Today we’re diving into Pillar Four of the 5 Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership featured in the new book coming September 10, The Empathy Dilemma – Decisiveness.
Yes, factoring in various viewpoints is the way forward for empathetic leaders – and enables us to see more opportunities and avoid more risks. . But we must combine that with swift and decisive action to make a call. Leaving your people in limbo or avoiding difficult conversations is unkind. And leaves your people paralyzed, unsure what to believe, do or expect next.
In our dive into decisiveness today, I talk about what decisiveness is and why it is important. And I’ll hone in on six strategies that you can start using today to be more decisive. More details, examples, and tactics to try can be found in The Empathy Dilemma, so don’t forget to snag your presale copy now at TheEmpathyDilemma.com.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Avoiding employees until you have something to report isn’t empathetic – get in the habit of giving status updates, even if it is just “we’re working on it.”
- Dithering over your decision does not demonstrate empathy. Not knowing what decision to make, no matter how you mask it, demonstrates fear and insecurity.
- Learn to be clearer more quickly. Talk openly about the choices you’re making whenever possible.
- Put a deadline on your thoughts. It’s not about making good choices, it’s about making good choices in a timely manner.
“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.”
— Maria Ross
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hello, everyone, it’s Maria here. Welcome to this month’s our take how thoughtful decisiveness shows your team empathy. As you know, the book is coming September 10 is the day that the empathy dilemma how successful leaders balanced performance people and personal boundaries, hits shelves, hits your ears and audible hits your Kindle or other device in ebook, and will help you as a leader center around people focused practices to get the best performance possible so that you can balance the demands of the business with the needs of your people. And as you know, I’m so excited to share this with you. If you’ve been with me the last few months, you know, I’ve been devoting a hot take episode in the months leading up to launch, showcasing one of the five core pillars of effective empathetic leadership outlined in the book. Because the reality is that we want a more human centered workplace culture, but we have to get actual work done. You can do both, but only when you’re able to show up fully and have capacity to take in other perspectives without fear, stress or defensiveness. So today, we’re diving into pillar four of the five pillars decisiveness. And I feel like this one is the most least understood in how it correlates to empathy, because we can often think about decisiveness as dictatorship, right. And that’s not what we’re going to be talking about here today. Before I dive in, I do want to remind you that there is a special presale offer for the book going on right now. If you purchase between one to 99 copies of it from porchlight, my amazing bulk distributor, you can get, as I said, 30% off until August 27. So stay through to the end, I’ve got some information for you. I’ve also got some information for you in the show notes. And there’s some bonuses that go along with the pre sales, including allowing me to crash your next video meeting to have a discussion about empathy and balancing empathy with performance and accountability. So that is a limited time. Now again, before I dive into today’s pillar, I know I’m teasing you, the book is a direct result of all the feedback that I’ve gotten from my previous book, the empathy edge. And from attendees in my training sessions, conference attendees at my keynotes, and all the company talks I’ve done, people have reached out to me to say, okay, Maria, I’m on board with this whole human centered new leadership paradigm. But here’s where things get challenging for me, here’s where I get stuck. And it’s usually around the either or thinking I’ve mentioned in past episodes that we we hold this either or binary thinking that holds us back, I can be empathetic or high performing, I can be compassionate, or hold people accountable. Right? I am promoting a both and philosophy. And that is the crux of my work to show us that we can hold two seemingly opposite things to be true at the same time, if we have the right strategies, if we employ the right tactics, and if we have the right mindset. So that’s where the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership come in. And these came about from common traits and behaviors that the successful empathetic leaders I’ve interviewed or spoken to or advised, have shared with me, and it’s how I see them balancing people performance and personal boundaries with such grace and dexterity. So again, decisiveness is the topic for today. It’s the fourth of the five pillars in the book, and let’s dig into it. What do we mean by decisiveness? decisiveness is taking thoughtful that’s important but swift action that doesn’t leave people hanging, addressing issues before they fester and blow up synthesizing input and perspectives to make timely choices, and practicing radical and kind. Honesty is not enough to practice radical honesty and be a jerk. You need to also be kind and respectful. So why is decisiveness important? Well, keeping people in limbo is one of the least empathetic things a leader can do. And it can feel risky to commit to decisions quickly. But dragging your feet to avoid hurt feelings will only erode trust, I see this time and time again, you’ve got a difficult decision to make, you’ve got a crunchy conversation you need to have. And your approach is to delay is to procrastinate is to put it off thinking you’re being kinder thinking that you’re being empathetic. And that is not the way. So addressing choices, performance issues, action plans, and pending questions as soon as possible, is the most compassionate way to operate. Now, it doesn’t mean you fake an answer. It means that you get back to people, it means that we’re going to talk about this today you’re transparent in the process, but avoiding them until you have something to report is not empathetic. Get in the habit of giving status updates, even if the status update is we’re still working on it. Doing this shows your team members that you’re paying attention and you want them to know what to expect. It helps them fully understand what’s happening around them and feel good about it and feel safe. decisiveness helps leaders maintain team momentum, cultivate trust, and build a culture of open and consistent honesty. And most empathetic leaders strive to hear and implement input from all their people. But sometimes, sometimes endlessly soliciting everyone’s feedback for unanimous agreement can drive your team mad. And 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. And 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, they were frustrated, they were unsure. They felt like if they moved in one direction, it was going to change tomorrow, because they weren’t