Empathy matters

Belinda Parmar on the value of becoming a more empathic project leader who encourages a project team culture that’s strong on empathy.

Belinda Parmar, founder and CEO of The Empathy Business, who was also the keynote speaker at APM’s 2022 Women in Project Management Conference, uses the science of empathy to change the way we lead at work, adapting cultures to bring more empowerment to people’s lives, with a focus on belonging and diversity. Parmar is also the creator of the Global Empathy Index, published in the Harvard Business Review, which is the first index to measure empathy and inclusion at scale.

Q How do you define empathy?

A It’s the emotional impact that the company has on its colleagues and customers. There are three types of empathy. There’s cognitive empathy, which is about understanding others’ perspectives. There is affective empathy, which is when you feel someone’s pain. And then there’s behavioural empathy – this is about when empathy moves you to act. Empathy is very different to sympathy. An example of empathy in action is you telling me something sad and me saying: that’s really sad that you’ve got an issue; let’s sit down together and work it through. I will support you, but ultimately the responsibility and accountability are with you.

Q Why does empathy matter at work?

A Empathy matters because we spend 50 years of our lives at work, so that’s more time than we get to spend with our kids, our families. For a lot of people, work should be a place of purpose, of meaning – a place where you feel like you have a voice. But the reality is that most of us think that work is not a place where we feel that. In the way organisational design has been created, we’ve knocked empathy out of the workplace, and what I want to do is transform the workplace to bring more empathy back into it. More empathic companies not only make more money, they also have higher levels of engagement, lower burnout and they’re more diverse.

Q What advice would you give to project leaders about empathy?

A We’re all a work in progress, and I think that’s really important. The other thing is, we have to create the conditions for empathy because you can’t expect people to show empathy if you don’t even talk about it and don’t reward it. So show people what great empathy looks like, what an empathy deficit looks like – it might be in the process, it might be in the way you write an email. If you’re leading a project team, making it a regular part of your conversation is really key. It’s not a tick‑box exercise. It takes time. It takes the involvement of people, and you’ve got to really show people what great empathy looks like, whether that’s the way a meeting is conducted or the way a project is delivered. Empathy is everybody’s responsibility. Create five or 10 empathy nudges, which are just small shifts that you’re going to make. It might be that you’re going to speak to clients in a more empathic tone. It might be the way we run internal meetings, or it might be the way we give feedback to each other. You can’t really have empathy if you don’t listen and you just want to tell the other person what you think. You don’t have to agree with someone – the empathy is in the listening, so they feel heard, they feel visible and that you’ve taken the time to listen. What we need right now are managers and leaders who can really embrace difficult conversations, because that is where empathy is key.

Listen to APM Podcast’s interview with Belinda Parmar on Spotify, Apple or Google

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2023 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.