Empathy is that quality by which you can understand others’ perspectives and feelings, and for a leader, that is very important. When you have a pretty diverse workforce, it can also be very challenging.

Your employees have skills they are most interested in using or developing, problems affecting their personal and profesisonal lives, ambitions and goals, and plenty of other things going on that are unique to them. For you to make the best use of your employees — getting their best work from them, keeping them motivated and enthusiastic — you really need to understand how they view the world and what is important to them. You cannot just look at what is important to YOU, you need to figure out what is important to THEM. Through the lens of their individual perspectives you can get a better idea of which skills they are most likely to use, what problems are affecting their ability to do a great job, what it takes to keep them interested and striving forward — in short, you really need to understand things from their point of view.

It is helpful for you to have a diverse workforce, but that also eliminates the “one size fits all” approach of dealing with your employees. It is harder to step into someone else’s shoes if you do not understand them. And since everyone is different, you are going to have to work extra hard to understand their point of view. Some of that will come though direct conversation, so do not be afraid to talk to your employees about things beyond the office. Some will come through observation, so take note of what they are doing when they seem happiest, and watch for problems from outside the office that creep into the workplace.

This is not all just a bunch of hand-holding, touchy-feelyness…this is about doing what you need to do as a leader to help your employees turn out the best possible product or service and maximize your profit. If you were on an assembly line you would worry about the quality of the ingredients that go into your final product. When you are leading people, you need to think just as carefully about the qualities of your most important ingredient: your employees.