Empowered Empathy – Leading through a Pandemic
- Ryan Walter
- Oct 12, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 30, 2021
Over the past 20 months, I have increasingly asked Jenn
(my awesome wife and best friend), Feeling Questions.
Many of you who have experienced our leadership
training, or who have been reading our content, know
that my coaching journey has me fixated on the power of
questions.
Our research on metacognition and its power as a
leadership/coaching tool has me excited about the
intentional use of questions. For years we have focused
on asking Thinking Questions: “how long have you been
thinking about that?” “When did you first start thinking
through this process?”
Thinking questions intentionally trigger the
metacognitive process, becoming a forcing function for
the recipient of the question. It forces them to think
about their thinking. Mentoring your people (or kids) on
solutions for their problems is essential, but coaching
people on how to develop their own thinking around
problem-solving is magic! You can give a person a fish or
show them how to fish...
The leaders we train, and coach, are becoming brilliant at
asking thinking questions, but Maya Angelou’s quote
(above) adds an extra dimension to asking
questions. Feeling questions actually help me
uncover feelings! Without telling Jenn, I began to
intentionally ask her more Feeling Questions.
Here’s what I discovered: greater focus on the Inner-
Game (feeling questions are only one player in this
match) delivers greater perceived empathy! And
what is empathy? “The ability to understand and
share the feelings of another.”
I have coached many executives through this
pandemic. During this journey many leaders have
found that taking the time to tap-in to their people’s
Inner Game has been critical. Being more
empathetic helps these leaders focus on their
people’s feelings; being more empathetic means
trying to understand where their people are at.
In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
Steven Covey shares an experience that he had one
Sunday morning on a subway in New York.
“People were sitting quietly – some reading
newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with
their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.
Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the
subway car. The children were so loud and
rambunctious that instantly the whole climate
changed.
The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes,
apparently oblivious to the situation. The children
were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even
grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing.
And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.
It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe
that he could be so insensitive as to let his children
run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no
responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone
else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with
what I felt like was unusual patience and restraint, I
turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really
disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t
control them a little more?”
The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a
consciousness of the situation for the first time
and said softly, ‘Oh, you’re right. I guess I should
do something about it. We just came from the
hospital where their mother died about an hour
ago. I don’t think they know how to react to this,
and quite frankly sir, either do I.’”
Covey uses that story to help people understand the
paradigm shift that he had as he better understood
the situation and viewed this man with a different
perspective.
This story touched me differently. I was struck by
how often we start with where we think people
should be, instead of where people are at!
Empathy requires us to start with where people are
at and move forward from there.
This is where "feeling questions"
give us a strong start.
Full disclosure: I am not often focused on feelings. I
like feelings. I am sure that I have feelings down
there somewhere (we all do), but I often wonder if
some of my feelings were beaten out of me over my
3 seasons playing in the Western Hockey League,
followed by my 13 NHL seasons played during the
late 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. I have since learned
that asking people how they feel at a certain time,
about a certain subject or person, gives me
invaluable feedback and begins the empathy exchange.
Maya Angela ends her statement with the famous
words, “but people will never forget how you made
them feel.” Increasing our ability to know how people
are feeling helps us increase our ability to inject
more intentionality into how we “make them feel,”
increasing empathy.
Simple Feeling Questions to get you Started
How are you feeling?
How did that make you feel?
How do you feel about working from home after 18
months of doing it?
When did you first start feeling that way about…?
What sparks that feeling in you?
What are some of the things I do that create negative
feelings for you?
What are some of the things I do that create positive
feelings in you?
As you explore this area of helping people increase
their metacognition (thinking about their thinking),
Thinking Questions and Feeling Questions are a
foundation to build on. You can continue to develop
your own style of questions:
Action questions
Behaviour questions
Focus questions
Personal questions
Relational questions
Company questions
Hiring questions
Keep in mind our training concept: When I listen to
tell, I am mentoring, but when I listen to ask, I am
coaching. With all these questions to explore and
empathy to deliver… I am going to start calling you
COACH!
Many of our corporate clients are engaging our services this summer and throughout the fall in order to energize their teams, focus their cultural mindset, and brainstorm processes around how to maximize their team COMMUNICATION during this new-normal.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00856/full
https://www.upworthy.com/the-future-self-strategy-is-a-simple-and-effective-way-to-become-the-person-youve-always-wanted
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