Finding the Harmony: Empathy and Performance in People Management

While empathizing with team members' challenges is crucial for a supportive work environment, maintaining high-performance standards is also essential for the team's overall success. The manager's ability to navigate both aspects effectively became a vital leadership competence in recent years and showcases the importance of this delicate balance in people management dynamics. In this article, I explore these two concepts and the significance of finding a fair balance between empathy and performance in today's world of work.

Understanding Empathy in the Workplace

Within the workplace landscape, empathy embodies the capacity of individuals, specifically leaders, and colleagues, to deeply comprehend and resonate with the emotions, viewpoints, and encounters of others, spanning across employees, team members, or clients. It transcends the mere acknowledgment of emotions, extending into a profound understanding of the underlying rationales behind these emotions.

Empathy encompasses many dimensions. The capacity of effective listening, where engaging in attentive listening to grasp both verbal and non-verbal cues, demonstrates genuine interest in others' concerns. The ability for tailor-made communication, articulating thoughts and decisions in a way that considers the emotions and needs of others, fostering open and respectful dialogue in the workplace. The adaptability of being open-minded and open to different perspectives, diverse backgrounds, and varying emotional responses in different situations. Mastering some or all of these capabilities facilitates surfing many of modern workplace conflicts and creating healthier work interactions.

Overall, empathy in the workplace isn't just about sympathizing with others; it's about actively understanding their emotions and perspectives to foster a more supportive, inclusive, and productive work environment.

it's not a coincidence then, that the human-centered approach of modern People Operations, considers empathy as a driver for the redesign of traditional Human Resources workstreams, by empathetically understanding the challenges employees face—whether related to mental health, work-life balance, or personal circumstances that directly or indirectly impact engagement and performance.

Understanding employees' aspirations, strengths, and growth areas is crucial for effective performance management, fostering an environment where employees feel valued, understood, and supported, ultimately driving innovation, growth, and organizational success.

In Primal Leadership, Daniel Coleman says:

-"Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions."-

Though this quote doesn't explicitly mention empathy, it underscores the emotional aspect of leadership, which aligns with the role of empathy in understanding and connecting with others' emotions—a crucial aspect of effective leadership within every kind of endeavor of a team.

People Operations function

For People Ops professionals, empathy isn't just an attribute; it's an essential skill set that empowers People Ops professionals to create a human-centric approach, fostering an environment where employees feel valued, understood, and supported, ultimately driving organizational success.

Empathy has emerged as an indispensable cornerstone within the realm of modern People Ops, fundamentally transforming the way organizations navigate the employment lifecycle.

Candidate attraction and employer branding are a growing concern in the modern borderless labor market. An empathetic approach during recruitment and onboarding lays the foundation for a positive employee experience from day one. Understanding candidates' motivations, concerns, and goals allows People Ops to personalize the recruitment and onboarding processes, making them more welcoming and aligned with candidates' values and career aspirations.

Company Culture & Inclusivity

Cultivating an empathetic culture involves not just understanding team members' points of view but actively incorporating diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and past experiences into the fabric of the organization and its leadership style. Empathy nurtures an inclusive environment, where employees feel valued even when they fail or miss a target, respected and heard when expressing an unpopular or candid opinion, contributing to a more transparent, robust, and innovative workplace culture where it is ok to be just the way you are. Also, this approach facilitates mediating workplace disputes, as it allows HR professionals to impartially navigate divergent viewpoints, de-escalate tensions, and guide individuals toward resolutions that consider multiple perspectives.

Performance in the Modern Workplace

Evaluating employee productivity and success in the workplace has been linked to quantitative metrics for many years from Frederic Taylor's principles of scientific management to recent years. Metrics like sales quotas, KPIs, and annual performance reviews have historically been used to measure employee output and contribution. However, in today's rapidly evolving work environments, these traditional metrics are undergoing significant evolution due to a shift towards Outcome-Based Metrics, emphasis on soft skills, emotional intelligence, and asynchronous collaboration. But the key underlying factor is the radical change to a continuous feedback approach and agile performance management that progressively crossed industries from modern Tech to traditional manufacturing. With this transformation, the pyramid turned upside down, people and team dynamics gained attention over output and hours worked and organizations are adapting their measurement systems to align with these changes.

