Long on empathy and short on patience

Photo by Maria Orlova.

"We gave our people a lot of grace. But like, we sorta need to get back to it, you know?"

"Our big focus right now is on rolling out a performance management system - across the entire org."

"The leaders here are really nice. Actually, that's part of the problem."

People ask if all fast growing startups have the same issues. Does every org look the same inside? Are we working our way through the same extended screenplay, with different actors?

No. Well, not exactly.

Covid has meant that more bosses are encountering the same problems. Issues with burnout. High turnover. Remote onboarding. Communication across lossy systems. These are the top four cards in every leader's tarot deck. But even though there are some universal elements, what to do about it is deeply specific.

The accidental loop

Early on, we talked about how leaders needed to meet their people where they were. Not everyone would be able to put in a full work week. In fact, many would struggle to clock even a few hours.

Bosses internalized an important message. These are unusual times. A lot of people are struggling. Have empathy. Be patient.

As time went on, burnout got more rampant. Resignations began to flood in. And bosses dealing with already understaffed teams, kept reaching for the same tool. Empathy.

It wasn't hard to understand that the teams were burnt out. The bosses themselves were also burnt out. It wasn't hard to understand people looking for other jobs. The bosses were right there too. It wasn't some grand stretch of the imagination. The empathy was proximate; the conditions were intimate.

But we created an accidental loop. We told leaders to be empathetic. We told them to be understanding. And they are doing that. They are phenomenal about understanding the conditions for underperformance in their teams.

But it's not working...

They are patient to a fault. The underperformance they tolerate from some is demotivating to others on the team. Those employees are also tired and frustrated at having to shoulder a disproportionate amount of work. And they keep leaving.

At the same time, bosses know it's hard to hire. They know that any person in a role, even if they aren't fully doing the work, is still better than open head count and a job posting for 6 months. And that's six months if you're lucky.

This loop starts from a lovely place. But it bottoms out somewhere bad for bosses, bad for employees, and bad for the organization. A place where empathy is a reason to give up on accountability, or even setting expectations. A place where leaders see problems festering in their organization, but don't say anything to their teams for fear of upsetting them.

Clear is kind

The worst part of all this ruinous empathy is that it doesn't even work. The leaders who try it are hoping to spare their team some anxiety. Ask around, though. Anxiety is everywhere.

The people you work with are grown ups. They have friends on other teams, and family in other organizations. They know what it's like out there, 18 months in. They are under no illusions. Even as their bosses tell them to pay no attention to the performance management system behind the curtain.

It's not that your people don't want understanding, or empathy. It's that empathy for an adult means acknowledging, among all the other things, their need to hear the truth. The most sensitive, fragile folks in your company have more strength that they get credit for. And they don't want to be lied to.

The Jekyll and Hyde two-step

When we lay it out for them, many leaders get this. They know what they ought to do. They know that their current behaviour is out of integrity with who they are. They don't feel good about it, but they also don't know how to get out of it. They're scared to say what they actually need, because of how it will land. And when we pull on that thread, what comes out more specifically is that they're worried that it will mean they're not nice. Not a nice boss. Not a caring company.

Some of these leaders hold out. Out loud they keep extending leeway and grace to their people. All while their inside voice gets more frustrated and worried. They start to hold grudges against the people not pulling their weight, even as they smile and tell them it's totally fine. And that they understand.

Until one day they change. One day they get fed up enough with the state of things that they snap. Blowing people up. Demanding updates on people's projects and where they spend their time. Summary firings. Even pre-COVID we saw this Jekyll and Hyde script play out with managers who resisted saying the hard thing. They keep it all in for so long, that when it finally comes out, it's a disaster. An immature, flailing, abusive mess.

So much for being nice.

These leaders have a lot of identity wrapped up in being that nice boss, running a caring company. And one part of that is empathy for their teams, yes. But one part of it is ego.

They want so much to get through this whole thing as the exception to the rule. As the leaders that put people first. That's a worthy thing to want and to work for. But not if you put the story of your people-first leadership ahead of the actual needs of your people.

We have been banging the drum of "grace during a pandemic" the whole way along. So if you see yourself in this, and are wondering if you're being too gentle, give yourself a bit of grace, too. If there's a mistake to make during a global crisis, we'd take too much compassion over too little, every time.

But don't confuse compassion and ego. If you have something your people need to hear, you need to tell them. Tell them kindly, but also clearly. The other thing isn't actually people-first at all.

- Melissa and Johnathan