Empathy in Leadership and The Power of “Yet” with Dr. Marian Stuart

And so with that, I want to ask you specifically a question because your work, as I think you'll start to explain through your stories and our listeners will start to hear that a lot of your work translates and relates to leadership in general, not just within the medical field.

And so.

Marion, a lot of leaders often feel, I'll say caught between two extremes.

One being spending hours, right, in unscheduled emotional debriefs with their staff and the time just becomes derailed.

It sort of blows up their entire calendar having these conversations.

Or number two, on the flip side, being kind of an unapproachable manager that is always focused on and talking about the metrics and not really making that connection with their staff.

So You, however, have proved that real human connection and that emotional alignment can actually just happen in a matter of a few structured minutes.

And so what is the secret, Marion, to delivering high impact, time efficient empathy when most managers really only have 10 or 15 minutes to spare?

That's a great question.

I think what people don't recognize is how unimportant the details that a lot of people share about who said what to whom.

and what was going on at the time, those details really don't matter.

What matters is how a person reacts to what is happening in their life or what they're engaged in or what they are trying to do.

What matters is the story that they tell themselves about what's going on and based on that story, what their emotional reaction is, how it makes them feel.

Yeah.

And then once they are in touch with the feelings that they have, it's back to the story about what's important about this, what troubles them about this, how they feel that it can be a threat.

And most people don't get to that because they're busy saying who said what to whom and what they wish they had said.

And then in most situations when people are feeling overwhelmed, it's really important to be able to focus them on their strengths.

So a question like, how are you handling that, will basically clue the person to recognize, well, I'm handling it or I could handle it.

And then once we have basically how they're feeling, what troubles them and how they could possibly handle that, then a statement of empathy, such as I see that you're dealing with different circumstances in the best way you can, which is always true, by the way.

People are always trying to do the best they can.

Yes, I believe that.

If they could do better, they would.

Yeah.

But to basically acknowledge that makes people feel validated.

Yes, yes.