Chanda Avik - FROM COMMAND TO EMPATHY: Using EQ in the Age of Disruption

FROM COMMAND
TO EMPATHY

Using EQ in the Age of
Disruption

AVIK CHANDA AND SUMAN GHOSE

Contents

Its a myth that consumers buy products. What consumers buy is experience. Any organization that is in the business of providing products and services will fail if they do not first build the capacity to understand or feel what their customers and employees are experiencing from their frame of reference. This empathy in turn creates trust. Empathy cannot be built from just working behind a desk, or by reading about it. It comes from living the problem, observing and understanding the challenge in real conditions. I strongly believe that there is enormous strength and innovative advantage that leaders can bring about in their organizations by adopting the empathy principle and instilling the same in their teams.

After all, teamwork and collaboration are the cornerstones of truly innovative organizations, as opposed to flashes of individual brilliance. The best leaders are those who have mastered the ability to strike a balance between recognizing individual talents and honing the potential of a collaborating team. And being self-aware and empathetic is at the core of what keeps a team going. By developing the ability to imagine oneself in the others position, to understand what makes them tick and what motivates them, one can draw out more from a team than a sum of their individual capabilities. This empathy comes from using our reasoning abilities to understand the other persons thoughts and motives, and from truly making an effort to pause and reflect on the other persons perspective.

As a leader, one must be the example of working towards a higher purpose, since teams are better engaged and innovative when they know that what they do matters to others. And culture emerges from purposeful teams. For a leader, the ability to shape that kind of purposeful environment determines the legacy that they could leave behind.

In this context, From Command to Empathy is a timely book. The authors present the challenges and offer solutions, not theoretically but through the lens of practitioners who live this reality. The book takes the reader through multiple states of being: Being Mindful, Being Realistic, Being Reflective and Being Empathetic. This journey of self-transformation makes the book a practical guide that should be a companion for leaders as well as their team members.

Deb Deep Senguptais the president and MD of SAP India.In the Harvard Business Review study of the worlds most empathetic companies, which we have referenced in our book, SAP stands in the top 10the only technology company in the world to do so. SAP also stands at the vanguard of bringing about transformation through technological innovation, and is a model of what enterprises in a creative economy should aspire to be. In the corporate/ services sector that is so much the focus of current discourse, this foreword makes the book all the more pertinent to all practitioners and enthusiasts interested in technology and innovation.

Emotional Intelligence. Now.

In the long run, EQ (emotional quotient) trumps IQ (Intelligence Quotient). Without being a source of energy for others, very little can be accomplished. These are the words of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, addressing students at a Talent India summit.

Regrettably though, such a notion runs counter to the way we usually think. Even today, many leaders and employers focus on the need for greater efficiency, operational improvements and smarter management techniques to achieve bottom-line-driven results, at the expense of the human element involved. And the repercussions on the workforce are telling: an increased sense of alienation, greater stress levels, disillusionment and demotivation, all leading to lower productivity and higher attrition rates. The adverse effects are brought to light in even sharper relief when it comes to managing millennials, who are less hesitant than older generations of the workforce to leave a firm if its policies and attitudes dont align with their own values.

Studies show that empathywhich is about understanding others feelings and emotions and our own impact on themis more important to a successful business today than ever before, correlating to growth, productivity and earnings per employee. Heres a snapshot:

1. A study titled The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour at Virginia Commonwealth University concludes that EQ is the strongest predictor of job performance.
2. An analysis of more than 300
3. Research by the Centre for Creative Leadership has found that the primary cause of executive derailment involves deficits in emotional competence.
4. According to a 2013 study by American Express, EQ is one of the biggest predictors of performance in the workplace and a strong driver of leadership and personal excellence.

E.H. OBoyle, et al, The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Volume 32, Issue 5, July 2011, Virginia Commonwealth University

, 1999, Rutgers University

To objectively study the impact of empathy, a Global Empathy Index has been created, breaking down empathy into categories: ethics, leadership, company culture, brand perception, social mediadriven messaging and ecological footprint. Using this Global Empathy Index, a Harvard BusinessReview study in 2016 found that the top 10 companies increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10, and generated 50 per cent more earnings. The correlation between departments with higher empathy and those with high performers was a staggering 80 per cent.

Now brace yourself for the real shocker.

The same study found that based on publicly available data, 6 of the 10 least empathetic companies in terms of the Global Empathy Index are from India! And its not as if low empathy values are limited to a particular industry or sectorthese six giants spanned oil and gas, pharma, finance, telecom, technology and infrastructure.

This sort of evidence has been accumulating over the years and has now reached a level where it can no longer be ignored. Be it at the workplace or in our personal lives, the need to understand the concept of emotional enablement and to imbibe it in our lives is more important now than ever before.

And hence this book!

About the Book and about Us

What is the connection between empathy and leadership? How can emotional enablement help to meet both personal and business goals? Can an approach to management based on high emotional intelligence enhance performance of professionals? Is empathy at the workplace a one-way street, the onus being squarely on managers and business leadersor do juniors share responsibility in this regard? Should training to build emotional enablement form a part of our educational curricula? And what measure of emotional maturity can be achieved relatively later in life, after one has already entered the workforce, or is even midway through ones career?

We try to answer these and other related questions in this book. We strongly feel that the concept of empathy is critical to the health of company culture and must take centre stage. At a time when employees clamber over each other to reach the top, the truth is that for business leaders to experience success, not only do they need to be sensitive to all the activity around them but also must they genuinely relate to the people they lead. It is imperative for the leaders of today to put themselves in their employees shoes and view things through the latters eyes.