As a Sales leader which is more important to deploy,Compassion or Empathy
The CEO of Linkedin Jeff Weiner (@jeffweiner) tweeted:
Empathy is key to compassion, but important difference: Empathy enables one to feel another’s pain; compassion enables one to alleviate it.
This is an important distinction for anyone involved in a leadership role.
A career in sales can be both very rewarding and extremely stressful.
Sales Professionals are reminded daily of their quotas, metrics and monthly goals.
This constant daily grind can sometimes cause enormous stress.
When this occurs, what is your response?
Do you deploy empathy or compassion?
Currently empathy is the big buzz word. Managers, supervisors, and leaders too often lead with empathy.
Having empathy for someone who is under extreme stress, is by itself not a negative. My concern is by focusing on empathy, you leave no room to alleviate their suffering.
Empathy by itself is sharing in someones pain, which can be all consuming.
Compassion on the other hand is acknowledging someone’s pain but leaving enough room and space to help improve their situation.
Tara Well Ph.D, writes a great piece for Psychology Today explaining the difference between empathy and compassion:
Empathic people feel the pain of others acutely. ... Instead of focusing on empathy to the point of draining ourselves emotionally, Buddhism teaches the practice of compassion, called karuna. This is the idea of sharing in suffering, having concern for another, but essentially “feeling for and not feeling with the other.”Mar 4, 2017
My call to action is very simple:
If you are a Sales Leader (manager, supervisor, coach, etc…) you should be deploying more compassion and less empathy.
