The era of empathy

Rita Gunther McGrath, a Professor at Columbia Business School, is the author of the book The End of Competitive Advantage. In a recent Harvard Business Review article she wrote:

"As knowledge work grew as a proportion of the US economy, the new reality of managing knowledge and knowledge workers challenged all that organizations knew about the proper relationship between manager and subordinate. When all the value in an organization walks out the door each evening, a different managerial contract than the command-and-control mindset prevalent in execution type work is required. Thus, new theories of management arose that put far more emphasis on motivation and engagement of workers."

"Today, we are in the midst of another fundamental rethinking of what organizations are and for what purpose they exist. If organizations existed in the execution era to create scale and in the expertise era to provide advanced services, today many are looking to organizations to create complete and meaningful experiences. I would argue that management has entered a new era of empathy."

The challenges of remote work include the lack of face-time on which we all rely to express our ideas and negotiate compromises. Remote employees and their managers must rely on empathy to bridge the proximity gap.

As the amount of remote work increases, the value of empathy continues to rise. Authors like McGrath and articles like the HBR piece referenced above, are helping to reprice the currency of empathy.