When Empathy Leads to a Path of Enablement
In any organization that wants to actually retain top talent, empathetic leadership is no longer a “nice to have.” Some say this is a driven by the millennial or “Gen Y” members of the work force, but I’d venture to say all of us want that — and most of us in leadership positions want to be that.
However, one of the issues I’ve struggled with in the past is “can you be too empathetic?” (Spoiler alert: I don’t think so, but I still struggle with this sometimes.) When does being too empathetic pave the way for enablement, where complaining starts to take over? More importantly, when you realize someone has been enabled, how do you turn that back?
I’ll share a few tips here based off mistakes I’ve made by allowing things to go a little too far…not because I was too empathetic, but because I enabled a negative pattern or relationship.
Tip #1: Be careful in group situations, especially when you are the leader. Redirect to a private setting.
Imagine you are in a place where you are a team leader, but not their manager. The manager is a micromanager, and the team is not a fan. (I’m sure some don’t have to think too hard here.) You are conducting a retrospective, and time after time, one person raises personal complaints about a manager. The comments become more and more angry after a period of time. You want this to be a safe space, but you know there is no way anyone would say this to the manager, and you’re not sure how to share this “feedback” to improve the situation.
While I changed some of the details, I found myself in this situation once. In hindsight, I should have let the person openly share the first time, then talked to the person separately. I could have then made more direct suggestions around structuring his/her next one-on-one with the manager, and set them up for a productive conversation.
Since I didn’t, the worst thing happened — whether this manager was in the wrong or not, the team started to turn as well. The retro started to become a gripe session about the manager. Fully 80% of the comments were about the manager — and this flip was not over months, it happened quickly.
So how do you turn it back?
I tried several things that failed here. I tried talking to someone I was buddies with outside of work to stop. He did. They didn’t. Even when he said to move on, they didn’t.
I tried gentle redirection. All my best facilitation methods would pull them away — temporarily. Inevitably, we would return back where we started.
After several failures, I finally became exasperated. I blurted out, “What in the world would you like me to do about it???” (It’s possible there was an expletive in there, to be honest.) The team was silent, because they were not used to that type of reaction. After I took a breath, I asked the team if they wanted me to share their words with the manager. Of course, they reacted with shock. “NO!” “This is supposed to be a place we can vent!” (And so on.)
I explained that yes, this is a safe space here, but the point of the retro is to help the team move forward. Nothing they shared here was actionable…in the way it was being shared. So if they all agreed the team was being held back, what could we do to move it forward?
Because this was a great team, they finally started talking in a more productive way. “When (manager) does x, it frustrates me because y.” Others pulled back even more. I asked if they thought the manager wanted the best for them, and they agreed. So I told them to start thinking of the positives the manager brought along with the frustrating points.
At the same time, I decided to use a specific example or two with the manager as opposed to the overarching “the team feels you micromanage them.” (Fortunately, I had been meeting with the manager the whole time. Always do that — the relationship is important.) The manager confessed that he/she was new to the Agile way of working, and didn’t know where to jump in anymore. I was thrilled that the manager shared that, and led to some great conversations on where he/she could add tons of value.
Things weren’t sunshine and rainbows — there were always challenges — but the unproductive venting stopped. In this particular situation, I truly failed the team — and they bailed me out by being exceptional people.
Solutions: Have separate meetings with those needing an empathetic ear. Don’t enable the venting in a team setting — but if you do, push hard to keep the conversation productive by reminding the team of the purpose.
Tip #2: You can be empathetic but still have high expectations.
A shout out to The Outward Mindset by The Arbinger Institute on this one — it helped shape my reaction on this scenario.
I once worked with someone who had a lot of legitimate personal responsibilities (for simplicity, we’ll use my own name here to protect the innocent). Stan’s spouse worked off hours or second shift, so he was responsible for all three of their kids (except she could drop them off for school in the morning, but that was it). One of the kids also had some physical disabilities. There was little support from family, as most lived in other states.
