Tag: empathy dilemma

How Joy Leads to Empathy, Performance and Success

Posted on by Red Slice

The book is coming! September 10 is the day that The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries hits shelves to help leaders dedicated to people-centered practices to get the best performance possible balance the demands of the business with the needs of their people. Grab your free chapter at the link above!

Today, we’re diving into the last of the Five Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership: Joy. 

Probably my most head-turning one.  What the heck does joy have to do with empathy or high-performance? Quickly followed by, I’m awkward and not that funny!

To get you up to speed, the Five Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership are common traits and behaviors shared by the successful leaders I interview, research, speak to, and advise.. It’s how they balance people, performance, and personal boundaries with such grace and dexterity.

Joy is the fifth of the five pillars for effective and empathetic leadership in my upcoming book, The Empathy Dilemma: How Success Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries, coming September 10.

Let’s dig into it: Joy

What Is Joy?

Ensuring people enjoy their work, encouraging work friendships, and creating a thriving culture even when the work itself is challenging.

Why Is Joy Important?

A joyful work culture breeds trust to collaborate, innovate, and take risks. It empowers people to have each other’s backs. Multiple studies have shown that when people enjoy their work it leads to lower rates of turnover, higher productivity and engagement, increased company profits, and loyalty to the employer.

We all know we feel lighter, more buoyed by a work environment we like going back to. It’s basic common sense. If I enjoy my colleagues and feel safe and motivated in my environment, my work will reflect that. Now, joy does not mean every moment of work is joyful. I mean, I don’t particularly find find joy in client crisis or invoicing or budget spreadsheets (well, actually some of you might) But joy  – or levity, or camaraderie – as part of the empathetic culture equation means I can find joy in the work even when the work itself is not joyful. As it will inevitably get at certain points, or they wouldn’t call it work!

What does joy have to do with empathy, you may be thinking? When we create a joy-filled environment, people can relax, be themselves, and share themselves as human beings. This leads to better understanding and collaboration. If I get to know you through joy, I can understand where you’re coming from. I can forgive your bad days and you can forgive mine. We can learn to listen and see common ground because we have  shared positive experiences. All the ingredients of an empathetic culture.

How Does Joy Benefit Leaders?

• Joy reduces stress – we can show up and laugh, smile, bring a little levity to what can be hard work.

• Happy team members are easier to lead

• Fun environments foster trust and collaboration, which breeds innovation and high performance.

So, how can you incorporate more joy in your team and workplace culture?

Find and Encourage Humor: The ability to laugh at ourselves and to find humor in tough situations is a sure sign of resilience, which is just what healthy teams need. Things can and will go wrong, but when we stop taking ourselves so seriously, we can engage our prefrontal cortex to problem solve more effectively. No, you don’t have to be a comedian, or even force it, but letting people know it’s okay to laugh, share memes, or talk about the latest celebrity gossip while getting work  – all of that goes a long way to making work a place we want to be. Some great examples are in the book about how some leaders allow moments to organically arise and the team turns those into inside jokes or casual rituals. 

Learn Improv Skills to Nurture Creativity and Trust

Improv best practices can help teams collaborate in virtually any environment. Learning how to think on your feet, listen well and pass the ball, and yes, even laugh at the outcomes can unleash trust that leads to innovation.

Encourage Workplace Friendships

As someone who has met some of my lifelong best friends at work – and my husband, this one is my favorite. The old rules about your “work self”and your “personal self”have gone out the window. We are who we are and we bring who we are to work. I’m not saying let it all hang out or act crassly, but it’s okay to get personal. It should even be encouraged. Mountains of research indicate that having friends in the workplace doesn’t only boost job satisfaction and performance, it also improves wellness. It’s linked to a lower risk of burnout, improved mental health, and maybe even a longer life span, according to studies conducted across Europe and Israel. As a leader, it’s your role to foster a culture of warmth and connection so your team members know that work friendships are encouraged.

Make Meaningful Team-Building a Priority

One time long ago, I joined a rather soulless tech firm. With its drab brown cubicles, high walls, and quirky personalities, it truly channeled the movie Office Space when, in my first week, everyone was dragged to the conference room to sing happy birthday to an executive and it was utterly depressing!

No one wanted to be there.  I bet you’re thinking of a required Happy Hour or Ropes Course where you felt the same way.

Team-building has gotten a bad rep over the years as a cheesy, forced way to forge bonds, but when it’s done thoughtfully, it can totally transform interpersonal dynamics for the better. Before you pursue team-building, make sure that your internal culture is already serving the needs of your people. Team-building should be a source of shared joy, not a bandage slapped onto a festering cultural issue. Find ways to get everyone involved in suggesting activities, doing community service projects, and ensuring that a variety of options are accessible to everyone regardless of level, ability, neurodiversity, whether they have to get home to kids or not, recovering alcoholics, etc. When you can tie team building to your company mission, that is the best experience for everyone to forge bonds and get to know each other outside of work.

As I wind down on sharing the high level 5 Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership, I would like to make something crystal clear. 

These pillars are not the sole responsibility of the leader. 

