Tag Archives: feeling and leadership

Savor Today’s Leadership Mint: Gaining Trust With Empathy

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Empathy is good business.

You gain greater buy-in the more you can step into the shoes of your customers or your employees and more readily feel what they feel.

That empathy then fuels a trust that triggers greater productivity and profitability over time.

But how do you teach empathy? You don’t.

Let others do it for you : like Generals in the U.S. Army (Colin Powell and Norm Schwarzkopf), political leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, Barack Obama and Lee Kuan Yew along with legendary sports heroes like pro football’s Vince Lombardi and professional golf’s Jack Nicklaus.

They share their secret to success: leading with empathy among the 77 Leadership Mints 5-minute stories in LOVING Like a Leader, one of the three books in the Leadership Mints Series designed to help busy leaders freshen their feeling for leading.

Leaders Rock ‘n Roll with Feeling

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Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to reinforce your sense ability and sensibility. Reading time: 3:58

You’ve been stabbed in the back –politically. By a “friend.” You’re hurt and confused.

simon and garfunkelWho can you trust –if not a colleague you considered a friend?

A Rock
Feels No Pain

You want to hide in your office. Slam the door shut (if you only had one). Shun everyone. Especially your so-called friends.

An Island
Never Cries

You’re angry!!! So angry you find yourself broiling and roiling in the frustration and swirling and whirling in the exasperation unleashed in Simon & Garfunkel song: I Am a Rock.

I have no need of friendship.
Friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.

I am a rock. I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.

In protecting themselves from frayed feelings between colleagues and friends, even the most effective leaders are tempted to hide behind a rock or bury their heads deep into the financial reports as author John Steinbeck observed in Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck called the rock-hard, walled-off bosses in their offices — “owner men.” They “worshipped” their data, reports etc. because those hard numbers “mathematics” provided a “refuge from thought and from feeling.”

But the leader in you knows better: Feelings are the foundation of leadership. Even raw feelings. You can’t lead without trust and you can’t trust without feeling. Continue reading →