I had kids of my own (my boys were both very young), so I definitely empathized with Stan, though my spouse did not work off hours. From the start of his tenure, Stan was consistently missing deadlines, and I started to receive reports from others that he was not doing his part in meetings or as part of the team. When I talked to him, Stan would always have a tough story to tell about his personal struggles.
I tried to find ways to meet his needs. I suggested the team give him assignments that had the most flexibility on deadlines. We walked through what needed to be done on his work and the best approach for getting it done. I even called a client and asked for some extra time and had teammates pitch in extra to get it done.
Without getting into the details, Stan’s kids weren’t the issue, nor was anything else in his personal life. It was an out for his inability to do the work to the level of expectation desired — as well as a lack of desire to improve. I let this go for far too long. It frustrated the team. They started to wonder if I played favorites. My problem was I let the empathy trump the expectations.
So how do you turn it back?
In this case, resolving the issue took far longer than if I had addressed it head on. What I should have done at the start was level-set the expectations of the position and work collaboratively to see if there was a way that could be met, while remaining empathetic to the situation. I instead provided too many crutches Stan could use.
After talking through the expectations, I then had to deal with Stan’s anger — he felt that I was being unfair. I had to bring out the original job description, which is what the expectations were pulled from. After some time, he agreed. I then worked with him to find ways he could be successful (I offered to even review his work to set him up for success — he did not take me up on it). Within a few weeks of consistent meetings to measure against expectations, he resigned. Truth be told, he did share with me that I was more than fair with him throughout. Thankfully, I regained the trust with the rest of the team, because even though they couldn’t know the details of our conversations, they noticed a change in his work and effort.
Solutions: Ensure you hold people to the same expectations, but work with them if they need empathy or some help for a period of time to be successful. If you do let it go too far, dialing it back takes more effort — and you risk the trust of others. It’s more work, but it has to be done.
Tip #3: Many times, you can be empathetic and at the same time, look at the business value.
Bob was a great employee and teammate. I noted that he started nearly falling asleep in team meetings. Certainly not the right thing to show, especially since members of senior leadership would occasionally show up to the meetings.
Bob and I talked, and it turned out his young child started having issues sleeping, and he was getting perhaps 2–3 hours of sleep a night. Bob was still somewhat new to the organization, so was trying to tough it out.
I offered him a shift in his work schedule. What if we let his work day start at 10 am until things settled down? He could drop his child off at daycare, go back to sleep for a few hours, and could work later in the evening (his wife could pick up the kids). He didn’t even know that was an option. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if it was either, but I knew it needed to happen for Bob to be successful.
Before you say “oh, you’re the best manager,” there was a good business reason for this as well. If I didn’t allow some flexibility, one or more of three things was going to happen:
- A member of senior management would have seen this, and wouldn’t have understood the rationale, which could lead to a negative impression of Bob. (Or if they were an excellent leader, a negative impression of me for not being a better manager.)
- Bob’s work would begin to suffer, simply because of exhaustion.
- Bob would find a new place to work and we would have to go through the long (and expensive) hiring process, with a team that was already overly busy.
Don’t misinterpret this — I’m not saying you shouldn’t be empathetic if you cannot find a business reason to do so. Being empathetic is the right thing to do — and for me, I don’t know how to turn that side of me off. I’d rather quit a job that doesn’t value empathetic leadership than try to turn that side of my personality off.
It’s simply that many times doing right by the people you work with is also the right thing for the business in the long run.
I still struggle with the question of being too empathetic. I have an even harder time working with leaders who say things like “that’s what we pay them for” or “if they don’t like it, they can find another job.” (Of course, if a leader is having a tough day and needs empathy from me, knowing they may say these types of things and not mean them, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t show the same empathy I expect from them.)
I have made mistakes here — both in letting empathy cloud the expectations as well as not allowing myself to show empathy. I could write a book of stories on the latter, because I’ve made that mistake far more often.
At the end of the day, it is a fine line between showing empathy and enabling negative patterns. But if you can be too empathetic, I’d rather err there than not giving empathy to someone.
