Leading with Empathy and Understanding: The Power of Applied Humanistic Leadership

The world of leadership is constantly evolving, and the traditional, top-down approach is no longer effective in today's fast-paced, ever-changing business environment. In order to be successful, leaders must be able to adapt and change their style to suit the needs of their team and organization. That's where Applied Humanistic Leadership comes in.

Applied Humanistic Leadership is a leadership style that is based on the principles of humanism. It focuses on the importance of communication, reality-based decision making and the development of soft leadership skills. This style of leadership is all about creating a positive, empowering and collaborative work environment where people can thrive.

One of the key components of Applied Humanistic Leadership is humanistic communication. This means that leaders must be able to communicate effectively and empathetically with their team members. They must be able to understand their needs, concerns, and aspirations, and work to create a culture where everyone feels heard and respected.

Another important aspect of Applied Humanistic Leadership is reality-based decision making. Leaders must be able to make decisions based on the facts and information available to them, rather than relying on assumptions or stereotypes. This means taking the time to understand the situation, analyzing the data and considering the perspectives of others before making a decision.

Finally, Applied Humanistic Leadership is about developing soft leadership skills. This includes things like emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness. Leaders who are able to understand and manage their own emotions and those of others, are more likely to be able to build trust and foster positive relationships with their team members.

If you're looking to improve your leadership skills, consider taking an online course in Applied Humanistic Leadership. At Humanist Learning Systems, we offer a certificate in Applied Humanistic Leadership that covers all of these topics and more. Our course is designed to help you develop the skills you need to become a more effective and compassionate leader. Sign up now and start your journey to becoming a more humanistic leader today.

Take the Course: https://humanistlearning.com/certificate-in-applied-humanistic-leadership/

note: written by Jennifer Hancock with the assistance of ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI

Respectful communication

 I have online learning programs where I teach Humanistic Communication strategies and science based conflict management approaches. I was recently approached by a reporter to answer some questions about respectful communication. 

1. In your professional experience and opinion, what are the benefits of respectful communication in the workplace?

The benefit of respectful communication is trust. All business revolves around trust. Without that, things can’t get done and if things don’t get done in business, you won’t be in business long. 

The problem is that the term ‘respect’ means different things to different people. Does it mean treating people with deference. Or does it mean treating people with dignity? I’m not big on arbitrary authority, so I prefer to think of this as a problem of dignity. I reframe the question in my mind. Why I need to treat my colleagues with dignity?  The answer is, trust and professionalism. It’s best not to turn colleagues into enemies and it’s best not to make an enemy out of someone who wants to be your colleague.

But more than that, it’s about making sure I don’t create additional problems for myself and the team. If there is a problem in communication, it means there is a misunderstanding, probably on both sides. To me, being professional means, treating everyone with dignity and behaving in a dignified way myself. So if/when a conflict arises, I don’t respond tribally, I respond professionally and treat the other person with dignity and well-meaning and work through the misunderstanding to re-establish trust. To do that, I must communicate with dignity and reinforce the dignity of the other person.  If it turns out the other person really is undignified and behaving unprofessionally, then my professional dignified communication with them will serve me well by making it clear, the problem isn’t me. 

2. What is your #1 tip for achieving respectful communication in the workplace?

My number one tip is compassion. Compassion for myself when I respond with my hackles up to something that is said or done feels like an attack. This allows me to move out of defensive fight mode into rational thinking mode. Once I’ve done that for myself, I then turn my compassion to the other person and remind myself, they are a human being just like me and that most likely, what happened was just a miscommunication and not an attack.  Compassion allows me to respond to the person with dignity and to acknowledge the dignity of the other person so that we can work through what is almost always a miscommunication back to trust. 

The bonus of this approach is that if it was indeed an attack, by responding with compassion and dignity, I disarm and blunt the attack. 

Learn More:

I have a few online courses that can help you learn to practice these skills.

Humanistic Communication Strategies - Learn how to combine humility, compassion and personal responsibility into an effective communication strategy so you can focus on collaboration instead of combat. https://humanistlearning.com/humanistic-communication-strategies/

and

A Humanistic Approach to Civility and Dignity in the Workplace - This program is broken into two sections. The first discusses civility as a concept, covering the problems and difficulties of using civility as a metric. The second section discussed how to use dignity as a value in the workplace to improve interpersonal relationships and problem solving. The goal is to help people understand how to deal effectively with stress and difficult people while still behaving ethically and problem solving effectively. - https://humanistlearning.com/a-humanistic-approach-to-civility/

or

How to Win Arguments Without Arguing - In this program author and Humanist Jennifer Hancock will discuss recent research on how ideas are formed and changed to help you understand why and how to yield to your opponent and how to turn the conversation around using Socratic questioning techniques to frame the underlying moral debate to your advantage. If you want to learn how to win arguments by not arguing take this course! - https://humanistlearning.com/socratic-jujitsu/

and finally - I offer a certificate course in humanistic conflict management.

Certificate Program in Humanistic Conflict Management - This certificate program includes 8 courses for a total of 9 3/4 hours of content to teach you how to effectively, ethically and compassionately deal with conflict while still being professional.

https://humanistlearning.com/conflict-management-discount-bundle/

Communicating across generations in the workplace

With Gen Z entering the workforce, communicating across generations is getting harder! What is the best way to accomplish this? Boomers like one way, Millennials another.

I offer a training on how to do this using humanistic principles and science.

https://humanistlearning.com/generationaldivide/

First – the science. The generations aren’t all that different actually. Personality wise – humans are humans are humans. About the same number of boomers and Gen Z are narcissistic for instance.

What does differ is our life experiences and fears. Basically – did you grow up in a time of social investment? Or a period of social disinvestment.

Boomers experienced scarcity – but also – social investment.

Gen Z – is growing up in a time where there is very little social investment and actually quite a bit of social disinvestment.  This leads to differences in the levels of social trust each group has.  Boomers have a lot of social trust.  Gen Z have a lot less.

The good new is that what we value is basically the same so we can use our values to connect to one another.  And this is true across any diversity dimension.

The problem in communication tends to be something called – dignity violations. Basically – how people feel their dignity is being violated or has been violated in the past – makes them sensitive to future dignity violations and they often won’t even consider another viewpoint until their past dignity violations have been recognized and validated by the other person.

The way to get past this defensiveness is to validate the dignity of the other person.  Don’t demand they validate your dignity before you recognize their humanity. Validate their dignity.  After that – the rest gets easier because communication and problem solving – among equals – is collaborative and respectful.

Most of the tricks to doing this involve personal practice. Recognizing your own responses to dignity violations. Recognizing how your own biases are impacting how you are feeling about the other person, and choosing to override your instinctual response and view the other person as fully human too.

Hope this helps and please let me know if I can be of any assistance to your work group. I offer training to groups to help them use science to remove unwanted behaviors - whatever they are.