Human-centered leadership skills, like emotional intelligence (EQ), self-awareness, communication and more, are essential for leaders looking to support and empower their teams to perform at their best.
However, many leaders struggle to develop human-centered skills. In fact, according to Gartner, 71% of employees believe that their leaders don’t exhibit human skills.
In this episode of The Business of Learning, we spoke with Karolien Koolhof, an author and founder of the training and coaching business Quiet Quality, for tips on how to develop human-centered leaders.
Tune in now for expert insights on:
• Why human-centered leaders are critical to business success today.
• The connection between human-centered leadership and company culture.
• The (often overlooked) power of introverted leaders.
More Resources:
• E-Book: Experience Matters: Developing Leaders at Every Level
• Infographic: Future-forward Leadership: 5 Skills To Develop
• Article: The Power of Being Human: Why Vulnerability Is an Essential Skill for Modern Leaders
The transcript for this episode follows:
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Hi, and welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo: And I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor. Before we begin, here’s a brief message from our sponsor, Training Industry’s Leading Leadership Development Certificate.
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Today’s leaders are faced with a host of challenges, whether it’s managing a remote team, keeping pace with the industry advancements, or navigating difficult conversations with employees. That’s why Training Industry’s Leading Leadership Development certificate program was designed to give you the skills you need to manage successful leadership development programs, which in today’s business climate, is imperative for lasting success. Explore what makes a great leadership development program and learn strategies to develop your current and future leaders. For more information on the program, visit trainingindustry.com/lld.
Sarah Gallo: Human centered leadership skills are essential for leading high performing teams. However, 71% of employees believe that their leaders don’t exhibit human skills, according to Gartner.
There are many reasons why a leader’s human skills may be lagging. For one, they may not have had the time or space to develop them. Or they may not understand the true importance of these skills in today’s work environment. After all, in the past, the pace of change wasn’t what it is today and human skills were not always considered a priority.
So today we’re excited to speak with Karolien Koolhof, an author and founder of the coaching and training business, Quiet Quality, to learn more about developing human centered leaders. Karolien, welcome to the podcast.
Karolien Koolhof: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yes, welcome. I’m super excited for the conversation today. To get things started, can you share a definition for human centered leadership? What does it mean to be a human centered leader?
Karolien Koolhof: That’s a very broad question, of course, and there, well, I’m sure there are all kinds of definitions, but if you were to ask me, then I would say that a human centered leader is a leader who is empathetic, feels the need of his or her employees, uh, listens carefully. And not just listening, but active listening, also acting upon what someone tells you, uh, reminding what someone has said and then getting back to them later on, like asking, okay, how’s it going right now? It’s about the, the part of being human, right? Just being interested in the people around you, uh, and expressing that interest as well.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah. I love that. Thanks for defining that for us. I know it is a bit of a broad term. So now that we do have that definition in mind, can you talk a little bit about why human centered leadership is becoming increasingly important for both businesses and employees?
Karlien Koolhof: Well, if you look at the current job market and what you see happening, Is that it’s actually, um, a demand based market, right? So there is a lot of demand right now, a lot of open vacancies where it’s sometimes hard to find people to fill them. So for employees who are well willing to switch, it’s pretty easy to leave a company and just go somewhere else if they don’t like it. So in order to retain these people. I think it’s very important for people to feel safe and appreciated in the workplace. And I think human centered leadership can help with doing that. So that is one reason. And if you look at the younger generation entering the job market right now, for them, I think their whole perspective on work and work life balance is pretty different from what we were used to before, because for them, work is not the main part anymore. It’s also about, well, living a nice life, enjoying your life. And work should be a place where you can grow, where you can develop yourself. I also coach quite a lot of young professionals, and what I see happening there is that purpose, um, being appreciated, working on something that matters, is very important to especially that younger generation. So I think there too, in order to be able to adapt to that, it’s very important to listen to those people to see, okay, what is it that they need and how can we cater toward their needs and how can we make them feel happy and safe here in the workplace?
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah. Definitely. That’s such a good point. Um, because there is such an evolution and how people, find purpose in their work and what work means to them. So that’s definitely a great point there. Can you share some examples of human centered leadership skills and what do they look like in practice?
