Cognitive empathy - power tool for leaders

Empathy is not a single concept. Psychology distinguishes between several different forms of empathy. Today, we will focus on one of them - cognitive empathy. This type of empathy is among the most important tools leaders have when working with people, teams, and their results.

Cognitive empathy is a tool that everyone who wants to be a successful leader, mentor, and influential person should have in their repertoire.

Let’s start with a definition:

Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand another person’s perspective, their way of thinking, their interpretation of a situation, their motivations, and their assumptions.

Many people judge others based on themselves, thinking that others think the way they do. They often ask themselves questions like: “Why don’t they get it when I explain it to them? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”, “Why are they getting so upset? It’s no big deal,” or, conversely, “How come they’re so indifferent? Don’t they care about this?” All of these questions implicitly contain a judgment, where we judge others based on ourselves, our own experience, and our own current state. And all of these questions often indicate a lack of cognitive empathy.

Instead of trying to force others to see things our way, we should ask ourselves:

• Why do they feel the way they do?

• Why does a given situation evoke such strong emotions in them—or, conversely, none at all?

• Why do they interpret an event the way they do?

People don’t react to reality. They react to their interpretation of reality.

Example

Let’s look at an example: your employee focuses on “cool” things, wants to work on what gets the most attention, often presents this as their own work - talking about how hard they worked on it and how much they sacrificed for it - and ignores the small, thankless tasks, or doesn’t perform them to the expected standard. The first thing to consider is whether this is a one-off occurrence - perhaps the person is simply very interested in the matter at hand - or whether it’s a pattern. Do they act this way in most cases? Can you verify this impression with others? And if you’re right, what should you do about it?

One solution might be to distribute the work evenly so that everyone contributes equally to different types of tasks. However, such a solution ignores motivation and the way people interpret the situation. A poor (or novice) manager might not care - after all, you’re distributing the work, and that person is there to work, not to have fun. However, working with your people’s intrinsic motivation is the leader’s responsibility.

One solution might be to let that person do what they enjoy, and have the others handle the rest. You simply won’t address it until someone speaks up. But people only speak up when their frustration reaches a point where they feel the need to do so.

The solution here is cognitive empathy: understanding how others interpret the situation, what needs and motivations drive their reactions, and why the person in question has that preference.

Here’s a possible scenario:

1. Question: “Why do you think you’ve chosen these four projects recently and ignored other parts of the job on several occasions?”

2. Question: “What motivates you in this job?”

3. Feedback - it’s important to give the person feedback. What have you noticed, what feelings does it evoke in you and others, what impact does it have, what would you need, and what impact would a change have?

4. Question: “What do you think is needed for you to be able to do the work that needs to be done, rather than just the work that’s cool?”

This approach has three effects:

• You’ll understand your subordinate’s perspective

• You’ll give them the opportunity to reflect on their behavior

• By asking questions, you avoid judgment, which often leads to defensive responses and arguments over who is right

This approach can help you understand why your subordinate is acting this way. You might discover that in a previous job, their former manager took the best work for themselves and presented the team’s results as their own success, and your subordinate’s current behavior is a defensive mechanism: “So that no one steals my success and so that I, too, can do something interesting.” And not only will you discover this, but it may also be new information for your subordinate.

The Power of Cognitive Empathy

What you can influence:

• effective communication – adapting your communication style based on the type of audience

• motivation and influence – the ability to harness and guide the intrinsic motivation of those around you

• conflict resolution and negotiation – understanding the causes that lead to conflict and the needs that each party is trying to satisfy

• building trust – when people feel that you understand them

etc.

Building Blocks

Metacognition and Self-Awareness

Metacognition is “thinking about thinking.” Self-awareness is one of the most important practical manifestations of metacognition.

Self-awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions, to grasp what feelings and thoughts they evoke in you, and to know why you behave the way you do.

If that definition sounds familiar, then simply put, self-awareness is cognitive empathy directed toward oneself. Self-awareness uses mechanisms similar to those of cognitive empathy, but turns them inward:

• What behavioral patterns do I have?

• What triggers do I have?

• What emotions do events evoke in me?

• How do I interpret these events and emotions / how do I feel?

• How do these feelings manifest in my behavior?

You aren’t invited to a meeting (event) → you feel excluded (emotion) → they probably don’t like you (feeling) → you act unkindly toward others (behavior).

Understanding this sequence will allow you to work on each step so that you are not controlled by others’ actions or your own emotions, and it will enable you to interpret events differently than as a personal attack.

Metacognition and self-awareness are among the most powerful tools for developing cognitive empathy.

Intellectual humility

Intellectual humility is the ability to admit that I don’t know everything, that I may not always be right. It is the ability to admit that I may not be able to assess - and therefore judge - everyone correctly on the first try.

Curiosity

Curiosity goes hand in hand with intellectual humility. Curiosity isn’t just “I want to know what’s going on.” Curiosity is much more than that - in this context, it can be a tool for reframing feelings:

• Instead of getting upset and thinking, “This isn’t how I wanted it to be,” curiosity allows you to ask, “Why did they choose this approach?”

• Instead of blaming: “This isn’t how I wanted it to be,” curiosity allows you to ask: “Why did you choose this approach?”

Cognitive empathy isn’t just a tool for team leaders. Coaching and mentoring require this ability to find appropriate approaches for the development of the person being mentored.

Product development requires cognitive empathy. A good product isn’t the answer to the question of what you want, but the answer to the question of what your customers want and why—what problem they have that you might not, and that they want to solve. How they want to solve that problem and why exactly that way.

Of course, a relationship with your partner requires cognitive empathy.

And to generalize:

Cognitive empathy is one of the foundations of successful, long-term relationships. It gives you the ability to influence such relationships toward growth.