Empathy and Conviction: a Recipe for Effective Leadership

Leading teams with a combo of empathy and conviction is a great recipe for fostering a successful work environment.

It means being able to hold your ground in defence of what you know is right, while always being ready to shift where you stand on issues by listening to and understanding differing points of view around you.

In other words, being able to admit to myself and to others when I'm wrong, and that there is a better way. Not because my convictions are weak, but because I'm capable of differentiating between the value and impact of my own ideas from other people's better ideas. Learning to let go of your ideas is hard.

For me, learning these two ways of thinking didn't come about easily at all. I had to fail many times at life before being able to truly understand what they meant in practice. And frankly, I'm still learning.

But despite the long road of learning ahead of me, I feel like I've figured this one thing out, and it enables me to make a solid effort in enabling my teams to do their best work while providing a good mental space for us to coexist in.