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah, definitely. And just to make it a little bit more specific, because I’m specialized, especially in the more introverted leadership style, which I also link to human centered leadership, because it’s a kind of leadership where you lead from behind, so to say. It’s not that you position yourself above your team, but you are. Amongst them, you’re part of the team listening to them being in constant conversation. What is it that they need? How can I help you in order to develop? So it’s about listening. That’s one part, but also giving them the autonomy to try and see for themselves like, okay, what is it that I need? And how do I like to work here? So it’s also about giving space. And if you look at a differences in personality and also preferences linked to that, what you see happening is that people who are more on the introvert spectrum, so to say. For them, it’s easier to give space because it’s a natural tendency. Whereas for people who are more on the extroverted side, for them it’s easier to take up space, to take the stage, to share success, all of that. So it’s, it’s also linked to personality, I think, but also to culture. If you look at the cultural differences, there are countries where you’re expected to share your individual success to take the stage for company, the U.S., but also in the Netherlands, it’s. It’s quite important to show, uh, your value, to show what you’re capable of, to be successful. But if we look at countries in Africa, for example, certain countries over there, or Asia, there it’s more about the collectivistic, way of being. It’s more about, “we’re all in this together” and how are we going to do that? And if you look at research literature, what you see there is that the more collectivistic way of working is linked to a more introverted nature of people. It’s about giving space, whereas the taking up space is linked to a more individualistic way of working. So there, yeah, I think the human-centered kind of leadership is more the collectivistic one, which is also a little bit of introverted leadership.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah. Thanks for breaking that down for us. It is interesting to see the different norms and styles across cultures and countries for sure. I’d like if you could also share a little bit about how our listeners who are corporate training professionals can really go about developing human centered leadership skills. What does that look like?
Karolien Koolhof: I would say that it all comes down to really turning on your feeling part. Because especially in the, in the Western part of the world, we have become very rational, right? Everything needs to be logical and we tend to think a lot. We all have a feeling part that you can pretty well use for this empathy part, for the listening part. So it’s also about allowing yourself to feel, to express your emotions, and to actually use them in order to know what to do in a certain situation, but somehow, sometimes it seems like we’ve forgotten about that a little bit, about the feeling part, that we’ve become so rational that this feeling part becomes like inferior or something that we’re not allowed to show in the workplace, but I think actually that being vulnerable. It is a big strength for a leader, because it shows that you are human, that you have feelings too. And it opens up the workspace to share for others. If you do it as a leader, you have like a role, right? And like you show that it is safe to show your feelings, to show your emotions. So I think it starts with being vulnerable yourself. I think the work of Brené Brown is very strong on this topic. I think it all comes down to that, right? To allowing yourself to feel and to show that vulnerability in the workplace.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely that vulnerability piece, I think is really challenging for leaders to kind of tap into that. But as employees, we respond to that like so much when we see like another leader being vulnerable and really being authentic, like you’re really drawn to that. Um, so that’s a great point there. When it comes to developing human centered leaders, can you talk a little bit about what, what are some common challenges that organizations, um, might face, um, with this type of development?
Karolien Koolhof: About the feeling part that we just talked about, right?
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Like when it comes to like developing human centered leaders, like whether it’s like the training programs they implement or how to apply and reinforce it in the workplace kind of, what are some challenges that organizations and leaders might face? And how can they overcome them?
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah, I think there too, it might be that somehow they’re a little bit biased toward what the best leadership would be, because oftentimes it’s still about being like the alpha male or even alpha female, if you wish, um, taking up a lot of space. Really like the one who takes up the stage and then tells everyone what to do. But when it comes to leading and there’s even some research on like, what is effective leadership. It’s more about being empathetic. It’s more about, like, the whole, if you look at the big five part, for example, it’s more about the human part of a personality that makes effective leadership. So it is actually about understanding what people need. It is about catering to those needs to that. So a challenge might be that we still have this image of a leader should be strong. A leader should know what to do at every moment in time, and then should be the example all the time. And the leader should not be allowed to show any vulnerability, any weakness, because then people would think that he or she is weak and doesn’t know what to do as a leader. So I think that kind of bias…. In a lot of companies, I still see that happening, that they have one certain image of what leadership is. And then when they start looking for a new person to become part of the leadership team, then they look for a similar person. Someone that’s just like them, even in terms of personality. And I’ve done a couple of Big Five tests with big leadership teams to see like, “Okay, if we’re talking about diversity, are you really diverse in terms of personality?” And oftentimes, it’s not the case because it is an invisible kind of diversity, right? You don’t see it straight away that people might think that they’re very diverse when it comes to where people are from or gender, all these kinds of things, but and for personality, oftentimes, people are pretty similar. It’s the affinity bias that is playing a role in there, so I think there too the bias is not just the image of what leadership is, but then also copying what we already have might be blocking them from doing it in a different way.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, great points. And a lot of times that bias is unconscious, right? So it is kind of hard to spot and root that out.