sure what was happening. And really what this came down to, even in the name of quote unquote, empathy. It was about fear and insecurity on the part of the CEO just not knowing what decision to make. And he was masking it with this veneer of Well, I just want to make sure everyone’s on board, I just want to get everyone’s opinion. So you want to avoid that. Here are we’re going to talk about today, six strategies to try to be more decisive. And we’re just the tip of the iceberg in this podcast today, there are going to be more details, examples and actual tactics to try that can be found in the empathy dilemma. So don’t forget to snag your copy now at the empathy dilemma.com. So let’s get into the six strategies for being more decisive and thus more empathetic as a leader. Number one, revisit your goal and purpose. Often, so much of the time leaders get caught up in the drama surrounding important decisions and they lose sight of the goal of that decision. Because of all the input they’re getting right. ensure everyone is on the same page. So when the decision is made, you can put it in context of the goal. It helps people understand that their input is valuable, but that it detracts from the goal it may not be the right course of action. However, it also keeps you honest, to not get caught up in people pleasing and keep your eyes on the prize. Second, practice transparency, there is no need to make all your decisions in a secretive way and unveil them only when they’re fully baked. There might be some that are more sensitive and confidential, obviously. But for the most part, the business decisions that you’re making that impact your people don’t need to be made in a black box and then revealed like some home improvement show. So learn to be clear 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 that folks know what you considered and can trust you in the process. Third, third strategy for being more decisive and thus more empathetic as a leader is to solicit and synthesize input quickly and fairly. You want to get skilled at gathering facts and opinions and knowing the difference between those giving others a voice so they can point out opportunities or risks that you may have missed. People see different sides of the different facets of the diamond. So it’s important to get multiple points of views, especially from diverse voices. And you want to give others a voice and then sort through all the inputs and come to a conclusion. Be clear that once that decision is made, naysayers will be asked to disagree. But commit, and I talk about this concept in the book a lot. At a certain point, we’ve all got to move forward together and still be committed to the mission. But if you you know from the previous strategy, if you practice transparency, and people understand how the sausage was made, so to speak, they’re more likely to understand how and why and when you were able to implement some of their ideas or when you had to, you know, not implement their ideas. Fourth strategy for decisiveness is put a deadline on your thoughts. So decisiveness isn’t only about making good choices. It’s about making good choices in a timely manner. If you tend like me to ruminate endlessly, you need a mechanism to get yourself 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, like a big investment or strategic pivot. think more in terms of days or weeks. Fifth strategy for decisiveness is build trust, and an environment where trust has been cultivated and built. People are more willing to trust a leader decisions, even if it’s a tough decision for them to swallow. So 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, right? If you don’t trust someone and they make a decision, you’re always going to be questioning their motives. Now, this may not link directly to your ability to make decisions as a leader, but it’s vitally important to ensure that those decisions are accepted, instead of questioned and picked apart. So building trust is very important to being able to make tough, difficult decisions. And finally, adopt a design thinking approach. This is your sixth strategy for being more decisive and more empathetic as a leader. Now we know Design Thinking asks us to experiment and try things out to see if they’ll fly in the real world. And if you force yourself to consider every option until you’re absolutely sure you’re selecting 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 as much input as you can decide, and move forward with a sense of curiosity and experimentation. Right? Most things can be undone, we can look at things from sort of a scientific perspective that, hey, let’s make this decision. Let’s put it into action. Let’s test it, let’s tweak it, let’s measure it and see what we need to change or keep, you know, keep that design thinking approach in mind. And it will help you make decisions faster because it won’t feel so loaded every decision that you make. So to better understand all of these deceptively simple strategies, which I’ve presented again, just the tip of the iceberg on if you want to understand them in detail, then please check out the empathy dilemma. Because I’ve got stories from leaders in there. I’ve got actionable tactics for each of these strategies, so that you can put them into practice. And you can pick one or two tactics and try them out for a few weeks at a time and see if that helps improve your decisiveness or your clarity, all your all your self care all the pillars that we’re discussing, I promise you that these five pillars will transform how your team engages, performs innovates delivers for you and your customers, but you want to be smart about it and you want to experiment and like I said, try a few of the tactics that are in the book to help you improve on whichever pillars need improving. For some people, it might be pillars, one, three, and five. For others, it might be pillars two, four, and five. But that’s why self awareness is the first pillar because you need to understand your strengths and your blind spots. Check out more about the book and link to presale bonuses and all the things at the empathy dilemma.com And don’t forget about that special presale offer I told you about because when you submit your receipt, you also get invited to a VIP Launch event that’s happening in October, and there will be swag, it is still to be determined what that swag will be. But I promise there will be swag for pre sales. And again, go to the empathy dilemma.com to check out everything you need to know about the book. And I’d love to come in and bring the book to life for your team, for your company for your conference for your event. So if that is of interest if you want to do an interactive workshop, if you want to do a keynote, if you want to do an erg talk, please come find me at red dash slice.com and go to my Connect page, my contact page and let me know what’s going on and I’d love to help so I hope you enjoyed today’s solo hot take I hope you’re enjoying the heartaches let me know. And until next time, when you tune into another episode of the empathy edge and more with my amazing guests. Please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
