The Purpose Collective’s Post

❓️Why are some leaders less empathetic, the higher in seniority they become?⁠ ⁠ 💜One of the curious and surprising findings to me which has been emerging from my observations in recent years is that some leaders (who have made it to senior leadership positions themselves) seem to have forgotten how hard it is to make your way to senior leadership!⁠ ⁠ 💪🏼They don’t seem as supportive or empathetic to their people as I thought they might be. This includes women, as well as men.⁠ ⁠ 🔎 I decided to do a bit of digging around on this and came across a piece of research about empathy from HBR which, in my mind, at leasts connects to what I’ve been noticing.⁠ ⁠ ✨️ When you’ve struggled through difficult situations, empathy research suggests that you have less, not more, empathy for those in similar situations to you. ⁠ ⁠ This feels relevant at the moment, not just to women’s leadership, but also to how we are connecting with and empathising with employees in the post-COVID workplace.⁠ ⁠ 💭 It also made me stop and ask myself if I do this too. ⁠ ⁠ 💪🏼Maybe I am not as understanding as I could be because sometimes I have also forgotten how hard things were? ⁠ ⁠ When you are the other side of your struggle you think, if I can do this anyone can do it, and you perhaps underestimate how hard it was for you at the time you were going through it. ⁠ ⁠ 💡 When I connect to those times of struggle in my own life, new born babies, moving countries, early days of separation of divorce, bias in workplace, homeschooling and COVID(!!!) and I go back to the moments and really connect to the struggle, I find my empathy can return.⁠ ⁠ 💜 You can read more on this on my blog post here https://lnkd.in/gGCPScpg #Purpose #Values #Leadership #Singapore #culture #empathy #seniorleadershipt

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