You know the frustration of watching the same problems resurface repeatedly without being resolved. You’ve spun your wheels trying different approaches, but the solutions never seem to stick. Problem after problem drags on, leaving you and your team burnt out, demoralized, and lacking innovative ideas to move forward.
There is a way to reclaim your ability to drive positive change as a healthcare leader and inspire those around you. The solution lies in a simple but powerful concept: empathy.
Empathy increases not just from what we say, but from how we pay attention to the questions we ask. Empathy is often considered too “soft” for work environments. Yet, decades of evidence show that empathy is a workplace superpower.
As a coach, I use the power of listening and asking questions with my clients. Inevitably they want me to help them bring those skills into their leadership style to build deeper understanding, cultivate trust, and unlock creative solutions.
Two Essential Skills to communicate with more empathy.
The first skill is listening. You’ve heard this before, but listen carefully to how I’ll discuss listening to create more empathy. Your goal is to help people you are speaking to gain clarity about what the real issue is and come up with their own ideas about how to approach it.
Tips to enhance listening:
- Pay full attention to the speaker in the present moment. Be as present as possible.
- Allow the speaker to finish their thoughts without interrupting.
- Accept where they are in the situation and their level of experience, without expecting them to be different or offering solutions.
That leads to the next skill: asking questions instead of offering solutions right away.
Your agenda is not to solve their problem but to help them access their own understanding and see new perspectives. You encourage this process by asking powerful questions.
Examples of powerful questions:
- “Where have you seen this situation before, and how is it similar?”
- “What are you curious about in this situation?”
- “Where do you want to go from here?”
Powerful questions generally start with what, how, where, or when – inviting deeper exploration and reflection while avoiding the potentially judgmental why. There is no need to plan what the questions might be. When you are fully present with the intention to help them share their ideas, the next question will come naturally based on their responses and the context.
Here’s a simple example of how listening and powerful questions can help someone get unstuck. One of my clients feared being fired after seeing a colleague terminated. She got stuck thinking, “It could be me.” I listened as she cleared her mind. When she paused, I asked, “What next?” She realized she is regularly invited to key discussions and likely doesn’t need to change anything—she became unstuck, felt heard and connected. It can happen that fast.
Here’s a link to my recent video that shares more details about how intentional listening and powerful questions are essential tools for women in healthcare leadership roles.
Deborah Munhoz is a certified physician development coach. For more than 20 years she has coached top-level female healthcare professionals to help them overcome barriers and excel as leaders.