Empathy (i.e. the ability to understand what’s going on in someone’s head) is a key leadership trait in my opinion. The good news is that you can develop this skill.
First and foremost, listen. Use 1:1 meetings to talk about how the person is doing, not what they’re doing. Ask open-ended questions. One of the most underused and most powerful questions in the workplace: “how does that make you feel?”
Pay attention to weak signals, like someone changing their daily routine, being snappier than usual in team meetings, etc. Learn how the people in your team usually behave, what they like and don’t like.
Then, put yourself in their shoes. This is easier than you think: if you’re used to writing code, chances are you can emulate pretty complex systems in your head (like the behavior of the piece of code you’re working on). A normal human being is a complex system that you can learn to emulate, by which I mean that once you know how someone usually behaves, what motivates them and so forth, and you know their current situation (see step 1: “listen”), then you can take a pretty good guess at their internal state.
Once you know how your team works, both as individuals and as a team, your job is simply to keep them in a state of maximal happiness. And they will move mountains.
Empathy (i.e. the ability to understand what’s going on in someone’s head) is a key leadership trait in my opinion. The good news is that you can develop this skill.
First and foremost, listen. Use 1:1 meetings to talk about how the person is doing, not what they’re doing. Ask open-ended questions. One of the most underused and most powerful questions in the workplace: “how does that make you feel?”
Pay attention to weak signals, like someone changing their daily routine, being snappier than usual in team meetings, etc. Learn how the people in your team usually behave, what they like and don’t like.
Then, put yourself in their shoes. This is easier than you think: if you’re used to writing code, chances are you can emulate pretty complex systems in your head (like the behavior of the piece of code you’re working on). A normal human being is a complex system that you can learn to emulate, by which I mean that once you know how someone usually behaves, what motivates them and so forth, and you know their current situation (see step 1: “listen”), then you can take a pretty good guess at their internal state.
Once you know how your team works, both as individuals and as a team, your job is simply to keep them in a state of maximal happiness. And they will move mountains.