This month's newsletter provides leaders with four steps for responding with more intention and empathy to individual and group-based distress signals.

At the Stoplight

There’s a surprise around ever corner in Paris – sometimes wonderful, sometimes perplexing.

As I approached an intersection earlier this month, I noticed a young woman with a reddened face and wet cheeks. It was obvious that she was crying, that she was likely experiencing emotional distress. She was standing alone a bit back from the street and not, to my eyes, in any obvious physical danger.

The noticeable gulp of a sob reached my ears, and I slowed down. What was an empathic person to do?

Four Steps to Empathy

In organizational leadership, whether DEI-focused or more general, we all too often come upon colleagues in emotional distress. Their distress may relate to an individual issue or to a group identity. In the current social climate, many employees are exposed to ambient or direct bigotry and discrimination, an experience equivalent to other major life stressors.

Four steps can help improve our interpersonal and group-based affective (not a typo) communication, perspective-taking and proactive support.

First, noticing requires intentional contact and slowing down. The more meaningful connections we have with a person, the more likely we are to be able to perceive when something seems “off.”

Second, preparing space requires awareness of our own thoughts and feelings about the situation. Recognizing where our identity or emotional needs want to insert themselves in the interaction allows us to separate our concerns and focus more completely on the person and their experience.

Third, accurate sense-making requires decentered curiosity. To discover what the person is truly feeling, open-ended, non-leading inquiries or benign silence work best. A statement like “I’m open to listening if you want to talk about anything” invites sharing, while respecting the choice not to. In contrast, common responses, such as “Are you okay?” or “You must be so sad/ mad/ [insert whatever emotion you want to assign to them],” are laden with our own assumptions rather than empathy.

Finally, responding appropriately requires humble adaptability. Treating impacted persons as authors for our responses empowers them to articulate their needs, which may require actions different than those we’d propose to take. While the organizational context may present some constraints, co-creating solutions honors their wishes and wisdom.

Stop, Look, Listen, Care

For the stranger at the crossroads, I did not have a great strategy. I paused to see if she might look up. Maybe something in her eyes would tell me what she needed. I thought, self-servingly (?), that she seemed to be calming herself and projected that I might annoy or embarrass her. After waiting awkwardly through one traffic light then another, I convinced myself she’d be okay and continued on my way. Was it a missed chance to offer support? Perhaps. Probably. I'll never know.

With planning, preparation, and courage, you can avoid leaving distressed colleagues crying on the corner (unless, of course, that is what they want and need to do). Empathy in leadership requires this affective fluency. Inclusion work demands we not tell ourselves it’s okay to keep on walking.

Reach out if you’d like to discuss empathy and how you might incorporate
empathy-promoting interventions into your leadership development or DEI strategy.