Three Tools to Foster Empathy Among Your Change Team
Leading successfully is about more than hitting measurable targets. It is about fostering a culture people appreciate and encouraging team members and making them feel valued and recognized. Leading with empathy is not something that should be overvalued or overlooked, especially while undergoing a major change initiative.
A Forbes article titled, “14 Ways Leaders Can Boost Empathy in the Workplace” notes ideas from members of Forbes Business Council on how to highlight empathy. Their recommendations include:
Having employees participate in the decision-making process
Listening with an open mind
Understanding how your decisions impact others
Communicating effectively and frequently
We see all these suggestions as crucial elements to sustaining and empowering a strong team. But achieving these points is not easy. Our Changemaker's Toolkit: Getting Started features multiple tools that can help you act on promoting empathy while leading through change.
RACI Grid
People like to feel that their opinions matter and their concerns are not only heard, but actually addressed. A RACI grid is a valuable tool that helps create clarity around roles within a change initiative and provides a great opportunity for engagement.
When completing a RACI grid, your team will work together to lay out all tasks for a specific project or initiative and identify who is responsible, as well as who is held accountable, who is consulted, and who is kept informed. This collaborative exercise serves multiple purposes. First and foremost, it gives individuals a stronger understanding of what their roles are and helps avoid duplicity. More than that, it gives change champions like you the opportunity to listen to your team members and make them feel they are valuable, respected assets.
Stakeholder Empathy Map
The fact that the word is in the name serves as a bit of a giveaway that this tool can help promote empathy. It can be easy when making decisions to only consider how you, or those you work most closely with, will be impacted. The stakeholder empathy map forces you to consider how every stakeholder may be affected by the actions you take. This exercise has you — the change leader — fill out a different “map” for each stakeholder group and note what you think they are saying, doing, thinking, feeling, seeing, and hearing in relation to the change initiative at hand, as well as what pains and gains you believe they are experiencing. Your change team is then better prepared to anticipate stakeholder responses and adjust your plans accordingly.
Communication Canvas
Once stakeholders have been thoroughly identified, you want to consider the most effective way of sharing important messages with them, while taking their specific concerns and thoughts into consideration. The communication canvas allows you to lay out your change vision, goals, and pain points, among other relevant categories. You want to make sure your stakeholders feel heard, so it’s important to keep their values and the challenges they are facing top of mind while filling out this tool. You need to make sure you are communicating clearly and thoughtfully if you want your message to be properly received.
Prioritizing and leading with empathy helps improve team morale and commitment, building the foundation for a successful change initiative. To learn more about these tools and a variety of others that can help you lead effectively through disruption, check out our Changemaker's Toolkit: Getting Started.
