What Does Mutual Empathy Look Like at Work?
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What do the people at your company need to do their jobs well?
What is holding them back, making them frustrated, or actively getting in their way at work?
How would the team’s performance improve if leaders understood those barriers — and removed them?
Answering those questions is a quickstart introduction to mutual empathy at work. The word “empathy” might seem like it belongs in a warm-fuzzy conversation about feelings, but it’s time to break that stereotype. Companies with mutually empathetic relationships deliver better results, have happier employees who understand how to succeed, retain employees longer, and are consistently ranked as the best places to work. Those employees have better relationships with their colleagues across the organization, less stress, better physical health, and better relationships outside of work.
If you’re a leader who thinks about empathy as a “nice to have,” it’s time to rethink your definition of mutual empathy at work. The stakes are high, and the benefits of mutual empathy are clear in the bottom line.
What is mutual empathy?
Here’s how we define mutual empathy:
Mutual empathy is a core agreement between two people, or two groups of people. They both say:
I have worked hard to understand and acknowledge what you want and need.
Please understand and acknowledge what I want and need.
With this mutual empathy, we are both invested, we can hold each other accountable, and together we can achieve a better (and usually more creative) outcome.
This does NOT mean that leaders need to give in to every request a team member makes, or that employees need to blindly jump through hoops. And it doesn’t mean that there is a democracy or that every request becomes a debate. Sometimes we all need to roll up our sleeves for the sake of a client’s satisfaction, or a deadline, or another pressing issue.
Mutual empathy should mean more trying to understand where requests are coming from and more giving the benefit of the doubt.
Why should leaders care about mutual empathy?
When you build mutual empathy at your organization as a leader, you build a culture where employees are more invested and accountable. Several studies have linked employee engagement to results such as higher productivity and profitability.
The latest Gallup study showed a striking connection between engaged employees and business results. Business units with most engaged employees significantly outperformed those in the bottom quartile for engagement. Those engaged business units reported these impressive outcomes:
Engaged employees show up at work.
81% lower absenteeism
Engaged employees make better decisions.
58% fewer patient safety incidents
64% fewer safety incidents
41% fewer quality defects
Engaged employees stay with the company.
18% less turnover (in high-turnover organizations)
43% less turnover (in low-turnover organizations)
Engaged employees lead to more loyal customers and more business success.
10% higher customer loyalty/engagement
28% less shrinkage (theft)
18% higher productivity (sales)
23% higher profitability
How does mutual empathy help leaders make better decisions?
In addition to the more general positive impacts quantified above, I’ve also found that mutual empathy leads to better results in specific areas. For example, we’ve asked our team members to tell us what they need to shorten sales cycles on a particular product, where we can reduce friction in a given process, or what they need to sell more of a solution that has been declining.
When you ask people what they need to succeed, you get better insights. You’re not making assumptions about what you should do; instead, you’re asking those individuals directly impacted. They know you care, they become part of the solution, and you achieve the ideal outcome of mutual empathy: improved business results and increased employee satisfaction.
How can employees and employers have mutually empathetic relationships?
To build mutual empathy in your organization, start by thinking about wants and needs, and what everyone hopes to achieve.
Employees want:
A sense of purpose so they can get excited about coming to work every day.
A sense of empowerment and a frictionless experience so they can get their job done.
Psychological safety so they know leaders have their back when they take smart risks.
The company wants:
Commitment.
Contribution.
Results.
What does this look like in the workplace?
1. Identify a goal or a need: Often someone needs to meet a goal (new client logos, profitability, license sales, linearity over a quarter). These goals or needs can come from any group in the organization, and must be transparently communicated. For example, legal may need a more linear timeline of when contracts come in so they can better allocate resources. Sales may need more pricing empowerment to be more responsive to a customer request. Executive leadership may need more predictability in forecasting.
2. Actively listen to understand obstacles: Everyone comes to the table with an honest dialogue about obstacles in their way.
3. Mutually commit to agreements and performance levels by agreeing on milestones for success and addressing the obstacles.
The “mutual” part is that both sides share their goals. Both groups explore the inhibitors to meeting the goals and determine how to remove complexity or friction. And both groups work together to uncover the best solution to move forward.
There is mutual appreciation that each “side” has a goal to meet, mutual acknowledgment that each has a set of nuanced concerns, mutual commitment to resolve issues, and mutual accountability to a concrete plan to reach milestones and new outcomes.
What are some examples of mutual empathy at work?
Any time multiple departments depend on one another to deliver results, it’s time to practice mutual empathy.
One example might be a need to increase revenue for a product introduced last year, but with flagging sales. To approach the problem with mutual empathy, you could:
Identify the goals: Leadership needs increased revenue; sales needs to make their quota.
Identify the obstacles: Pricing is not competitive; sales doesn’t have pricing empowerment; sales has an insufficient budget for demos.
Prioritize the obstacles and knock them down: What can BOTH leadership and sales do to reach a mutually effective solution?
Another example might be optimizing new product introductions.
Identify the goals: Leadership needs rapid success; sale needs to be enabled to sell.
Identify the obstacles: Sales doesn’t have solution information early enough; it takes months for demo units to become available; there’s no solution awareness.
Prioritize the obstacles and knock them down: What can BOTH leadership and sales do to reach a mutually effective solution?
Here’s how a few sample conversations might play out. Note that in most cases, there will have to be a dialogue about what both sides need and what both sides are willing to commit to.
CRO to sales manager: “Our board is asking us to increase the number of net new customers. We believe the Mid Market is a strategic segment to go after to do this. You said you need a product with the right price and features to win in this space. If we as a management team build this solution, how much Mid Market revenue will you commit to?”
COO to customer service manager: “We are seeing an increase in customer service issues. You suggested that by giving each customer service rep a budget to increase responsiveness we could resolve most of the issues on the spot. If we create an empowerment budget of $1000 per quarter per rep, will you commit to improving customer satisfaction scores by 50%?”
Sales manager to COO: “The slow response time to our pricing requests is impacting our revenue. By the time I hear back on a special pricing action, our major competitor has won the deal. What can we do together to get to a 48-hour turn-around-time on pricing requests?”
CFO to sales leader: “Our contracts team is getting slammed with a mad rush of orders and requests coming in during the last week of every quarter. What actions can we take to bring orders in more linearly throughout the quarter?”
The goal is to acknowledge an issue, show empathy that there is “more to the story,” and commit to working together to find a mutually agreeable solution.
How can we achieve mutual empathy during chaotic, unexpected times?
When business is good, everyone’s healthy, and life is relatively easy, it’s not terribly hard to work toward mutual empathy. But in a year like the one we’ve all lived through, I’d argue that mutual empathy is harder to achieve — and also much more important.
It’s a sure bet that we’ll have another stochastic change in our future. So, as individuals and companies, we need to be skilled in how to deal with change, adapt, and persevere.
To apply the mutual empathy framework to the messy reality of our current, chaotic moment, both individuals and companies need to get out of status quo thinking to be more flexible and resilient.
As individuals and teams, we need to approach conversations by giving the benefit of the doubt to the other side.
To get started building a mutually empathetic workplace, share your strategic goals and ask your team what's standing in their way. Don’t rely on your annual employee survey; rather, check in regularly to make sure you have a pulse on what your team needs in order to deliver the business outcomes your organization needs.
With mutual empathy, each team has the right and responsibility to ask: if I address what you need, will you deliver what I need?