An Impact podcast with Damiao Lo, created for the Impact leadership playbook.
Research shows that individuals with an empathetic manager are more innovative and engaged than those with less empathetic managers. The organisational knock-on effects of this are significant, with empathy proven to be an important driver of productivity, inclusion, and resilience – especially in times of crisis. But what exactly is empathy? And how can it be developed?
"The result will come if we can understand where people are coming from."
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In this mini podcast (24 mins), created exclusively for the Impact leadership playbook, Dan chats to Damiao Lo, Senior Consultant for Impact Asia, about empathy. Originally from Macau, Damiao spent 25 years in Canada before settling in Shanghai. His work now spans Asia and the Americas, where he brings a unique blend of cultural fluency, global perspective, and hands-on experience. Damiao is known for his warmth, integrity, and deeply authentic approach.
What is empathy?
For me, it's about how to create that capacity to understand where other people's viewpoints and intentions are coming from. Because if not, then we really don't create that connection or create that relationship [...] It's like, let's pause, to find out where people are coming from, what their current circumstances are, what their purpose is in the work that they're doing, as well as what are their concerns. So that I can hear them and then address them in a way that they can hear me better. And then, how do we build that rapport to accelerate this relationship?
From a leader's perspective, what role would you say empathy plays in that leadership toolkit?
So for me, what's more important is that empathy is a result of an action. Perhaps asking, what am I curious about? Am I willing to learn something every day? Am I willing to learn from this person? And then, after that, what's the next step? What can we do? How can we collaborate together to create some value?
What I'm seeing in the last year is a lot of discussion about how to deal with Gen Z. And I think that, in itself, if we can create that understanding and empathy, when they exhibit some behaviour that is not to our expectations, we should actually pause ourselves and say, 'hey, you know, how can we contribute to that learning?' Because in the end, they still want to learn something. So, I think that in the next couple years, if you're asking about empathy in the leadership toolkit, it should be more and more important because we have more Gen Z and more younger people coming in. And how do we create that space to allow them to grow and for us to help them?
The danger of prioritising results over human interaction
It reminds me of some Impact clients in programmes that we're doing. And they say 'Well, we have no time. We need to get the result, we need to get the work done.' [...] And when they want to get things done, they really push and they're not understanding where everybody's coming from, and they might say to each other, 'you did everything wrong'. And by doing that, you can actually see the energy just pulls out from the whole room. Because they are too result focused. The result will come if we can understand where people are coming from, for sure. Research shows us it's about human-centric actions and behaviour that will create empathy as well as the results.
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This mini podcast was created for our leadership playbook, an interactive resource capturing 45 years of learning about leadership.