“Stop moaning” — and the science of why empathy breaks down (part II)
Knowing what we now know about empathy, how does it come into play when leaders address weary employees at the height of a global pandemic?
Here are a couple of principles:
1. The quality of your listening determines the quality of your impact. Use intentional listening to gauge the emotional temperature up and down your organisation.
If there was ever a ‘gym for emotional intelligence’, this would be the foundational exercise every single time: intentional listening. Listening incorporates a paradox: it’s not a secret, it lies in plain sight for us all to access and, at least on the surface, it’s deceptively simple. It’s like being told to hydrate as an athlete: we all know it, yet few of us practice it well.
As a leader, listening well is even harder to exercise. I lost count of the times I’ve witnessed messages being ‘massaged’ before they reach the ‘boss’; hard truths being held back; and various agendas being wrapped in seemingly innocuous packaging.
Which is why I call it “intentional.” It literally means consciously flexing that empathy muscle we all have. Here are a couple of questions to consider:
>> Why do you listen? Do you listen to offer a fix?
>> Who do you listen to? Are you reaching out to a cross-section of the organisation — different roles, tenures, generations, backgrounds? Do you listen to people who disagree with you?
>> Are you only half-listening? Do you already have a story in your head and are you listening for confirmation?
Underpinning this type of listening is a backbone of psychological safety. Hooray for the “holy grail” of employee engagement — the safe space many executives and team leaders think they’ve created but few really have. [Stay tuned for a separate post expanding on how to make psychological safety a reality.]
2. In a crisis, what works for you might not work for your employees. Mind the empathy gap.
Back to our beleaguered KMPG chairman. Did Mr. Michael listen to his staff? Yes — or so he claims. “I have spoken to a lot of partners and people at all sorts of levels,” he emphasised. No — if by listening we understand the intentional, humble, spacious kind described above. Because while listen he did, the needle of his thermometer was completely off. What he heard is what he wanted to hear.
And this is how a yawning empathy gap takes shape. What Mr. Michaels offered was a version of the gritty motivational speech that would quite likely work for him — “stop moaning” — but pinched his staff’s rawest nerve.
These are a couple of things employees don’t want to hear when they’re burnt out:
>> Gladiator-like pep talks
>> Projecting on them what works for you
>> Quick fix-its
3. Hold space and THEN take congruent action.
So what is a workable alternative, you might ask? One reason many leaders have struggled is because an emotional crisis is pretty different from defining strategies, hitting targets and fixing operational issues. It goes against the grain of our diagnose — fix — move on operating procedures. It takes cognitive and affective energy and, because we’re “emotional pragmatists”, we’re often inclined to look for the easy way out. And yes, an easy way out may sound like “stop moaning” at times.
Instead, I’d like to propose a dual approach:
>> Acknowledge — “I know that what you’re going through is hard”. Ideally, reflect back what you’ve heard from them, minus your own interpretation.
>> Allow for the whole array of difficult feelings — and the possibility that you may not have the answers. This pandemic has played an ‘accordion of emotions’ on us, ranging from despair to anger, despondency, confusion and grief. Holding space for it is perhaps the most powerful way you can show your empathy. Jacinda Ardern expressed that skillfully: “We cannot know your grief, but we can walk with you at every stage.”
After the two A’s, employees will want to know: now what? This is where empathic concern comes into play:
>> Offer clarity — point the direction of travel. Admittedly, when the situation is as nebulous as this pandemic, clarity might sound like an impossibility. But remember that what your people expect is the compass, not the map (which nobody has anyhow).
>>Take congruent action — “This is what you told us are your biggest pain points and here’s what we’re doing to alleviate them.” There’s nothing worse than claiming that you care and then taking measures that directly contradict that. Now, many organisations have taken ‘care’ to mean mindfulness classes and virtual water-coolers, while leaving KPIs unchanged and squeezing every ounce of energy out of their employees. Take KPMG’s ‘forced distribution curve’, where team members are pitted against each other and ranked from best to worst, which was maintained throughout the pandemic. Empathy isn’t just what you say and model — it’s also displayed in the policies you uphold. And not walking the talk is perhaps the worst empathy failure of them all.
Morale of the story? It’s not “zip up your lip or you’re out.” As regrettable as this “stop moaning” episode proved to be for Mr. Michael’s career, there’s a bigger learning here. This is how it reads: “How you treat people at their most vulnerable defines your culture.”