It is not all on your shoulders to build up the pillars of self–awareness, self-care,clarity, decisiveness, and joy. These are pillars you can introduce, model, and cultivate an environment. But share the load with your team. Have them make suggestions, take on aspects that may be a challenging blind spot for you, and practice this with each other. I would hate for leaders to think I’m just adding more to their burden. When we talk about the 5 pillars that ensure effective empathetic leadership, yes, we are talking about your own personal pillars, but the team pillars can and should be strengthened and upheld by everyone.   Involve them in the process. Be transparent about what you’re trying to do and work on. Let them play a role so they have ownership and engagement. And when you do that, you will nurture an empathetic environment that flows in both directions!

To better understand these deceptively simple strategies in detail, please get a free chapter and buy your copy of The Empathy Dilemma for stories from leaders, and actionable tactics to put these strategies into practice.  These 5 pillars will transform how your team engages, performs, innovates, delivers for you and your customers.  

Photo Credit: Johnson Wang on Unsplash

How to Be More Decisive As a Leader

Posted on by Red Slice

Decisiveness is the fourth of the five pillars in my upcoming book, The Empathy Dilemma: How Success Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries.

What are the Five Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership?

These are common traits and behaviors seen over and over again in the successful empathetic leaders I interview, speak to, and advise. Even those who truly are empathetic, but don’t label themselves as such! The 5 pillars are a result of hundreds of podcast interviews, research, and data and are common threads across all those who are empathetic and high performing.

Let’s dig into the fourth one: Decisiveness

What Is Decisiveness? Taking thoughtful but swift action that doesn’t leave people hanging, addressing issues before they fester, synthesizing input and perspectives to make timely choices, and practicing radical and kind honesty.

Why Is Decisiveness Important? Keeping people in limbo is one of the least empathetic things a leader can do. It can feel risky to commit to decisions quickly, but dragging your feet to avoid hurt feelings will only erode trust. Addressing choices, performance issues, action plans, and pending questions as soon as possible is the most compassionate way to operate. Doing this shows your team members that you are paying attention and want them to know what to expect. It helps them fully understand what’s happening around them. Decisiveness helps leaders maintain team momentum, cultivate trust, and build a culture of open and consistent honesty.

Most empathetic leaders strive to hear and implement input from all their people. But sometimes endlessly soliciting everyone’s feedback for unanimous agreement can drive your team mad.

I share a story in the book about a brand story client I had way back when. The team was paralyzed and frustrated because the CEO would simply not make an important decision about distribution priority, which impacted who our brand story needed to primarily speak to and attract. In the name of wanting to solicit all perspectives, the CEO dragged his feet on making the decisions and by this point, the team was like, “Can we just decide and move forward already?!”

There is no one perfect decision that will please everyone. That’s not the goal. The goal is to know when you’ve gathered enough input to then make an informed call – and to communicate why that call was made back to everyone so they can understand how their ideas were considered and ask questions.

Here are six strategies to try to be more decisive and empathetic. 

More details, examples, and tactics to try can be found in The Empathy Dilemma, so don’t forget to snag your copy now!

  1. Revisit Your Goal and Purpose—Often

Much of the time, leaders can get caught up in the drama surrounding important decisions and lose sight of the goal. Ensure everyone is on the same page so when a decision is made, you can put it in context of the goal. This helps people understand that while their input is valuable, if it detracts from the goal, it may not be the right course of action. It also keeps you honest to not get caught up in people-pleasing.

  1. Practice Transparency

There’s no need to make all decisions in a secretive way and unveil them only when they are fully baked. Learn to be clearer quicker, and if possible, talk openly about the choices you’re making and have made. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out together.” This ensures folks know what you considered and can trust you and the process.

  1. Solicit and Synthesize Input Quickly and Fairly

Become skilled at gathering facts and opinions, giving others a voice so they can point out opportunities or risks you may have missed, sorting through all the inputs, and coming to a conclusion. Be clear that once a decision is made, naysayers will be asked to disagree but commit. At a certain point, we’ve all got to move forward together and still be committed to the mission.

  1. Put a Deadline on Your Thoughts

Decisiveness isn’t only about making good choices; it’s about making good choices in a timely manner. If you tend to ruminate endlessly, you need a mechanism to get your- self unstuck, such as setting aside a block of time to make a decision, which is itself a task. Get in the habit of setting deadlines for decisions that trip you up. If it’s a small decision—say, picking a spot for a business lunch— give yourself a few hours. If it’s weightier—a big investment or strategic pivot—think more in terms of days or weeks.

  1. Build Trust

In an environment where trust has been cultivated and built, people are more willing to trust a leader’s decisions, even if it’s a tough decision for them to swallow. If your people don’t trust you, they’re less likely to think your decisions have been reached fairly, with everyone’s input and overall best interests in mind. This may not link directly to your own ability to make decisions as a leader, but it’s vitally important to ensure those decisions are accepted, instead of questioned and picked apart.

  1. Adopt a Design-Thinking Approach

Design thinking asks us to experiment and try things out to see if they will fly in the real world. If you force yourself to consider every option until you’re sure you’ve selected the

“perfect” one, you may never make a decision for fear of being wrong. Perfection isn’t the goal, even when it comes to high- stakes choices. Don’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Instead, gather input, decide, and move forward with a sense of curiosity and experimentation.

To better understand these deceptively simple strategies in detail, please check out The Empathy Dilemma for stories from leaders, and actionable tactics to put these strategies into practice. 

These 5 pillars of empathetic leadership outlined in the book will transform how your team engages, performs, innovates, delivers for you and your customers.  

Check out more about the book here: www.TheEmpathyDilemma.com.

Photo Credit: Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash