Whether they’re newly minted managers or C-suite executives, effective managers often lead with empathy, intellectual curiosity and vulnerability.
Welcome to Manager’s Toolbox, a column designed to help managers in biotech and pharma navigate the corporate terrain and grow professionally and personally while aligning with their own values. Each month, Bruce Wu, an executive coach, shares expertise and insights that will help you learn or hone your management skills.
In this installment, Bruce discusses empathy, intellectual curiosity and vulnerability, which are important tools for managers.
As we move onward and upward in our career journey, many of us become people managers. First-time managers are often overwhelmed and come to realize that it takes a very different set of skills to manage people than to manage nonhuman tasks. Seasoned managers find themselves needing to continue honing their people management skills. If you’ve become a people manager, how can you best oversee and empower your team? What does an effective manager look like?
Before we continue, I want to emphasize that the goal here is not to come up with a precise definition of “effective,” as I believe an effective manager can take on many forms. Nor is this column meant to be an instruction manual of the best way of being an effective manager. My hope is to offer perspectives from my journey as a multiple-time C-suite executive who’s led legal, people and business development departments at multiple technology companies so that you’re aware of three valuable leadership tools available to you.
Although there are no preset traits of effective managers, these people tend to share some characteristics in common. It doesn’t matter whether they’re newly minted managers or C-suite executives, these folks seem comfortable being uncomfortable, and they value empowering their teams to grow with them. They often lead with empathy, intellectual curiosity and vulnerability.
Leading With Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand emotionally what other people feel and to see things from their perspective. It does not require us to feel what another person feels. Simply put, empathy is the bridge that connects people emotionally.
A people manager, by definition, interacts with other people who bring a wealth of knowledge based on their own unique perspectives and life experiences. Empathy allows you to connect with others and tap into that well of resources.
I often see managers, particularly those who are fairly new on their career journey, try to train their team to become replicas of themselves. Their reason: doing so feels safer than having to confront thoughts or opinions that are different from their own. While in those instances the team members might end up delivering exactly as instructed, the manager loses an opportunity to learn from and connect with their team on an emotional level. Even worse, they demonstrate a behavior that will likely be repeated and propagated by the team members when they too become managers.
To be clear: Being empathetic does not mean you agree with what you’ve heard. It requires you to open your mind to try to understand another person’s perspective and connect with that person emotionally so you can grow.
Leading With Intellectual Curiosity
One tool that helps develop empathy, opening our minds to another person’s thinking, is intellectual curiosity. Intellectual curiosity is curiosity that leads to acquisition of new knowledge. Note that there is a difference between curiosity and intellectual curiosity. We can be curious about many things in general, and that’s the end of it. To be intellectually curious, however, we must go one step further to acquire new knowledge.
It’s that additional act of knowledge acquisition that becomes important for a manager. It requires an affirmative act of recognizing a gap in your knowledge and then actively moving to fill that gap. Your life experience is enriched by an accumulation of knowledge and experience picked up along your life journey. When you’re genuinely receptive to new information, you can open yourself not only to a new experience with another person but also to a new understanding about yourself.
Intellectual curiosity is especially important for one of the biggest leadership challenges based on my conversations with managers of all ranks and backgrounds: wanting team members to “fall in line.” Instead of seeing a difference in opinions as a detriment, an effective manager would recognize that they might have a knowledge gap and stay intellectually curious so that they can fill that gap. This allows them to be agile and empower their team to collaborate and share knowledge. In other words, intellectual curiosity can open doors to endless possibilities.
As you strive to be an effective manager, remember to not only gather information but also assess it holistically to make key decisions. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Leading With Vulnerability
One main ingredient that can lead to intellectual curiosity is vulnerability. Being willing to understand others emotionally (see empathy) and recognizing that it’s OK to have a knowledge gap and then fill it (see intellectual curiosity) can sometimes be uncomfortable.
Many of us have been trained in our professional career to equate exhibiting any type of vulnerability to weakness, and we were taught not to show any sign of weakness when we defend a Ph.D. dissertation, climb the corporate ladder to become a company executive, secure the next round of financing from investors, lead a team of human beings who have ideas that are different from our own, etc. The list goes on.
I challenge that notion. Author and research professor Brené Brown describes it well: It takes courage for us to accept our imperfection, embrace vulnerability and acknowledge our fears. Put another way, to acknowledge that we’re not infallible, and to be willing to show up and actually learn from others, makes us courageous, not weak.
Specifically, as a manager, it’s important to acknowledge to your team that you recognize there’s something you don’t know and be willing to lean in and fill that gap. You’ll not only grow personally but also empower your team to grow with you. Vulnerability fuels intellectual curiosity and empathy.
Summing It Up and Looking Ahead
Empathy, intellectual curiosity and vulnerability are valuable tools for being an effective manager. Now that you have an understanding of them, we’ll build on that knowledge. In the future installments of this column, we’ll explore the nuance of these tools and how to use them to help you develop your leadership skills.
As I mentioned earlier, this column is not meant to be an instruction manual. You’re fully in the driver’s seat, and I’m just your guide. Feel free to get on and off at any stop you like, and pick up any tools offered here that are calling to you. I applaud you for being courageous to join me as we look inward so that you can learn and improve your management skills. Onward!
Interested in seeing more of Bruce’s leadership insights? Follow him on his website.
