What makes your direct reports tick?
The #1 response in my research into the leadership behaviors that make employees feel included (and therefore more likely to go above and beyond, produce great results, stay with the company, be innovative, and attract other top talent) is "my manager remembers something about me". Simple.
As a manager, it's your job to know what (aside from family, loved ones and work) makes your direct report tick. What are they motivated by? What are their values? What or who inspires them? Because NEWSFLASH! They *may not* be living their dream in their day to day job working for you 😁 .
Around 5 years ago I discovered in my very first conversation with a new report, Claire Isenthal, that she was an aspiring author. Over the time we worked together I saw Claire deploy the same discipline, commitment, creativity and energy into her client relationships as she did with her manuscripts when she wasn't working. She let me read a very early draft of her first novel and my admiration for her rocketed even higher. I watched her manage a stressful job, a rotation in London, and latterly becoming a mother of 2, all while working diligently and relentlessly on her book. Today, that book arrived on my doorstep, and tomorrow Lee Child better watch his back, because it's GOOOOOOD!
What makes your direct reports tick? Do they volunteer? Are they active in an employee resource group? Do they coach or mentor? Are they enrolled in a course? Do they write (or act, sing, swim, sew....)? What issues do they care about? What teams do they support? What would their definition of a perfect weekend be? The more you discover the more you can flex your empathy muscles. Always, of course, with empathy for those who prefer not to share.
Or do they know more about YOU than YOU know about THEM? That's never a good sign.
Claire is now a full time author, with her debut novel already climbing the bestseller charts. Here is the link to buy.
New 'NO SHIT!' report: 'First HP Work Relationship Index Shows Majority of People Worldwide Have an Unhealthy Relationship with Work'.
New 'NO SHIT!' report: 'First HP Work Relationship Index Shows Majority of People Worldwide Have an Unhealthy Relationship with Work'. This report is comprehensive, with recent data from workers in 12 countries. Leaders, I highly recommend taking the time to digest it.
When we look at the Identifying the Drivers Behind a Healthy Relationship with Work, I strongly believe most can be addressed with an empathetic approach to leadership.
Top 3:
*Fulfillment: Employees yearn for purpose, empowerment, and genuine connection to their work, but just 29% of knowledge workers currently experience these aspects consistently.
*Leadership: New ways of working demand new leadership styles, according to 68% of business leaders; yet only one in five workers feel leaders have evolved their leadership styles accordingly. Cultivating emotional intelligence and transparent, empathetic leadership is crucial for today’s workplace.
*People-centricity: Only 25% of knowledge workers consistently receive the respect and value they feel they deserve, and even fewer are experiencing the flexibility, autonomy, and work-life balance they seek. (KJ: I'm willing to bet those from historically-excluded groups are not part of that 25%).
In a post-COVID world we need to truly rethink how we make our employees feel valued. A Starbucks giftcard isn't cutting it. Invest in empathy training for your leadership.
Undercover Boss: literal empathy
I've recently rediscovered the joy of Undercover Boss (multiple franchises globally) on TikTok and YouTube, and I binge clips whenever I'm feeling low. With my Empathy hat on, it's remarkable how this literal example of the boss walking in their employees' shoes for a period leads almost universally to AHA!! moments that benefit their company. That could be the boss that discovers how shitty their lead gen platform is, or the one that learns from the bar manager who disregards Corporate's guidance for songs staff should sing to customers and makes up her own. Each time, there's a huge lesson learned, the boss takes the learning and scales it, and it's win win.
If you're a manager reading this, when was the last time you went back to the floor and spent even just a day doing what you ask your most junior employees to do? What do you think you'd learn? If you're reluctant to, ask yourself why?
