Lead with Empathy

Today is a great day for Amazon! The Principal Engineer community has updated its tenets to include “Lead with Empathy”! 

While this may seem small, it is not. It can be a start of a big shift for Amazon. Empathy means understanding and caring about others. Not just how they perform, evaluated and rewarded, but how they feel as individuals in daily interactions. It is about listening. It is about evaluating leaders on how they interact with others and take responsibility to reduce stress for employees. It is about balancing productivity against human-centric metrics, which kinda matter in our short time on Earth. It is about building teams which leverage their social capital to be more productive, not just bursts of individual heroics. 

While this is only a PE tenet now, it sets the standard for all engineers on how to behave at Amazon. Organizational culture is a very powerful force, and Amazon is the best at proactively influencing organizational culture. So, making this part of company culture can absolutely make a positive difference for employees and later other stakeholders.  

When I was close to my retirement from Amazon (and so felt free/brave to speak my mind), I argued passionately on the PE mailing list for developing an LP that emphasized empathy, collaboration, team building. All surprisingly lacking in Amazon LPs. I also argued for something that countered the “Disagree/Commit” LP with some responsibility for leaders to create an environment for ideas to flourish, responsibility to listen, instead of just telling folks to Disagree and then Commit, which puts onus on those with less power. Something that reduces stress, competition, egos, team turnover. Someone suggested “Have Heart”. I suggested “Build Social Capital”. Neither is perfect wording, but you get the idea. 

It is not easy to advocate for this tenet because it is something that can be thought of as “soft and fluffy” in a metric-driven environment. I saw a lot of support on PE mailing list, but there is also a good number of sceptics about of how effective such tenet can be. I don't dismiss them. We are all shaped by our experiences, and spending a lot of time at Amazon would not have exactly encouraged empathy in you as a core value.

I am indeed proud of having spoken for it and did my share to water the seeds among others who did. I admire Senior PEs who actually made this happen. There is quite a bit of conviction and stamina one needs to affect such change. The recent events in the US which highlighted minority issues probably reminded all of us to be more sensitive to others, and this may have given it the last push.  

When/if this PE tenet grows to become a full Amazon LP, it will have a profound impact. Amazon can be a bigger force for good if it acts with Empathy as a guiding principal — starting with Empathy among coworkers.  

Happy day!