What is the single most important thing that distinguishes a good leader from a bad one?
You will find numerous leaders around you – in your organization, in your country and even in your family. Leaders influence you and your actions and in some way becomes responsible for your goals in life. They pave the way to your career and show you the ways to achieving them.
It is the same in case of a bad leader too. He too would influence you to a great extent. But it is unlikely that you would look upto him. Perhaps because of his behavior. Is there something else as well that makes him different from a good leader?
Empathy!!!
It is empathy that distinguishes a good leader from a bad. That’s right.
Leadership houses on the foundation of empathy. I have quite often come across leaders, rather worked with leaders who are more focused towards getting things done or, achieving their individual goals in life. In doing so they would not be bothered about how their followers are feeling or, what they are going through. They would profess things that they would not have done in the wildest of their dreams.
A lot of leaders, after they become leaders forget the path that they have treaded en-route to their position. They forget the difficulties that they had faced. They start thinking as if they were never in the position that their followers were in. This brings in an “I am not bothered” approach in their behavior. People follow such leaders for some time, but gradually when they start feeling that their leader is not empathetic towards them, they start to move away from such leaders.
What is Empathy?
A bookish definition is not what I would want to present here as an answer to this question. What is real is empathy?
My manager walks up to me and says that he wants to spend some time with me. He sits with me and listens to what I have to say. He is transparent with me and understands and acknowledges everything that I am going through and speaks to me about all the changes, its impacts and the like. I start to feel that he is with me and is like me and that he understands me.
This is a situation, when I as an employee look up to my Manager as a leader – a leader who is empathetic towards me. We can quote a thousand different definitions for “empathy”, but what empathy actually means can only be explained by someone who has actually been touched with it.
For a manager to develop empathy, he has to come out of his shell. A manager has to get outside and spend time with his direct reports to understand his situation and develop a sense of empathy towards him. Spending time with your direct reports at his workstation is not what it means. Rather, you need to spend time with him at places where he is his actual self, where he behaves naturally. It is only then that you will be able to understand him in detail. Such interactions help you know what the real world and real environment is like. You need to be genuinely interested in your people.
At this juncture it is also important to understand the fact that merely spending time with them will not bring in empathy. You need to ensure that you bring back the evidence of this real world to your office.
It is not unnatural for all of us to get entangled in data, given the kind of tough environment that we work in. But what we need to take care off is that we are not forgetting how to empathize with our direct reports. You might have all other traits in you, but without empathy these traits are of no use and you would still be much far away from being a good leader.
Can a book really prepare you for an interview?
I never believed it could and to be very frank, I had never read too many such books. But some time back one of my readers suggested that I should refer books that could help them in appearing for their interviews. This is when I decided that I will review a few such good books from time to time so that it benefits you.
What is “Winning Job Interviews”?
This book written by Dr.Powers, is a complete job hunt book, which starts from job hunting, getting called in for the interview and then cracking the interview. Dr.Powers has sandwiched humor and thought into his book excellently and in such a way that you will enjoy the read and will never feel that your are reading a book on job hunting and job interviews.
Dr.Powers opens the book with a chapter on “Job Hunting” and titled it appropriately as “Why Job Hunting sucks”? The chapter is presented in a humorous way and after you read it, you will realize the humor behind job hunting. He goes onto discuss about being an effective job hunter and the ways to being and effective job hunter. A few techniques that he discusses included thing like networking, posting and researching the success statistics of each recruiter. Initially I felt that the things being discussed were a bit too theoretical, but as I read through to the next chapters, I realized the relevance of each of the things that Dr. Powers had described in the book.
The next section focuses on preparing for the job interview. In this section his focus is mainly on researching and practicing. His lays emphasis on researching about the company that you are applying for. You can prepare mock questions and practice them with your friends and relatives thus improving on the preparedness for an interview and reducing the anxiety associated with it.
As a closing note in the book, Dr.Powers discusses about the importance of maintaining a record of your contacts so that your can use them in the future if you have to go job hunting again. It seemed irrelevant initially, but later as recession crept and people started loosing jobs, especially the ones who felt that they were very secure in their current jobs, I started to realize the importance of this.
The book beautifully describes tips to get over the normally asked question – “tell me something about yourself”. The author describes about how to include your skills in the answer that you give rather than just harping on your tasks. He teaches how to take control of the interview instead of the interviewer being in control.
This book is an amazing read and at the cost that it is available at Amazon, it is a steal of a deal for anyone who is looking to prepare for an interview, rather crack an interview. The book is a beautifully laid out masterpiece that can help you achieve your personal career goals in life.
Check out the book at Amazon -