My project on Leading with Compassion in Big Tech which I completed as part of Stanford University's CCARE in collaboration with ACA’s™ Applied Compassion Training™ for Architects and Ambassadors of Applied Compassion, addressed the suffering that occurs in even the most forward-thinking corporate spaces in the form of burnout, very high stress levels, staff attrition (especially among under-represented groups), low inclusion sentiment and low well-being sentiment. The project collected then shared survey data from 500 tech employees, bringing to life which behaviors from leaders amplify suffering, and then what tactical efforts can be made to reduce it. Believe it or not, when offered options to select for 'What actions or behaviors from leaders and Google could alleviate your suffering?', 40% selected 'a step-into-my-shoes program for managers to do an IC's role for a day'. Reality TV is onto something!
And just for kicks, SNL and Adam Driver's version is perfection: watch here
Empathy on the court and off
I think of empathy as simply dialing into someone else's frequency, and this beautiful interview with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert is such a wonderful illustration of how that works in real life. Fierce rivals on the court but friends in the locker room and beyond, they could relate to each other and the pressures they managed like no-one else could. When you think about what they've collectively faced (rampant sexism, homophobia, defection from a communist regime, failed relationships, sibling tragedy and - recently - serious cancer diagnoses and treatment) it's a shining example of how people with very different backgrounds found strength in each other.
Not content with consistently pushing boundaries (when it was even harder than today) to campaign for women and LGBTQIA+ rights, their empathy now extends to early cancer awareness for other women, because they don't want anyone else to go through what they have. F*** the media narrative about sporting rivalry. These women exemplify empathy for each other and beyond.
Washington Post article here
The one thing AI can’t do for us? Care. Authentically
About me: I study compassion and empathy and created a program for leaders called 'Leading with Empathy' at Google, where my roles have included Global Head of Resilience. As a tech employee I have also benefited first hand from the incredible AI revolution we’re experiencing, and as someone obsessed with fostering compassion in the workplace I’m heavily invested in understanding how AI can help - or hinder - authentic empathy.
If AI can help me write an essay, it can help me break up with someone, right? Multiple ads in my TikTok feed would say so (I’m very happily married, so the algorithm needs adjusting). If leaders are taught by people like me that empathic communication is a key driver of driven, productive, innovative and creative employees more likely to stay with your company, attract more other top talent and produce better business results, then surely on a day where your calendar has you chain-smoking meetings and time is at a premium, it’s easier to ask AI to "write a thank you and great job email" than waste time composing it yourself?
One of the key tenets of my Empathy work with senior leaders is demonstrating understanding, effectively dialing into someone else’s frequency, especially if that someone is below you in the reporting chain. In an age where the majority of knowledge workers' communication at work is over text/email/ping, the urge to save time and use AI to "generate a sensitive paragraph to send to my Black colleagues to show I care about Juneteenth", while shocking, is also a reality. I’ve seen it. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ve at least considered it. Like a vending machine for empathic sentiment, I wonder how prevalent this short-cut to compassion already is.
What’s worse than an absence of empathy? Fake empathy.
In a fascinating new paper by Anat Perry, ‘AI will never convey the essence of human empathy’, research from an online emotional-support chat service utilizing GPT-3 responses shows that while the AI-generated chats are initially well received, at the point the recipient realizes it was artificially generated all the positives are negated. Empathy comes from a place of shared experience, so finding out it was artificial can be more damaging than not receiving a message at all. While well intended, an email from a university to its students showing compassion after a mass shooting had the exact opposite effect when it was discovered to have been AI-generated.
We’ve likely all received a gift sent via Amazon with the pre-populated “Enjoy your gift!” text option, and know how much more meaningful it is when something personal has been entered instead by the sender. That’s because an act of compassion or empathy isn’t ‘what’ the act is, but in the doing of the act itself. You can't hack compassion.
Leadership is hard, but leading with empathy isn’t something you can fake your way to, so resist the urge to lean on generative AI shortcuts. While that authentic message or conversation may take a few seconds or minutes longer, you run the risk of doing harm rather than good by skipping the most important step - caring.