Management Assignment: Managerial Competency Of Empathy

Question

Task:
You are supposed to write a management assignment exploring one (1) competency that students can self-select from the "Managing Others" competencies.

Answer

Introduction
The aim of the report on management assignment is to analyze the key managerial competency of empathy by summarizing the conceptual overview of the key aspects that the managers needs to have this competency and examine the learning of key authors like Goleman, Boyatizis and Pedler. It will then identify the behavior exhibited by the managers that have used this competency. Further, it will provide two sources of evidences to show that managers with such competency demonstrated better performance.

Definition and Conceptual Knowledge of the Competency
Empathy can be defined as an action of understanding and being sensitive towards others and experiencing the feeling and thoughts of the other person vicariously. It is a competency that encourages social awareness and relationship management by developing the ability of understanding other’s feelings and the way they see things (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013).

Boyatzis (2009) defines empathy from the perspective of two different competencies such as “a concern with close relationships” and “positive regards”. Both these competencies describe the concept of empathy and focus on the importance of managers to understand how others think and feel. According to positive regard competency of Boyatzis & Sala (2004), the managers have trust in others and see them as “good”. According to him a manager with positive regard is more about a way of thinking rather than a set of behaviors. Based on this competency of positive regards he identified two attributes such as managers adopt the role of an optimist and managers have verbal and non-verbal skills. This concept of empathy by Boyatzis is closely linked with making others feel valued. According to him an empathetic manager is more likely to be caring and withhold personal needs along with addressing organizational needs. Further, Boyatzis (2009), refers to empathy as an emotional intelligence, which is the ability of the person to understand and use emotional information to communicate with others.

On the other hand, Goleman (2000) argued that empathy refers to a core competency in implementing relationship management in the organization. According to him, empathy is a kind of emotional intelligence where management involves in much complex relationship. He explained that empathy is a relationship that involves influencing people positively by managing conflict and inspiring them on emotional grounds. It is a competency that involves paying attention to other people through listening, understanding their needs and building relationship. Unlike Boyatzis, Goleman refers empathy as relationship and behavior rather than only fulfilling personal needs. Moreover, Goleman’s concepts of empathy competency are divided into three types such as cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and empathic concern. Cognitive empathy concept is defined as an ability in which a person sees the world from other’s eyes (Faisal & Ghani, 2015). Emotional empathy refers to a competency in which a person understands the needs and feelings of another person. Empathetic concern refers to a behavior in which someone express a caring behavior about another person and usually tend to protect them. However, Boyatzis and Goleman aligns in their definition of empathy as competency where both considers that empathy relies on genuine communication including both verbal and non-verbal communication. Boyatzis and Goleman pursued the concept of emotional intelligence to approach the definition of empathy from different perspectives (Hackett & Hortman, 2008). Both the authors explained empathy as an important competency that must be present for superior performance.

Boyatzis, Goleman and Rhee (2000), outlines the framework of clustered emotional intelligence competencies and defined empathy as a competency of sensing others’ feelings and viewpoints and actively taking interest in the problems and concerns of others. according to them empathy is important in leadership and helps in developing social awareness. It is a kind of emotional intelligence that help in managing trustworthiness between two parties. This definition of empathy is considered as a self-management cluster method along with rising conscientiousness. This definition and concept of empathy highly related with the definition and concept of Goleman alone that considered empathy as a kind of emotional intelligence (Batista-Foguet et al., 2008). It also matches with the definition of empathy put forward by Boyatzis that empathy is a positive regard and positive relationship with others, either verbal or non-verbal communication.

Behaviors Exhibited by Managers that Developed Empathy Competency
According to Boyatzis (2009), manager that has developed empathy competency tend to show high level of understanding and considerations in their behavior towards others. further, manager with the competency of empathy allow them to acquire positive virtues such as integrity and honesty behavior. They display ethical behavior towards the employees and base their decision on moral grounds. Batista-Foguet et al., (2008) states that the characteristics of the managers with positive regard competency shows trust and believe towards others. a manager with positive regard always sees good in their employees and recognizes their skills. Moreover, an empathetic manager with positive respects always adopt the role of an optimist. This means that such leaders always believe in inspiring and motivate the employees to achieve the shared vision of success. Moreover, such optimist leaders believe in conducting team work rather than taking individual decision making (Hackett & Hortman, 2008). Such leaders always believe in making the employees feel valued by demonstrating care and respect either verbally or non-verbally.

According to the five clusters of emotional intelligence model of Goleman and Boyatzis, an empathetic leader is one that exhibit behavior such as understanding towards others, focusing on developing others, leveraging diversity and inclusion and improvement in political awareness (Boyatzis, Goleman & Rhee, 2000). Such positive behavior of an empathetic leader improves the commitment of the employees and help in increasing the level of teamwork. A leader with empathy competency exhibits huge care and concern for relationships with the employees and keep a balanced behavior between events and people (Livesey, 2017). These people are highly caring towards their subordinates and likable among their employees or teams.

