven most common team questions (and answers) Conclusions Acknowledgements My own view Haven't read this yet, but it seems like she's advocating an "Us against them" mentality. Neverthless, networking with fellow women - and men! - only makes good sense.
Re: What works for you? - Hi Yinka, I work better under pressure of deadlines when I am doing something for other people. However, I like to have the leisure to develop my own projects. The first case is what Stephen Covey calls a "Quadrant 1" activity ("Important and urgent") whereas the second case is a "Quadrant 2" activity ("Important, not urgent"). We should aim to make as much time as possible for Q2 activities so that we can develop our own projects. Easier said than done!
Re: Anyone Uses Elance.com? Guru.com? Rentacoder.com? - I've had quite a bit of success on oDesk.com. I've never used Elance so I can't compare. I like oDesk.com 'cos I get to sort thru people (e.g. within a certain bid range) with a single click. I find their help response very quick and I like the oDesk Team software that "providers" must install. This gives me the Buyer more insight as to what I am paying for. The Team software takes screenshots of the Providers screen on 10 min increments so I can see that the person is infact doing work for me.
Import / Export Business - I am in the benign stages of starting an import/export business and would like to know the most important factors in the early stages of the business. 1)The most secure method conduct financial transactions 2)Important issues with development of a website?
ARTICLE: Performance coaching in the workplace - To create lasting performance change it is necessary to first understand the positive and negative influence that a person’s personal behaviors has on their execution and what impact these have on their ability to achieve success. Only when we fully understand a person’s behavioral patterns and create positive self-managing coaching strategies can we assist a person to create lasting performance change. The vast majority of employers believe coaching can deliver significant benefits to both individuals and organizations. The majority of employers plan to increase the use of coaching over the next few years, according to a new survey by the Institute of Personnel and Development. Nearly nine out of ten interviewed companies expect their managers and supervisors to deliver performance coaching as part of their day-to-day work. In another large industry-wide study it was found that most managers reported that they were confident in their ability to coach. However, the study also showed that the managers’ actual skills levels as coaches were typically poor. As a consequence they were not nearly as effective in their coaching as they believe themselves to be. Often times, they believed that coaching consisted of just providing 1-to-1 instructional feedback to their staff members on what to do in a given situation to perform better. Many recent studies have shown that technical skills only represent at best 20% of the contribution into our performance. The remaining 80% comes from our ability to choose or make a decision, assertiveness, commitment to grow, ability to concentrate, honesty, optimism, persistence, ability to perform well under stress and so on. These traits are commonly called our soft skills or attitude. Few managers understand just how deeply rooted their own behavior patterns are, let alone how to positively change them in other people. Performance coaching is frequently confused with other types of coaching, such as Executive coaching and Life coaching. Performance coaching is a form of Directive coaching. Executive coaching and Life coaching are both forms of Non-directive coaching. Directive coaching is usually more suitable for a manager who sometimes acts as a coach. Performance coaching in the workplace has developed immensely from what it was only 4 years ago. To choose the right coach will make a huge difference. You also better make sure to know what you want. If your coach knows what (s)he is doing – you will get on your way to get it! [i:38tu5pgr]- Peter J Karlsson[/i:38tu5pgr]


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Life is a Balancing Act!

Multilevel Marketing: 4 Tips To MLM Success

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.