Understanding Your Team: A Leader’s Superpower

I’ve written more than a few times on the roles of relationships in our business lives and the importance of understanding things from someone else’s point of view. This is the definition of empathy, and when used authentically, it can be a leader’s superpower.

When I led organizations, one of my primary goals was to understand everything I could about the people who worked with me. Not only did this practice help me build equity in my relationships with my colleagues over time, it also gave me another advantage: It enabled me to predict the future.

Understanding What Makes People Tick

I can imagine some of you scoffing a bit or accusing me of using some black magic when I say that empathy is the key to predicting the future. But this is a story about emotional intelligence.

The more you can understand what makes you and others tick at an emotional level, the more effectively you can predict someone’s future reactions and behavior.

For example, if you’re debating how someone might handle some tough news or how they might react to an opportunity to take on a new position, it helps to know what makes them tick. The better you can predict how they will handle the situation emotionally and then frame things in the way they will best encounter it, the better the odds are of achieving the kind of success you’re striving for.

More Than a Chameleon

Some people are critical of this approach to leadership. They claim it’s disingenuous and chameleon-like. But these critics miss the fact that adapting to the needs of your people is probably the most important part of being a leader in the first place.

Great leaders don’t rely on playing a single note. If you approach every situation in the same way, you will miss opportunities to connect with people and meet them where they are. For instance, if you’re always stern and harsh, a stickler for the details, you might miss the opportunity to understand how someone reporting to you will react to missing a deadline. If you didn’t know that they had a sick child at home or an elderly parent who needed care, and you hammered them, how do you think they would react?

The secret is that to understand people, you must also be vulnerable. In other words, you have to authentically disclose yourself to your people. And you must do it first to model the behavior. This is not for the faint of heart; you will show some less-than-perfect parts of yourself. You might think that would cause you to lose leadership power, but it doesn’t.

Great leaders understand that they need to use different tools for different circumstances, especially when dealing with the everyday complexities of working with human beings. The more you know about what makes someone tick, the better your chances are of authentically connecting with them while also understanding how that interaction will conclude.

Using Your Superpower

I worked in plenty of businesses where management had a much more old-school style of leadership — one where leaders kept everyone at arm’s length. But as a result, these same leaders could never understand or predict how anyone who reported to them would react to their orders. It was like they were playing a guessing game.

Of course, there is a real downside to getting to know what makes your people tick: It takes a lot of time. I mean a lot of it. And the conversations you have with your people need to go beyond the business’s four walls. You also need to make the time to ask and listen to what’s happening in their personal lives. That’s how you can truly create an authentic connection with someone — and better understand how they might react to opportunities or challenges in the workplace. That’s how you develop your superpower.

A Real-World Decision

I remember when a company I was running opened an office in Europe to expand its market. The problem was that we knew we couldn’t hire anyone locally. We needed someone who had the necessary technical expertise and strong relationships inside the company. That meant we needed someone to move from the U.S. to Europe.

Moving overseas is not for everyone. It is incredibly disruptive, especially when someone has a family. Not everyone will say yes, which can create plenty of problems. So, it can be a delicate decision to make.

The answer became apparent when we narrowed our options to four candidates who seemed qualified to tackle the job. We had one sales leader who was a perfect fit. Because I had gotten to know him well, I knew he was hyper-ambitious and didn’t have the kinds of family ties that would keep him in the U.S. That meant we didn’t need to put someone in the difficult position of refusing a plum job in another country.

I knew he would take the job on the spot when we offered it. And you know what? That’s precisely what happened. And he became a huge success — just as I predicted.