In relation to problem solving areas, an empathetic manager focusses on reviewing and understanding all sides of the issue and form solution by discussing with its team members. They focus on acquiring inputs and suggestions of other team members and do not focus at taking self-centered decision to solve problems (Yang et al., 2020). During team discussion a manager with empathetic competency always behave with their team members as friend and family. Moreover, they also believed in spending time with their subordinates even when there is no specific task to be delegated (Goleman, 2000). This shows that an empathetic manager is highly approachable and believe in active listening to their employees.

According to Boyatzis, Goleman & Rhee (2000), an empathetic leader or manager display high awareness of emotions and use the emotions to take good decisions in the organization. Such managers are seen to focus on managing emotions in their professional relationship and contribute in the development of ability and expertise of the employees. They also express appreciation towards the employees that work well and believe in making them feel good, valued and accepted.

Two Sources of Evidence
There are past works and researches that has shown that empathy competency helps in achieving better performance on the part of the manager by developing positive relationship, trust and care towards the subordinates. According to the findings of König et al., (2020), the empathy traits of managers or CEO of the company helps in effectively manage organizational crisis. Organizational crisis is one of the challenging episodes in the life of the firm and a manager with higher empathy tends to manage the crisis effectively. This is because empathy behavior among managers are closely linked with greater prosocial behavior, better task performance and greater communication. Such positive communication and social behavior allow the manager to manage crisis better than the ones that does not exhibit empathy competency. The findings show that leaders with empathy behavior tend to effectively sense crisis situation, quickly recognize warning signs and handle the situation with care. This is because such managers are more sensitive to emotions and sense the negative emotions that might come. For example, Coca Cola CEO would have saved the company from scandals, had he been more sensitive to emotional cues and anticipated the crisis. This clearly shows that an empathetic leader is more effective and demonstrate superior performance because of tehri emotional connect.

In the second evidence it is seen that an empathetic leader is more successful in inspiring strategy management. This is because they emphasize at high morale in strategic decision making that becomes successful in long run. It is one of the most critical traits in conducting ab efficient strategic management process. an emotional empathetic leader is able to understand the way person feels and take strategic decisions on emotional level (Deliu, 2019). This shows that an emotionally intelligent manager is able to take strategic decisions with emotional connect and thus demonstrate better performance.

Conclusion
From the above analysis it can be concluded that empathy competency of managers and leaders is the emotional intelligence they have when collaborating with others. They exhibit positive behavior that encourage trusts and bonding with others and an inclusive team behavior. The managers with empathy competency tend to show better concerns towards their subordinates and their views rather than taking individual decisions. Such managers prefer group work more and work in collaboration with others in the organization. Evidences from past researches shows that managers with empathy competency show high performance and better ability to solve organizational problems.

References
Batista-Foguet, J. M., Boyatzis, R., Guillén, L., & Serlavós, R. (2008). Assessing emotional intelligence competencies in two global contexts. Emotional intelligence: Theoretical and cultural perspectives, 89-114.

Boyatzis, R. E. (2009). Competencies as a behavioral approach to emotional intelligence. Journal of Management Development.

Boyatzis, R. E., & Sala, F. (2004). Assessing emotional intelligence competencies. The measurement of emotional intelligence, 147-180.

Boyatzis, R. E., Goleman, D., & Rhee, K. (2000). Clustering competence in emotional intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI). Handbook of emotional intelligence, 99(6), 343-362.

Deliu, D. (2019). Empathetic leadership–Key element for inspiring strategic management and a visionary effective corporate governance. Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management, 1(1), 280-292.

Faisal, A. S., & Ghani, M. Z. B. (2015). The influence of empathy on academic achievement among gifted students in Saudi Arabia. Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 4(3), 62-71.

Goleman, D. (2000). An EI-Based Theory of Performance From The Book. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.

Hackett, P. T., & Hortman, J. W. (2008). The Relationship of Emotional Competencies to Transformational Leadership: Using a Corporate Model to Assess the Dispositions of Educational Leaders. Journal of Educational Research & Policy Studies, 8(1), 92-111.

König, A., Graf-Vlachy, L., Bundy, J., & Little, L. M. (2020). A blessing and a curse: How CEOs’ trait empathy affects their management of organizational crises. Academy of Management Review, 45(1), 130-153.

Livesey, P. V. (2017). Goleman-Boyatzis model of emotional intelligence for dealing with problems in project management. Construction Economics and Building, 17(1), 20-45.

Yang, C., Zhu, Y. L., Xia, B. Y., Li, Y. W., & Zhang, J. (2020). The effect of structured empathy education on empathy competency of undergraduate nursing interns: A quasi-experimental study. Nurse education today, 85, 104296.