Leading Women: Engage and inspire through compassionate leadership

As part of our Leading Women series, we want to highlight the professional challenges and career aspirations of the women we work with here in Asia. 

In this feature, Huilin Min, Managing Director at Kimberly-Clark Taiwan and Hong Kong, shares her insights on the benefits of mentorship, how empathy plays a significant role in today’s climate, as well as vital advice on striking balance in career development.

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Q: Why is empathy at the workplace so important?

Yeah, there is a saying that nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And that’s absolutely true. Empathy really allows leaders to create an environment of open communication and trust, which leads to an engaging team. 

Empathy allows us to feel safe with our failures, and it makes us feel that we’re free to speak up with our ideas. It encourages the leaders to understand the root cause behind poor performance by listening and paying more attention to non-verbal cues that are part of everyday communication. 

Right now, we need to practice social but not emotional distancing. Given the ever-changing chaos and external challenges [brought about by the pandemic], every team deserves an empathetic leader who deeply understands what individual people are going through. 

Making the right managerial and executive decisions are challenging enough during tough times, and it gets even harder during a global pandemic. Hence, empathy and the ability to listen and understand the root causes and what drives people during a tough situation are important.  

This is an abridged version of the full interview with Huilin Min. For the full version of the interview, click here.