Empathetic Leadership in Pharma: Building Stronger Teams

Empathetic leadership is a management style in which leaders prioritize understanding and addressing their team members’ emotions, perspectives, experiences, and thoughts. Empathetic leadership involves active listening, showing genuine concern, and compassionately responding to all employees. 

Empathy leadership is critical in the pharmaceutical industry because employees are often pressured to meet tight deadlines and fulfill stringent regulatory requirements. Empathetic leaders can better understand their subordinates, meaning employees feel better understood and more supported. In the long run, following an empathetic pharma leadership style can help companies better retain their employees. Empathetic leadership translates to improved organizational performance for several reasons.

Positive effects of empathetic leadership on organizational performance

Improved personnel morale

A key benefit of empathetic leadership is that it improves employee morale and satisfaction. Employees in pharma work in a high-stakes environment where even a tiny mistake can cost the pharmaceutical company millions of dollars. Consequently, burnout is frequent. Empathetic leaders can better connect with burned-out employees, making them feel cared for, supported and valued. This improves their job satisfaction at their lowest, improving company culture, job satisfaction, and employee loyalty.

Increased collaboration

The key to any pharmaceutical breakthrough is collaboration. Empathetic leaders make their employees feel heard, improving team communication and beyond. Employees can more freely discuss their problems, allowing the leader to intervene without giving the impression of overbearing/micromanaging. Empathetic leadership promotes team cohesion in pharma, paving the way to higher productivity.

Increased productivity

Empathetic leadership also results in increased productivity and efficiency. When employees feel heard and understood, they are more likely to work harder and trust their managers. Furthermore, when faced with an issue, they can freely discuss it with their managers, who can provide resources. This decreases the idle time and improves efficiency.

Approximately 90% of US workers believe empathetic leadership leads to higher job satisfaction. These advantages show how a skill as simple as empathy can significantly impact the performance, productivity, efficiency, and loyalty of any pharmaceutical company. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that pharma leadership should develop empathy.

Developing empathy as a leader: Techniques

Here are some simple techniques to develop empathy as a leader.

Try active listening

Empathetic leadership depends on attentively listening to team members and their concerns, perspectives, and ideas. Empathetic leaders ask open-ended questions, try to genuinely understand the problems, and reflect on what they’ve heard. Therefore, to become a compassionate leader, leaders must listen and understand and provide detailed and relevant feedback that showcases their understanding. Vas Narasimhan, the CEO of Novartis, has repeatedly shown his empathetic leadership style by actively listening to employees, patients and other scientists.

Foster a positive culture

To become an empathetic leader, it is necessary to improve the work culture in the team. Empathetic leaders create an inclusive environment for all employees. Empathetic leaders promote team cohesion in pharma teams, discourage gossip, and provide opportunities. Empathetic leaders also foster a positive culture in their team by showing appreciation for hard work, recognizing team members, and promoting growth.

Offer support

For empathetic leadership, leaders must also intuit their team member’s requirements. Empathetic leaders must holistically consider the steps they can take to support their employees. For example, leaders can offer training and pair low performers with mentors. These steps show how the leader recognizes the worker’s struggle and is willing to provide support and resources.

Cultivate self-awareness

Even leaders are humans; they are bound to respond emotionally to what they’ve heard, seen, or read. However, one must understand and separate emotional responses to become an empathetic leader. For example, a leader faced with a regulatory query due to a subordinate’s mistake may (understandably) be angry. However, instead of blaming or arguing with the subordinate, they must focus on resolving the issue. Separating personal responses and emotions from work makes it easier to become empathetic.

Empathy in Leadership: 3 KEYS to Communicate With Empathy You MUST Know!

Here’s a short video explaining how you can communicate your empathy with your employees.

Demonstrating empathy can go a long way in fostering team cohesion in pharma. Building stronger teams requires strong leaders who understand their employees. Here are some simple strategies for building stronger teams and promoting team cohesion in pharma.

Strategies for building stronger teams and fostering team cohesion in pharma

Promote clear communication.

Encourage open and transparent communication among team members and leaders. Create schedules for regular check-ins and discussions. Obtain regular employee feedback and implement any necessary changes in processes or operations. Furthermore, when addressing issues between two or more employees, ensure all sides are heard and an appropriate solution is reached.

Define roles and responsibilities.

Leaders must clearly define the role and responsibility of each team member. Any overlaps and confusions should be appropriately and transparently handled with all team members. Empathetic leaders consider their team member’s expertise, experience, and knowledge before defining roles and responsibilities.

Share goals and visions.

Empathetic leadership involves aligning the team on the same goal. However, leaders must discuss the goal with their team members instead of choosing it. This allows them to set achievable, realistic goals so everyone feels understood. Regular updates and team meetings should also be held to understand progress and make changes to the goals if needed.

Many more strategies exist for becoming an empathetic leader and building stronger teams. Here’s a short video on four exercises for becoming empathetic leaders.

4 Ways You Can Exercise EMPATHETIC Leadership

Conclusion

Empathetic leadership is not a new leadership style but is gaining more prominence in today’s pharmaceutical industry. Compassionate leaders are likely to increase employee loyalty by making employees feel heard and understood. However, empathetic leaders are made and not born. Empathy must be practiced and learned. To this end, pharma leaders must focus on understanding their subordinates and separating their emotional responses from professional expectations. While the development is slow, empathetic leaders are much more likely to be successful in the long run than authoritative leaders.

FAQs

1. How do you quickly become an empathetic leader?

Becoming an empathetic leader is a process. However, the best way to become an empathetic leader is to put yourself in your employee’s shoes and analyse the situation.

2. How can empathetic leadership improve trust?

Empathetic leaders allow employees to share their concerns without judgment. They go one step further by providing resources or solutions to these concerns. This makes the employee feel supported, improving their trust.

3. Are there any statistics that support this leadership style?

According to EY, 86% of employees believe empathetic leadership boosts morale, and 87% say empathy is necessary to foster an inclusive environment.