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>> As any employee who's worked for an uncompassionate manager will tell you,
compassion can be everything for leaders.
And indeed, a recent study found that found two-thirds of employees say that they would put
in more effort and be more effective if their manager were more compassionate
with them and listened to them more.
And there's good news.
Ninety-six percent of the general population is actually hardwired
to experience empathy and compassion for others.
There have been studies done in macaque monkeys, which is a genus similar to human beings,
that finds that in our brains and in the brains
of monkeys there's something called a mirror neuron.
And when we experience someone else in pain around us our brains actually mirror
that emotion so that it's almost like we're feeling it ourselves.
So what's the problem?
Why are so many managers not compassionate?
The problem is our day to day lives.
We get busy.
We get stressed.
We get focused on ourselves above all else, and we forget to show
that inborn compassion that we're all capable of.
Now the caveat to this -- remember I said 96 percent of people are hardwired for compassion,
4 percent of the general population are what we call sociopaths.
Sociopaths are physiologically not able to experience empathy.
So if you're a sociopath and you're watching this,
I would suggest that you watch another video; but for the rest of you we'll go over a couple
of tips to improve your compassion and empathy with your team.
Let's get specific about what compassion means.
The way I like to think about it is an equation.
Compassion equals empathy plus supportive action.
And the best way to understand this is probably to talk through an example.
So let's say that you're walking down the hall of your office building
and you see an administrative assistant who is carrying five boxes and can't see,
and she trips on the carpet and falls over and drops the boxes.
If you experience empathy, you might have a physical reaction, again,
those mirror neurons, and feel really bad for her.
But if you don't actually extend a hand and help her pick up those boxes,
supportive action, you will not be compassionate.
So any leader who wants to have the benefits that any leader can experience
of compassion you need to not just empathize, but you need to go out of your way
and support whatever that person needs at that moment.
So I'd like to give you one tool for empathy and one tool for supportive action
to help you measurably improve your compassion with your team.
Let's start with empathy.
One of the most straightforward ways to demonstrate empathy to your team is to show them
that they are more important to you than just the people
who come in every day and work for you.
In other words, they're full well-rounded people with lives
that go on outside of your experience.
And the easy way to do that is to learn the names of the people that are important to them
in their lives; their spouse, their kids, even their pets.
And think about it.
There's a fundamental difference between these two questions.
Hey Bob, nice to see you.
How was your weekend?
And hey Bob, nice to see you.
How was your weekend?
Did you and Nancy do anything fun?
Again, that shows that you care about Bob in a way that's more than just Bob who works for you.
He is Bob, the full and complete person with people in his lives that matter.
Let's now talk about a tool to demonstrate supportive action to your team.
Remember it's not just enough to empathize with them.
You have to actually show them through your behaviors that you support them.
So the simple tool that's actually so simple,
that it's startling, I call the photo frame trick.
As you know, one of the most important pre-requisites for compassion is
when somebody is actually focusing on what you're saying.
Think about it.
How often on a day-to-day basis are you talking to one
of your employees why you're finishing an e-mail?
Or you're talking to one of your employees and your friend walks
by behind them and you wave to your friend?
So just a simple action of focusing on the person you're talking to, your employee,
can infinitely improve your compassion.
So that's supportive action.
All you have to do is picture when you're talking to one of your employees
that there is literally a picture frame around their head, and your job is to look
within the picture frame as much as possible.
Now there's a caveat to this.
If you do it more than 80 percent of the time, you might be labeled a creepy stalker.
So try to look at them as much as possible and naturally move out of the eye contact,
but really focus within that frame as much as possible.
So again, you can read more in my book Bankable Leadership for tips
and tools to increase your compassion.
But I hope these two tools will help you with both your empathy
and your supportive action with your team.
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