Standing on the shore looking out over an empty expanse it is often hard to envision an end state to change. It is easy to know as a leader what you want to happen, how you might want it to change the direction of the company or what business objectives you might want to accomplish.
It is much more difficult to place yourself in the blur of the horizon and imagine how things are different. That takes time; time that is not often budgeted into a business day. It also takes skill and competency in that you have to put yourself in your own shoes with a changed perspective and environment.
Maybe you have learned or been coached in this and have developed the ability to stand at the horizon and look back? Pat yourself on the back.
Now pick a stakeholder in this potential change, put yourself in their shoes and repeat the exercise. Certainly not as easy. If you are expecting to be a trusted leader, this is something you have to learn how to do. Your competitor across the street may already be practicing. If it is not a core skill now it will be by the time you wake up tomorrow morning.
Well refined you can “be” the stakeholder while still holding on to your business objective perspective. The string between context and big picture can then be defined with business/people input.
Let’s call this ability “Business Empathy”.
In order to make the transition from idea to end state description to action (and in a perfect world energetic buy-in) business empathy has to be developed.
Some reasons:
Trust- stakeholders will notice when a leader truly understands the work and the effort required.
Resource planning- without the ability to look backward to the present in another’s shoes key support will be missed.
Risk- looking forward and filling in the gaps (not empathetic and singly business focused) can pinpoint business risk, but often misses the risk inherent in the combination of change and human nature.
Time frames- timelines are typically crunched when it comes to the people side of change. Project management- the forward to the future approach- phases work in terms of implementation phases. Business empathy can help you phase work in terms of the interaction, connection and collaboration that must take place. The project managers can work their magic later.
Refine this ability. It is a core leadership skill.