Balancing Empathy and Accountability in Leadership
With the end of the year quickly approaching, many leaders are asking me how to best hold their teams to a high standard, even exceed expectations, in these critical final months. What's struck me is that the answer they’re expecting is to drop being empathetic and become a hard-driving, even micro-managing, leader to simply get things done. This truly highlights the frequent tension between empathy and accountability in the leadership space. Though often misunderstood, empathy and accountability can co-exist.
Empathy as a Foundation
Empathy is integral to understanding your team's strengths and guiding them toward growth. You need to know who they are, what makes them tick, and why they were the best fit for your team in the first place. Empathy is not about being ‘nice’, it’s getting in the trenches and being ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ with your team, understanding them and their challenges so that as a leader you can help remove obstacles for each individual on your team to perform at their best as well as bring their best self to work.
Emphasizing empathy doesn't weaken a leader's role; it fortifies it. Simon Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last” shows the power of leaders putting their team first whether you work in high tech, the military, or manufacturing. Allowing your team to shine helps with innovation, engagement, and revenue growth.
But the story can't end there. A team isn't built on understanding alone could lead to losing your team’s respect, even being seen as a pushover. That's where accountability enters the scene.
Accountability Isn't the Antithesis of Empathy
I've heard executives justify a lack of accountability by invoking the concept of 'servant leadership.' Please stop right there, because servant leadership doesn't mean letting poor performance slide. Quite the opposite: It involves being so invested in your team's success that you'll do whatever it takes to remove barriers and help them succeed. If someone still underperforms despite all your support, it is OK to move on from that team member. As a leader, it’s important to maintain the balance of taking care of your team while achieving the organization’s goals.
In James A. Autry’s book, “The Servant Leader”, he used a shocking quote that always stuck with me. A true servant leader can say “I love you, you’re fired.” Though an extreme quote I’ve never repeated, its sentiment resonated. Each person on your team was hired for a reason, as a servant leader you work to help all the pieces fit together and help each individual grow to their full potential. A servant leader provides every resource available to help them achieve.
But sometimes it doesn’t work out. The role isn’t a fit, or maybe there are extenuating personal circumstances, or maybe you’ve been tasked to determine who will be laid off. Deciding to let someone go is a terrible choice and one leaders often must make. The key is HOW you execute the decision.
Having led several employees who were diagnosed with cancer or caring for severely ill children, it was important to take each unique person’s circumstances and goals into account when building a plan moving forward. For example, one plan focused on providing information on healthcare and EAP plans, another on designing a flexible work schedule that allowed for chemo appointments and recovery times, another deciding to leave the organization altogether to focus on care and recovery. In each of these scenarios their work output suffered, and I was pressured to let these employees go but in approaching with care, concern and clarity of expectations, we were able to design plans that gave dignity and long-term employment options to each.
This is also true in less dire circumstances. For an employee you’re tempted to put on a performance plan, first ask, have you made your expectations clear? Have you investigated the root cause of why they’re struggling? Then, have you provided all the support you can? Is the team member aware of this? If so, then going into a performance plan shouldn’t be a surprise and they will believe you when you state the plan is meant to help them get back on track. After having a performance plan that doesn’t work out, I’ve had several employees say to me that they see we’ve done all we can, and that the role or timing just isn’t a fit. This results in employees who leave with their head held high, with strong transition plans in place, and even in a few cases life-long friends.
This dilemma also manifests in the treatment of high-visibility individual contributors—your star salespeople, scientists, or engineers. When these folks hit their targets, it's tempting to let certain behaviors go unchecked, but this can have a detrimental impact on your entire team. The most effective leaders use empathy to help such employees understand their impact, provide some flexibility, and then pivot the accountability lever when necessary. In other words, stellar performance can't come at the cost of team dynamics.
The Middle Ground: Respect
The sweet spot between empathy and accountability is grounded in respect—for each individual's uniqueness and their potential to achieve goals. You respect them enough to understand their strengths, set clear milestones together, and foresee challenges. Then, you use that understanding as a foundation for accountability, helping them and the team excel. This creates an environment of mutual respect and joint accountability that helps teams thrive. When grounded in empathy, even difficult conversations are a lot easier. Your team members will know you are coming from a place of care and that your goal is to help. They will also understand when you have to make the tough calls.
How Do We Get There?
Here are 5 steps to begin your journey of servant leadership, a leader who puts their team first, sets high expectations, and works together to achieve them – seeing both people and profits grow. These are the questions that can guide towards a harmonious blend of empathy and accountability.
1) Knowing and understanding your team.
a. What is their background, communication style, strengths, areas of development, etc.?
b. What obstacles are they facing at work and in life that may impact their performance?
c. Do you know why they joined your organization and what impact they hope to have?
2) Setting clear expectations.
a. Do they have an updated job spec and understanding of upcoming milestones or deadlines?
b. Do they understand the importance of their role and how they impact the broader mission, company, client, or colleagues?
c. Does the team have flexibility to make mistakes and experiment?
3) Transparent about obstacles.
a. Have you shared why a target is difficult but still achievable?
b. Are you working as a team to brainstorm obstacles?
c. Are you looking ahead to anticipate challenges?
4) Providing & receiving timely feedback.
a. Does the team know you have their back? Have you listened to the challenges your team is experiencing?
b. Are you mindful enough to provide feedback even when it's uncomfortable?
c. Is providing feedback part of your culture, given regularly outside of formal reviews?
5) Creating an environment of joint accountability.
a. Do you admit your mistakes and hold yourself to the same high standards?
b. Can the team rely on each other for help? Do they show care for one another vs blaming?
c. Does everyone feel responsible for the team’s success, does the group feel like we’re all in this together?
Conclusion
In summary, empathy and accountability aren’t just compatible; they’re codependent. Empathy gives you the insights you need to hold your team accountable in a meaningful way. And it's the synergy between the two that nurtures a culture of high performance and respect. It takes intentional and daily effort to uphold these ideas, when done well builds a high performing team with a culture others will want to join.
As always, if you'd like to dig deeper into this discussion or want personalized coaching, feel free to reach out for a complimentary consultation using the link below.
Articles
How To Strike A Balance Between Accountability And Empathy In The Workplace (forbes.com)
How to Actually Encourage Employee Accountability (hbr.org)
To Be Accountable While Showing Care 2018 (sagepub.com)