With the rise of remote and hybrid work, there is a greater emphasis on soft skills like communication, adaptability, and asynchronous collaboration. The attention has been turned into metrics that consider an employee's ability to work in diverse teams and navigate complex, dynamic situations, curiosity, and eagerness to learn and share knowledge and drive towards innovation and creativity.

With this new landscape, the traditional parameters used for performance appraisal became obsolete. The focus is now on how people do things, rather than on what they do. Behavioral indicators are used to identify the mastery of different dimensions of a competency. Let's take communication as an example: one dimension to assess is written communication (emails, instant messaging, reports) the second dimension is verbal interactions (is the employee able to have clear, concise interventions in a meeting, or exhibits difficulty in getting to the point?). a third dimension is information management (shares important facts timely, or holds on information? is capable to identify critical vs non critical data?) a fourth dimension is related to social interaction (is the employee able to build communication networks with peers and managers, or keeps interactions to a minimum? keeps regular contact with team members, or shows a lack of interest in collaborative tasks?) and finally, the dimension of tailoring messages, their tone, and content to different audiences, to ensure the message is delivered. All these traits of talent within a single competency show the importance of rethinking performance review and consequently, a new model for talent management. High potential is not the only talent to develop. There is also a key to tailor plans for innovators, disruptors, and average performers which most of the time are the silent engine of a team, and require new challenges and opportunities for growth.

Ideas to find a fair balance

The key to the appropriate balance between empathy and performance is far from being a one-fits-all measure. Managers and team leaders are now more than ever before required for a broad skill set.

Imagine a scenario where a manager oversees a team of diverse individuals. One of their team members, let's call her Mariah, has been consistently delivering exceptional results for several quarters in a row. However, recently, her performance has shown a noticeable decline. She seems disengaged and less productive. She has been absent, and silent in team meetings. something is wrong.

An empathetic approach might involve the manager reaching out to Mariah to have a 1:1 conversation and try to understand what might be causing this change. After a candid conversation, the manager learned that Mariah has been dealing with personal challenges at home, affecting her focus at work and performance.

If the manager has the necessary empathy with Mariah's situation, he should offer support, maybe a short break, and probably a flexible work arrangement or additional resources or coaching to help alleviate her stress and find tools to cope with the situation.

At the same time, the manager knows that maintaining high standards of performance is crucial for the team's success and achieving objectives. How then, find the right approach for balancing empathy with performance?

The first thing to do is to address the impact of Mariah's decreased productivity on the team's objectives and deliverables. Taking the lead and collaborating on a plan to support Mariah while also setting achievable performance expectations and milestones for her, and setting regular follow-up 1:1s. Second, being open and transparent with the team members, so they can understand what is happening, and also show a supportive attitude distributing some workload till things go back to normal. This small action will eventually create awareness of the fact that all of us can be Mariah at some point in time, and being supportive and open is key for team wellbeing.

People-centric organizations implement open-office guidelines, as they strive to foster a collaborative and productive work environment, aimed at enhancing communication, creativity, and overall efficiency within the workplace. Basic but strong features should include respect and treating others as you would like to be treated, respecting colleagues' privacy, addressing issues politely, and respecting others' concerns and opinions, even if you disagree.

Lionel Scalony had no previous experience as a coach in a big team. He prepared himself and learned from some of the best coaches in modern football history. But the thought that he could take on such a challenge frightened his own and made others dream of a quick defeat. His vision, values, humbleness, hard work ethic, and open communication style were some of the traits that allowed him to build trust with the team, alignig all behind a single objective, but most importantly, mastering the ability to apply the right mix of empathy and demand for top performance, team spirit, commitment, and shared effort. The results speak for themselves.