The Downside to Empathic Leadership

One of the main reasons I enrolled in my specific Executive Masters of Business Administration program was that the foundation of the entire degree was based in leadership. Rather than focus on a career tract like IT or healthcare, Oakland University had specifically redesigned their EMBA course to be leadership based in order to appeal to professionals in any industry. Studying leadership can be as taxing on your brain as managerial financing, believe it or not. Many times during the program I would speak out in class, exasperated, “I guess we just have to be perfect and do all the things, all the time, for every type of person.” My professor’s response: Basically, yeah.

Being a good leader is being a chameleon, changing your approach and style to each situation. Nothing is ever a copy/paste response and no two circumstances are alike. If you are consciously working on developing your skills as a leader, it is exhausting. You have to be very intentional about your leadership style and make a choice about how you want to show up for your team as a leader, and then be consistent with it. There’s nothing more annoying than an inconsistent leader.

The style that I’ve adapted is largely based in equity and empathy. My primary objective as a leader is to ensure everyone on my team feels they are treated equally and with empathy. When I was an employee, this was the leadership trait I most desired in my managers. I distinctly remember at one point when I was working in the restaurant industry, I needed to take off a double shift on a Saturday for my brother’s wedding. This entailed finding two other servers to take over the shifts, getting them to commit by signing a book, and then getting managerial approval. Without following all the steps, I would still be on the hook for those shifts and if I did not show up, I would be fired. Being the stringent rule-follower that I am, I followed all the steps, months in advance. Three days before the wedding, one of my managers came to me and said she could not approve one of the people that had agreed to cover my shift. I remember staring back at her, speechless, before finally sputtering out, “But I already got a manager to sign off on it.” She shrugged, said she didn’t think that other server could handle a busy Saturday shift, and that I had to find someone else. I still remember that ugly, sinking, hopeless feeling. I followed the rules! I did what I was supposed to do! So I very uncharacteristically pushed back when she tried to follow up with me later that day, and told her I could ask around if someone else can pick up the shift, but as far as I was concerned, I had gotten the shift covered appropriately and I would not be coming in to work on Saturday. The whole situation felt extremely unfair and like I didn’t matter as a person, only as a worker to fill in the roster for the shift.

Empathetic leadership is a scale that I constantly have to balance back and forth, because being empathetic without advocating for your own business will very quickly turn a successful business unsuccessful. I have to balance texting an employee congratulations on her new baby while finding out that a different employee is quitting without notice. It’s balancing PTO hours with clients that want to schedule closings whose revenue keeps the business profitable. It’s balancing health concerns for employees while managing their workload either completely on my own or delegating some of it. I want to show up for them in a way that I never got from a manager. But that has to balance with the very real pressure of making sure they all have a business to work for at the end of the day. I want to always tell them yes, to whatever they need, and figure out how to make it happen.

Empathetic leadership requires the leader to be extremely conscious of her own emotions – touching on the extremely accurate adage:

You can’t pour from an empty cup.

It’s pretty easy to ascertain if my cup is empty. Have I eaten today? Is it 9:05 am and I haven’t gotten through my compulsive review-every-single-unread-email-as-quickly-as-possible routine? Am I distracted when an employee comes in to talk to me, or am I able to give them my full, undivided attention? Originally my goal was to pretend my cup was always full even if it wasn’t, and that didn’t work for long. Then it was waiting to engage with employees until my cup was completely full (when does that ever happen?). What’s actually worked for me is taking time, multiple times a day, to pause and fill the cup up just a tad. And if I know I’ll need maximum empathy, I make sure I’m ready before I step into that conversation. If that means taking a quick walk or getting some water or just sitting in silence for a few minutes, then that’s what I’ll do.

I had an employee send me an email with a resignation letter. We work in the same office, in-person. In her email she wrote, “I wanted to give this to you in person, but seeing as we’re both very anxious people I thought the best way would be to send it and give you time to process it on your own terms, and we could talk afterwards.” THIS was empathetic leadership, from her to me. And it was such a gift, giving me time to read her letter, reflect, and then have a conversation with her. I’m ecstatic that she still works with me and I get to benefit from being around her and her leadership style.

In contrast, I had an employee come into my office as soon as I arrived to work one day. I was in the process of removing my coat when she came in, hurriedly told me I had call waiting, and that she was providing her two-weeks notice before rushing out and ignoring me the rest of her time at my company.

A lot of these anecdotes center around employees leaving, but of course, that is when empathy is the most needed. I was reflecting on this in particular, because I had an employee call me Monday morning to tell me she was quitting. She was crying and apologizing to me, and kept repeating, “I know this is horrible timing for you because you have so much on your plate.” I had to gently remind her, multiple times, that this has nothing to do with me. And that instead, I was the one that was sorry, that she felt management was not addressing her work load concerns and she needed to leave the job to lower her stress level. It’s not a right or wrong thing. It’s not something you can or cannot choose to take personally. It’s two human beings and the very least you can do is show up in that space authentically. I’m not going to pretend her job wasn’t getting steadily harder and more complicated. She’s not going to pretend that it was intentional or malicious or even within my control. We’re both going to come to understand that what once was a good fit is no longer a good fit, and then we both move on.

That conversation was then immediately followed by another employee at that office, extremely frustrated to learn that her quitting coworker’s work load would now be dumped on her. Her language was not respectful and she later apologized. But I still had to show up with empathy. Yes, she’s quitting and now those files are yours. This is what I’m doing right now to help you. I’ll keep communicating with you throughout the process. You aren’t in this by yourself.

So what’s the downside to empathetic leadership? It’s really, really hard. It can be draining on your personal relationships because that cup is completely empty by the time you get home. But I wouldn’t want to do it any other way. Because as I’m groaning as I drag myself off the couch and into my home office at 7 pm to send out a document that’s going to hold together a $9 million closing that’s scheduled for the next morning, my husband is bringing my dinner to me. Empathy begets empathy. My relationships both in and out of work have gotten infinitely better once I started working the muscle of empathy. If you’re trying to identify your leadership style, you should try the empathetic style. Despite the downsides, I would highly recommend, 10/10.