Empathetic Leadership
Stumbled on a topic on Twitter and the discourse was around “The curse of knowledge”. The curse of knowledge basically states that once you know something, it can be difficult to understand the perspective of someone who doesn't.
And we’ve all felt this frustration, way more than we care to admit. We ask ourselves, why can’t they understand me? Isn’t this task too easy? Why do they keep making the same mistakes?
We unknowingly assume that others think on our wavelength, know our thoughts and are as knowledgeable as we are. The smarter you are, the more you assume that people are as smart.
So how do we solve this?
Slow down, and be empathetic. This is not to say that you should accept incompetence, however, you have to give people the grace to ask questions or make mistakes.
Whenever you assume that something is too obvious to all, you’re likely to leave yourself open to being misunderstood and a lot of confusion in the end. Communicate, communicate, communicate!
Talking about empathetic leadership, catch this podcast on Mentoring I had with Joseph Agunbiade - Apple, Spotify, Google