So this is a second try to that answer, with the hope of a better result.

I would run away from any enterprise trying to convince people that there is one Universal truth, that kind of preaching is not aligned with my values and ways of working. Instead of “convincing” managers that empathy, more precisely, that tactical empathy is a “must”, I would rather create the context for managers to evaluate themselves the benefits of such empathy. Would you say that will give them the necessary knowledge to understand why emotions are valuable data? And maybe not perceive them as a threat to the performance of a team or a project?

The moment we respond to a radical position along the lines of “Leave your emotions at home” or “Let’s separate the emotions from the professional life”, with an equally radical “You HAVE TO show and practice empathy”, we lost the battle. We become guilty of the exact sin we are trying to cleanse, a close minded, un-empathetic approach to managing people. Adoption of best practices is never successful under a totalitarian enforcement, and I am talking here about long term results, not a short term show off.

How can one become emotionally literate, and thus emotionally intelligent? Simple rule of “know thy enemy”! I am willing to bet that the resistance to use empathy as an effective business tool has its roots into the inability of identifying and naming emotions. The common belief being that emotions are messy and emotional people are irrational justifies the assumption that reason cannot make sense of the emotionally driven situations.

I have some bad news, and some good news! Everything we do is driven by our emotions and by our met or unmet needs. We are very good at rationalizing and giving a seemly logical argument for our emotional (re)actions, but that is another story of how to steal your own hat.

The moment we become emotionally literate, that is, the moment we are capable to label and understand the emotions of others, and ourselves, in the present, is the moment empathy will make sense and using it in the professional environment becomes more natural. No longer frightened by the intensity of such emotions (usually the so called negative emotions are the scariest), we can interact with our colleagues by speaking the same “language”.

So, even if lately they are such buzzwords, empathy and emotional intelligence do make sense in the business world, and with a little bit of practice, anybody can be emotionally literate. Instead of denying and ignoring emotions, great leaders and managers identify and influence them. I would say that active listening is one of the key ingredients here, but listening practiced as a “martial art”, and not a passive activity. A great tool for that is labeling. When you are giving the emotion a name, you show you identify with how the other person is feeling. It also helps further on to discover the (un)met need behind that feeling, thus creating a clearer path towards effective solutions that everybody is happy with.