I’ve often been asked about the highs and the lows of my journey to leadership – the truth is that it is not always easy, but I can promise you it is well worth it.
This year has brought a great deal of reflection as we have achieved significant success in successfully continuing to pivot and grow our business through an extremely challenging time.
When I look back over the last 18 months and as we move into our 2022 planning, I feel that there are 2 main contributing factors to the success of the next chapter of my leadership journey:
- Embracing technology as an enabler for change
- Empathetic leadership
I’ve spoken about digital transformation in a number of my recent posts, so today I would like to share my thoughts on the soft skill empathetic leadership.
Empathetic leadership is not just about care and support for your people but rather using the emotive drive of empathy to understand the deep-seated needs of your people and then actively involving them in the decision-making process. Empathetic leadership is about leveraging the insights of your people to support every aspect of your business from wellness programmes to technology rollouts.
It is the confidence in your people to say, “let’s give it a try” and “let’s figure it out together”.
It’s the accountability to push yourself out of your comfort zone, to allow others to sometimes take the control, to make yourself vulnerable and by taking the calculated risks that may just bring you exponential growth.
Business growth needs a team, it needs difference in opinions, it needs different perspectives, it needs hardship, it needs people.
As leaders, let’s make empathy a priority, let’s give our people a safe place to share their voice and give them more opportunities to share their insights and learnings.
Empathetic leadership is truly the key to what makes our people feel valued.
Author: Candice Roberts, CEO at CallForce
