Why Empathy & Perspective matter for great leaders? — Simon Sinek Sharing
There’s one questions that I ask quite often when faced with conflicts.
“Why does he or she act that way?”
As I start to do some self-discoveries, I realize that it’s actually the sign of empathy. So I look for more information about empathy and leadership and found this amazing talk from Simon Sinek. Here’s are the two things that resonate with me deeply.
Empathy and perspective.
In the beginning of the talk, he mentions that great leaders have empathy and perspective.
I found it so true because often time, we are lost in focusing on the status and position within the organization. However, as you climb up on the organization ladder, the more you are, the more you need to think about the most important asset — People.
It’s not about taking IN CHARGE but about taking care of the PEOPLE THAT ARE IN OUR CHARGE.
As we grow within the organization, we become very good at our jobs, and everything we do, we do to train our expertise and become better at our jobs. By the time when we are very good at our jobs, we get promoted, we gradually become managers.
As Simon point out, what differentiate managers from leaders is that, managers manage the work, while leaders manage the people.
Great leaders are like parents, they create the environment, so that people that are in their charge can become better.
I like the analogy of being parents so much, and I totally agree with the concept of creating the environment for the people who work for you. Why?
For me, I know that most of the time, I may not be the smartest people in the room, and I cannot do the work all by myself. I believe that through working together, no challenge is too tough to be conquered. So, it becomes very obvious to me that if great environment cannot be build, how are people going to get strong in your company? If people can’t become better in your company, how are we going to overcome the most difficult issues that we face?
How empathy relates to creating great environment?
Again, I resonate with what Simon shares, without empathy, we can’t create an environment where people feel safe and have trust to each other. The reason is, we all have problems, we all face difficulties, and having empathy enable us to concern other human beings, not care only about their performance.
What’s more important in dealing with bad performance is to understand the reason that makes the people underperform. To ask, are you ok instead of threatening to fire them if they are bad. Because it is for sure that whenever we see the bad results, we do not know others feeling, we do not know what happen to that person, so we need to remember that, we need to take some time to figure this out.
I see empathy so important and need to bear in mind all the times because, every decision that you made, every action that you take, represents who you are. And if you can behave and make decisions based on empathy, then I believe that things will change, we will change how we view the world.
I tell myself when I see something wrong next time, remember to reflect and to think whether it’s ME that make things go wrong?
The other thing that great leaders should have is perspective.
As I recently read “How Google Works”, I’m really excited to find the spirit of “How Google Works” somewhat share the same spirit of the concept of perspective.
Great leaders are not playing to win; they play for the direction they believe is right to go.
Simon illustrates in a very clear and simple way; he divides games to two type: Finite game vs infinite game.
For finite game, there is winner and loser. For infinite game, there is no winner and loser. For infinite players, they play to keep the game rolling, they do not play to finish the game and be the winner.
How the concept of infinite game relates to perspective? How does it relate to business? As Simon goes on to share that when business leaders say thinks like: “We want to be number one.”, “We want to beat our competitors.”, they are playing finite games. The problem of playing finite games is that, you will be obsess with your competitors not with where you want to go.
When great companies who are playing infinite games, they are not playing to win, they obsess with why they do, what they do, and who they are. And why I found this so amazing?
Because life has ups and downs, just like companies, they have good times and bad times. In addition, we should view our lives as infinite games, not finite. Recently I felt the side effect of thinking like a finite player.
I felt, more empty than I used to be, when I accomplished something. The happiness of accomplishment didn’t last long, but the emptiness of not knowing what to do next lasts.
So I deeply agree with the ideas of having perspective, having a perspective that is based on playing infinitely. I believe having perspective will guide us through the ups and downs in our lives and guide us through the good or bad times for a company.
Finally, I would love to share a quote from this talk that I found it quite meaningful.
