What is it about?
Leaders who demonstrate caring and empathy contribute to positive outcomes on employee engagement, performance and retention. Specific individual and organizational interventions are suggested for enhancing empathetic concern, perspective-taking, and caring in leaders at all levels.
Featured Image
Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Several studies illustrate the business impact of lack of empathy by leaders and other employees in organizations. Leaders who lack emotional and social competence undoubtedly can become a liability to organizations, directly leading to employee disengagement, absenteeism, stress-disability claims, hostile workplace lawsuits, and increased health care expenses (Miao, Humphrey & Quian, 2016). Lack of social skills and empathy (key constructs in any conceptualization of emotional and social intelligence) would appear to have significant and meaningful effects on interpersonal relations at work, job performance, and employee well-being.
Perspectives
The evidence presented in this paper supports a positive and significant set of associations between leadership empathy with employee retention, engagement, physical health, psychological well-being and job performance. Therefore, it is recommended that interventions and programs to promote a culture of empathy and caring summarized here should begin at the most senior level of the organization and be cascaded downward. As a result, organizational cultures that foster empathy in interpersonal interactions with both internal and external stakeholders will likely flourish in today’s globally competitive marketplace
Chief Research Officer Kenneth Nowack
Envisia Learning
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Empathy enhancing antidotes for interpersonally toxic leaders., Consulting Psychology Journal Practice and Research, June 2020, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/cpb0000164.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
