The Empathy Equation: The Hidden Driver of Financial Growth, Employee Performance and Customer Loyalty

Luckily, Empathy is a skill that CAN be learned (Reiss, 2017), building trust and connection in the workplace as a result.  

For example, let’s say there’s a company-wide initiative that meets with heavy resistance.  An empathetic leader can listen to divergent perspectives, weigh them with the organization’s mission, and craft a narrative that unifies competing interests. 

When it comes to organizational change, Empathy has enormous power. 

Unfortunately, the “Empathy Gap” shows that CEO’s overestimate their own empathy and the company’s empathy with 86% of CEO’s believing themselves to be empathetic vs 49% of employees who agree (Business Solver, 2019). It’s safe to say that “thinking” Empathy is much different than “doing” Empathy.

When companies actually “do” Empathy, they grow. A study found that the top 10 empathetic companies in the Global Empathy Index increased in value more than 2x and generated 50% more earnings, compared to the bottom 10 in the Index (Parmar, 2015). 

Empathy means being comfortable with others who don’t look like you, think like you, believe like you or live like you. They have different beliefs, values, personalities, ideas, communication styles, thinking processes, and stress responses.

On the other hand, the enemy of Empathy is Conformity.  This doesn’t mean that you let people do whatever they want, nor is it about appeasing the leaders and customers.  Instead, it’s about embracing Individuality while creating Unity of purpose, goals and impact. 

“The source of engagement has nothing to do with breaking bread (or bread sticks) and everything to do with the extent to which trust, values and mission actually inspire and drive daily activities and interactions” (Forbes).

When a company’s leaders have Empathy, employees are more likely to cooperate and follow-through on their commitments. In a survey, more than 90% of employees said that they were more likely to stay with empathetic employers — including a willingness to trade hours and pay in favor of increased empathy (Business Solver, 2019).  Employees do their job with passion, elevate their performance beyond box-checking and feel fulfilled at work. 

“The distribution of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided. In most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees” (Harvard Business Review, Cross, 2016).

When employees feel that they are valued, heard and appreciated in an authentic way— and that they’re truly making a difference — this creates an “Empathy Multiplier” throughout the organization — spreading from leaders to employees, employees to customers, and customers to the brand. 

It creates a culture of people asking the right questions and truly seeking to understand, knowing what to ask (experience/knowledge) and how and when to ask it (empathy).  The people become aware of their preconceived ideas, feelings and biases and don’t allow them to cloud interactions. When a team is stuck with a difficult problem, they can manage their stress responses, so they have the clarity to see solutions in unexpected places.

Step 1:  Recognize 

Objective: When employees feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to foster good relationships with their coworkers and delight your customers. 

To develop Organizational Empathy, a better understanding of yourself and your people is key. Each individual must recognize their own uniqueness and how they’re designed differently from anyone else. Through an Intentionality Assessment, individuals can understand what guides their actions, how they’re wired, how they see the world, where they go when they’re stressed, where their biases are rooted, and how they can best tap into inspiration and ideas. 

This personal information can help organizations save time, money and energy because everyone is in better touch with who they are, and who their co-workers are.

Step 2: Realign

Objective: When employees can find meaning at work, the more likely they are to think creatively about every problem and find effective solutions.

To deliver meaningful impact, higher profits, and happier employees and customers, we realign individuals to the organization’s purpose/mission and goals, while also giving them permission to bring ideas that can deepen the purpose/mission and delight customers into becoming raving fans. With the Empathy360 Survey, we ask every employee to rate Empathy in themselves, their team, their leaders, the CEO, as well their job satisfaction (anonymously).  

Then, through an Empathy Workshop with engaging and fun activities, leaders are trained alongside employees to learn and practice the Empathy skill set while understanding how their unique talents fit into the whole of the organization. 

Step 3: Reinvigorate

Objective: Leaders must be prepared to model advanced Empathy skills for their teams as well as envision and implement the game plan to foster an empathetic culture. 

The next step is to reinvigorate employee engagement and effectiveness, so that every employee feels that they make valuable contributions and are a meaningful part of the team. To get there, we measure the level of mental and emotional commitment that employees have towards their jobs, their teams, the CEO, and the organization and its goals with the Resonance360 Survey.  

Armed with this information, leaders meet at a facilitated Leader Workshop to learn Empathetic + Mindful Leadership skills and create a game plan to guide their team members to greater fulfillment, performance and results at work.