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah, I mean, you can make it visible, for example, with this Big Five, it shows very clearly, like, we are actually pretty similar. And I must say that there was a big team, and they were pretty shocked that they were so similar because they thought that they were very diverse. And then after doing that, they were like, we’ve forgotten something because there’s another part of diversity that we didn’t include.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah. Wow. I do want to take a step back and kind of look at the big picture here, and I know you touched on culture a little bit earlier. So could you dive deeper into how human-centered leadership can really influence company culture and, and kind of what impact does it have on factors like employee engagement and retention?
Karolien Koolhof: Well, I think another important topic there is psychological safety. Because we spoke about the vulnerability part before, right? And that enables a culture of psychological safety. I think a lot of people are familiar with the work of Amy Atkinson on that topic. And what she says is basically that psychological safety is about being able to show up as yourself at work. And if a leader does that, really being an example, being vulnerable, showing up as yourself at work, showing, okay, sometimes I do make mistakes too, then you allow other people to show up as themselves as well. So you make it psychologically safe. And also, research has shown that psychological safety has an impact on retention of people, um, of having a culture that is a nice one to work in, and even to attract new people. So I think that is the crucial element in here, the psychological safety one. And again, the vulnerability part that we spoke about before.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah. Definitely. When we look at the measurement of these human skills, which we know it can be challenging to measure the effectiveness of communication or empathy or vulnerability, can you share any metrics or indicators that learning leaders can use to measure the success of their human-centered leadership training efforts?
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah. I think in the end, they’re all doing it for the employees, right? For their happiness for them staying with the company. So I would say that employee engagement would be a good metric in order to measure that, to see if there’s a difference before you do it in a more human centered way. And after you have incorporated that in your way of working, but again, I think, the fact of always wanting to measure everything again, that links a little bit to the rational part, right? I think some things cannot be measured. It’s the same thing with coaching. Sometimes people want to know before we start, like, “Okay, what is it that I will get out of it?” And it’s always different because it is a personal process. You go in there together and sometimes you change direction. I think it should be the same for leaders because well, you can set goals obviously, but if you’re really catered to the needs of the people in your team. Then you will see that you will be changing direction now and then because their needs change, right? So it’s very difficult to put a metric on that beforehand. Yeah.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, definitely being flexible and willing to shift is super important.
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah. I think that is one of the most important leadership skills right now, being able to navigate and to, to change direction because in an ever-changing world, You will never know everything, right? It is one of the main things that I learned in my MBA. Like as a leader, it’s not possible anymore to know everything.
You should be able to say, “Hey, I don’t know it yet, but I will find out.”
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah, being honest and it’s like, “I don’t have the answer, but I’ll find it for you.”
Karolien Koolhof: Yeah, but a lot of people think that it is expected of a leader to know everything and to know what to do, but that’s just not possible anymore. The world is changing so fast. It’s pretty hard to keep up with all of that.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah. Well, Karolien, we have covered so much today. I know I got a lot out of this conversation, so I hope our listeners did as well. But is there anything else you would like to share with us before we do wrap up?
Karolien Koolhof: Well, we already [discussed] human centered leadership, but also the introverted leadership … I think sometimes people consider that like an inferior kind of leadership, but I would argue that it’s actually something that can really be a competitive advantage if you use it, especially if you combine it with a different kind of leadership, because we already talked about the introverted part and the extroverted part. But if you combine the two, They have their own strengths, right? So what if you were to combine the two, like two people in a leadership position? One that can be very quick, very actionable, take the stage, the other one doing the one-on-one talks with employees, doing the more analytical stuff, the long-term stuff, combining that into a kind of dual leadership. I think that would be a great competitive advantage. However, I don’t see that happening in a lot of companies. I think it would be very interesting to explore that it’s not either or, but I would say it’s a combination of both.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: On that note, thank you so much for speaking with us on the podcast today, Karolien. How can our listeners get in touch with you after the episode if they’d like to reach out?
Karolien Koolhof: You can go to my website, quietquality.nl. I also have a weekly blog on introversion and introverted leadership. And LinkedIn, of course, where it’s pretty easy to reach out to me.
Sarah Gallo: For more resources on human-centered leadership, visit the description for this episode and the shownotes on our website TrainingIndustry.com/TrainingIndustryPodcast. Lastly, don’t forget to rate and review us wherever you tune in to The Business of Learning. Until next time.
