Leaders Who Care
“… Sorry … this is still blowing my mind” the young leader muttered in disbelief. “I mean is it really this simple?”
I was just about to wrap up a coaching session with a young leader who was experiencing some conflicts with another department. He worked in a very matrixed organization where projects had to pass through multiple touch points before completion. It is my experience that this kind of system can often lead to conflicts, especially if one party is perceived to be bottle-necking the process. That is exactly what this leader was encountering.
Due to the loss of a key member, his department was currently understaffed and team members were starting to grow frustrated, particularly with another department they often had to collaborate with. His team felt there was no communication, and projects were getting passed off with rush orders and lacking the proper information and supporting materials. The other department insisted that the problem lie with the expectations of their clients and it could not be helped. Thus the 2 sides were at a stalemate. This was the state of affairs the young leader presented me with during our session.
“What interventions have you tried in the past?” I asked, knowing the answer was probably little to nothing. “I’ve tried to explain to them the challenges we are facing, and they seemed to be receptive.” “How has that worked for you?” I said. “Not very well”, he said grinning. “So what do you think you should do?”
He sat and pondered for a moment. I took a sip of my coffee as he dug further into his chair, perplexed. Finally he let out a deep sigh of surrender and blurted out, “I think I need to go to upper management.” Bingo! There it was. The golden panacea for every personnel problem a middle manager could ever face. Go to their manager. “Well yes you could do that” I said. “However, I think there is one problem with that idea… tomorrow you still got to go work with these people. How do you think they will feel if you go straight to upper management without talking to them first?” “It will probably feel like I am going to Mom and Dad to tell on them” he joked. “I don’t want to do it. I just don’t see any other way.”
“Have you considered trying to build your relationship with this department?” I asked. “What do you mean?” he said with a raised eye brow. “How often do you spend time with people in this department?” “Rarely. Our communication is almost entirely through email.” “And I’m guessing every time you do communicate is when there is a problem, or you need something from them.” “Yeah…” he said faintly. You could tell he was starting to get the message and the cogs in his brain were turning. In response, I presented him with an idea. “What would it look like if you approached the manager of this department simply to remind them how important it is for your departments to collaborate, and asking how you can best support them? If another department approached you that way, how would you react?” “I would be much more inclined to work with them” he said.
The rest of our session focused on the importance of reminding this department about their shared mission, and investing time in building their relationship to promote more cooperative interactions in the future. When we started to wind down, I asked him what his biggest takeaway from the session was. He went silent for a few moments and then…
“… Sorry … this is still blowing my mind. I mean is it really this simple?”
And I have seen similar reactions with countless leaders I have coached over the years. Despite his good intentions, going straight to his boss would have perpetuated or even escalated this cycle of conflict between the 2 departments. This begs the question, why is it so easy for us to default to transactional solutions in our workplaces? Why is it so easy to just:
Send another email
Make another SOP
Move that person to a different office
Go straight to our manager
Rather than simply have a conversation with someone? We needn’t look much further than popular shows like The Office, or Parks and Recreation to show us what modern day workplace culture is known for. Callous, apathetic bee hives. Did you know that worker bees work themselves so hard that they only live for about 6 weeks? Many people in workplaces are not that unlike these worker bees; mindlessly buzzing around from task to task, driven more by the structure of the honeycomb than relationships with their fellow bees. Our love of systems and rules often crushes our people. We have an abundance of structure, and a severe deficit of empathy.
Steven Sinek captured this idea very well in his book Leaders Eat Last. One of the primary reasons he gave was this concept called abstraction. Here’s how he described it:
“The process by which people themselves become a collective representational idea in the eyes of a company. Rather than seeing consumers as actual human beings, companies often reduce consumers to abstract ideas (for the sake of easier management).”
Another quote he gave came from Russian dictator Josef Stalin:
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Abstraction explains why it is so easy to get road rage, or send a nasty email to someone; we are seeing cars and computers and not the people on the other side of them. This is also why we often see puzzling decisions from large corporations that seem to show a complete lack of consideration for their customers or employees. Leaders are leading through spreadsheets rather than making genuine connections with their stakeholders. With this dynamic is it any wonder why organizations suffer from so much disengagement, politics and destructive conflict? If we want to build strong and healthy workplace cultures that attract and retain top performers, it needs to start with empathy and real relationships with our people.
So with that said, how can leaders practically start cultivating more empathy in their workplaces? Here are a few simple tips that can help you get started. You will find that none of them are earth-shattering, but when done consistently, you will find this can make all the difference over time. Like the young leader I coached, you will find the simplicity and consistency over time is what it takes to transform our cultures.
1. Foster Meaningful Connections
Today despite the abundance of options available to us, we are less connected than ever. Our over-reliance on email, text and social media is feeding the abstraction monster. As a result, collaboration and empathy is deteriorating in organizations. Therefore, it is important for leaders to create an environment where meaningful face-to-face connections can happen; both the team amongst themselves, and the leader with the team. This has become particularly challenging with the rise of remote work. If you are a leader who oversees a predominantly remote team, then I would suggest encouraging more phone and video calls, and creating specific expectations and boundaries around the use of email and text. In order to fight abstraction and create more empathy, your team needs opportunities to build trust and understand each other and that can’t happen through 1-dimensional communication like email or text.
2. Crave Upward Feedback
By upward feedback, I mean feedback from direct reports and consumers to leadership. Jumping off the previous point, leaders must make asking for feedback a regular part of their leadership activities. It can become easy for leaders to get stuck in their echo chambers and lose perspective of the challenges and priorities of their stakeholders. When that happens, empathy takes a nose dive with it. There is a disconnect that often happens in organizations where leadership has all the authority, but very little information about the sphere they are responsible for leading. However, your direct reports and frontline workers, often have much more information because they are in the middle of the action. That is why their feedback can be invaluable for helping a leader identify their blind spots and leading with more empathy.
3. Adopt a Holistic Success Model
Finally, it’s important that we embrace a definition of success that accounts for more factors than simply financial ones. Organizations create a plethora of KPIs to measure transactional results, but very little to measure relational ones. What we celebrate, and draw attention to, we will empower. If the only things we highlight as leaders involve performance or bottom-line results, then we shouldn’t be surprised when our people value these things above how they treat their fellow team members or customers. This is where values-driven leadership can be so powerful. When leaders encourage and celebrate behaviors that promote wellness and healthy relationships, it creates a culture of empathy people want to be a part of.
So there you have it! Some practical tips for cultivating more empathy in your organization. As a leadership and collaboration coach, I am passionate about helping create healthy and high-performing workplaces. I trust you walked away with some practical tips you can go out and apply immediately to see greater levels in success in your organization.
Along the way if you could use some help, I would love to have a conversation about how 1:1 coaching with me can help you grow as a leader and reach new levels of success, personally and professionally. Feel free to DM me, or email to learn more.
Ryan Smith - ryan@unearth-coaching.ca
Founder & Coach
Unearth Coaching Inc.
