Emerging as an agentic-empathic leader: The effects of a leadership empathy intervention

Abstract

Purpose – The dissertation seeks to explore the qualitative changes in leadership behavior after an empathy development intervention has been visited. Design/methodology/approach – Literature on empathy, empathy development, emotion-al intelligence, leadership and leader-member-exchange was used to build a theoretical background for observing changes in behavior of the participating leaders. Results from the literature on empathy and emotional intelligence development were taken to conceptualize an empathy development intervention which was then facilitated for 11 participants, 6 of whom were leaders. Qualitative, unstructured interviews were held with the participants in leadership positions which were then analyzed using Grounded Theory. Findings – The emergence of an agentic-empathic leadership style was identified in 4 out of 6 participants. These participants used behavioral emotional intelligent skills taught in the intervention to actively shape their own behavior, their team cultures, and their followers’ behavior in an agentic yet empathic way reporting various positive effects from a reduction to sick days to an increase in compliant behavior and motivation. The changed leadership behavior helped them to build up their self-efficacy in situations which they formerly per-ceived as challenging. Research limitations/implications – The number of participants that contributed to the building of theory was relatively small as only six matched the criteria for inclusion into the sample. The whole research project was undertaken by a single researcher. Though this is not unusual for a doctoral thesis it entails certain limitations since possible distortions and biases in the qualitative design cannot be ruled out. A number of measures have been taken to improve study quality. Practical implications – The results help to better understand the impact of an empathy intervention on leadership behavior. While it is expected that participants become more empathic afterwards, the occurrence of instances of agentic behavioral traits were surpris-ing. It greatly increased the range of application of the behavioral emotional intelligent skills. A leadership style balancing agency and empathy can be very useful in leading a team of highly skilled individuals, motivating them to high performance as well as retaining them. Originality/value – As far as I know, the effects of an empathy intervention on the quality of leadership behaviors have not been researched before. Previous held hunches on the effect of empathy/emotional intelligence on leadership behavior were not confirmed.