The Happy Company #4: Cultivating a Culture of Empathy

Roel Timmermans
5 min readApr 13, 2024

Welcome back to The Happy Company: your bi-weekly guide to a Human 1st company culture.

If processes, and org charts are the brains, this is the heart of a company: Empathy.

Empathy is not just about understanding people or talking about emotions. It’s about feeling, connecting, and walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

The Power of Empathy…

Empathy isn’t just a fluffy feel-good concept. It makes the biggest difference in managing teams. One that doesn’t come easy to everyone. I’m one of those, I struggle with parts of it (more on those further on).

Empathy is not just about feelings
Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash

It’s about the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes, to understand their thoughts, feelings, and experiences on a deep, emotional level. When done with intention and authenticity, empathy has the power to build bridges, make strong connections, and bring positive change.

Some stats for you:

There are many upsides to empathetic leadership in the workplace, including:

  • Inspiring positive change within the workplace (87%)

--

--

Roel Timmermans

Driver of Human 1st Workplace Culture. Leadership, culture, team motivation