EMPATHIC LEADERSHIP
YVONNE
Empathic Leadership 33 Practices
Tomyteam withlove
Empathic Leadership 33 Practices
Yvonne Engbom
Empathic leadership, 33 practices
Second edition
© 2024 Yvonne Engbom
Art direction and illustrations: Josefine Danielsson
Editing: Josefine Danielsson and Yvonne Engbom
Language review: Dominic McAleenan
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand, Stockholm, Sweden
Printing: BoD – Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Germany
ISBN: 978-91-8057-458-7
What is this book
The purpose of this book is to share my leadership experience and describe practices to guide how to evolve empathic leadership in an organization, as an effective way to create business impact and well-being for people.
Who is this book for
Informal and formal leaders at all working levels, who strive to create an impactful empathic environment for people to thrive, grow, and innovate.
Being a leader of any kind, formal or informal, your behavior and values affect the people you meet. Being a formal leader, representing the employer, means you have decision power over others, setting salaries, leading work, and dividing roles and tasks. As a leader, what you do and how you do it, affects people around you more, therefore it is paramount for leaders to understand how.
No prior skills are needed than the experience of working together with others, which we do from a young age at school, in families, in communities, and at work.
Who is the author
I am Yvonne Engbom, I have a Master's in Computer Science and Engineering and have been working as a senior engineering leader for more than 30 years, leading large organizations in the technology space. I have led teams from small teams of 10 colocated people to large organizations of hundreds of people distributed internationally.
As a leader, you create impact through others. My leadership approach is to create impact through safety, empathy, and humanness. My leadership values are based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and with that as a model, I always strive to create a culture where people feel safe and seen. This enables experimentation and collaboration to create business impact for the company and growth for the individual and team. I believe in teamwork and when you create something together with a colleague or friend in a trustful relationship, the results you create together are more innovative and accurate.
In my free time, I am a classical singer and sing both as a soloist and as a part of a chamber choir. When making music together, it is obvious we depend on each other for the result.
Trust and belonging are key ingredients for an excellent result in all aspects of life.
How to use this book
Use the book based on the current needs in your environment as a guide and for inspiration.
You can read it from start to finish - or select practices that are useful for you in your current situation. You can adapt the practices to fit your operations, work environment, and needs. I recommend reopening the book when you start using the practices, as you might read things differently when applying them.
The practices in the book are described in the context of my experience, in a company where product development is based on a team setup. Some of the examples are described in the context of a multilayer organization to show how a practice can be used in a complex environment. However, the practices are useful and can readily be applied to other organizational settings.
Each practice is described with the purpose, time needed, and pitfalls to be aware of.
How this book is organized
The practices are grouped into chapters based on which needs you have and which situations you want to improve.
▪ TrustbuildingPractices- These are practices useful when you want to build more trust between yourself and people, or within a team.
▪ BelongingPractices-These are practices to shape inclusion and belonging to a unit or community.
▪ FeedbackPractices- Here you find practices enabling feedback, that makes people and the organization grow. Dare to work with feedback!
▪ GrowthPractices- These are practices to identify and build on the talent you already have, to bring growth into play.
▪ Accountability-These are practices to make the work in your environment more efficient and empowering.
▪ Trickysituations- Some advice on how to work with tricky situations involving shame and challenging changes.
Why is this book needed
After working many years as a leader in an engineering environment, with problem-solving at the center, and with efficiencies as a mantra – “save 15%”, “which parts can be automated”, “we have a deadline”, “the customer is waiting for it” - there is a risk of ignoring the time needed to reflect and drives a more commanding approach to generate results All businesses need to create results for their customers and shareholders. I believe that there are more empathic ways of creating better and more sustainable results and at the same time making people feel better at work.
I experience a prejudice about empathy and humanness as if it is about being “soft” or “nice to people” and as a characteristic opposite to setting expectations and creating results. I maintain that that thinking is wrong. When we are successful in creating strong trusting relations we have greater prerequisites to set high expectations and create results in an oftentimes stressful environment, while ensuring the longer-term well-being of our people.
I want to share how to create a more empathic workplace and as I am an engineer, I want to be practical, therefore I describe my experience as 33 Practices. Finally, this is not about theoretical leadership, as you find in other books, this is practical advice coming from my real-life leadership experience.
This is why this book is needed.
Finally
These practices evolved in a male-dominated engineering environment, based on the illusion of rational thinking, facts, and problem-solving. The environment is highly multicultural, with people from all around the world, sometimes colocated and with office locations across the globe. This means that these practices have evolved to manage empathic leadership in large, globally spread technology organizations.
As I have been practicing for years, the practices are born in a prepandemic office-centered setup. The COVID-19 pandemic changed our work lives dramatically, and some of the practices you see are shaped by the working-from-home and the postCOVID hybrid setup. The practices are thereby post-covid and hybrid-working proven, to enable impact through a highperforming organization.
All views expressed are my own. The practices are evolved together with many engaged people.
I hope these practices can guide and inspire you in your work on your journey as an empathic leader. Every small step counts.
Yvonne Engbom
WORKING IN a competitive engineering environment, with problem-solving at the center, and efficiencies as a mantra, there is a risk of ignoring the time needed to reflect and drives a more commanding approach to generate results.
When we are successful in creating strong trusting relations we have greater prerequisites to set high expectations and create results, while ensuring the longer-term well-being of our people.
This book describes 33 practices, divided into 6 chapters around Trust, Belonging, Feedback, Growth, Accountability, and Tricky situations.
This is not about theoretical leadership, as you will find in other books, this is practical advice coming from my real-life leadership experience.
ISBN 978-91-8057-458-7
