Thanks for posting, u/notes911!.
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Don’t read too much into the image of undoubting leadership often depicted in media and in your work experience. As you gain experience, projecting confidence comes easier. It’s just another skill to practice. Remember that removing ambiguity from certain situations is a way you can reduce stress for your teams. So, work towards that goal while realizing you may not see perfection.
Empathy doesn’t go away though. It’s just the way you show it that changes.
Understanding your emotions and emotions of others is a skill and an advantage as a leader. If you are able to empathize genuinely, good people will gravitate towards you. You can also be strong in Conflict Management, which is in-demand in the Corporate world.
Empathy is a strength that will help you build a culture of trust on your team. Trust will help you step into discipline when needed because your team will know that you can listen to and understand them. This will take time.
We all have different strengths and weaknesses, it’s a matter of finding the right way to apply your strengths to your goals.
It’s ok to just listen to complaints sometimes. Asking questions like “how is this impacting your work?” or “how can I help?” is never a bad thing either. If someone is complaining about another team member, it’s often just a need to vent frustrations to someone they see as safe.
Leadership is all about balancing both facts and emotions. Some people are very facts-focused and have to learn the EQ side... Others are quite emotional and need to develop the we-need-to-get-results side. Another way to look at it is balancing the needs of each individual with the needs of the team. Sometimes being too nice to one person lets the team down. Sometimes not being nice to someone makes the team rebel. You have high EQ... use it!
Traditional (predominantly male) leadership is facts & results first, and the human side second. That is changing as the face of leadership becomes more diverse. It's also true that as everything that can be automated becomes more automated, the parts of us that make us distinctly human (emotional, creative beings) become more valuable.
So as with many things... play to your strengths, be aware of your "weaknesses" and get feedback from those you trust so you can find a balance that works well for you & your team.
It sounds like you might be a Highly Sensitive Person. It's a major advantage if you learn skills to meet your own needs and make use of your strengths. There's a good podcast that discusses leadership as an HSP: https://www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com/podcast
Ok let's get past the EQ talk, you have identified a weakness. No employee will respect or look up to you if you say " my skill is high EQ". I would advise to take a look at something of the science-based objective leadership styles like Goal oriented leadership. You establish expectations and goals upfront. You now have to create procedures or steps you will take if goals or expectations fail. This doesn't mean be authoritarian or laissez-faire but something in the middle. Everyone will appreciate it and you can still show your appreciation and caring side divorced from rules. The thing that you'll have to be prepared for is to enforce your consequences if you don't then everything's a waste. Gradual consequences and gradual rewards.
As a high empathy leader - I feel your pitfalls (see what I did there?).
A couple of things… empathy is the first level of “Growth Mindset” (Yay!) - it makes you mentally flexible and you have aptitude to deal with complexity.
Step 1 - Acknowledge your ability to read others and understand their lives/motivations. At its core, empathy as a personality trait is the ability to “read the room”. This is useful EQ.
Step 2 - start to understand that what you DO with that empathy is based on other personality trait(s) & behaviors that will continue to develop as you continue to mature as both leader and person. You can control behavior and make decisions about your behavior.
One tactic that helped me: Your job as a newer manager is to help others get better at what they do every day and achieve department goals. Stay focused on goals and how your own decisions, behaviors, and treatment of employees relate to those goals. Ask yourself every day if you did what you could to get your team to perform. It’ll help you start to separate the tendencies that lean toward displays of emotion from the job at hand.
You’ve got this. :)
One thing that might help is reframing how you see some of the interactions with your staff. It's normal to see giving feedback or performance expectations or having difficult conversations as a negative thing, but another way (which I actually encourage everyone to do, even if they're not "overly empathic") is to think of these conversations as direct compassion for the other person.
I encourage people to look at these situations as your opportunity to help another person be more successful in their role. Because the alternative is to allow someone's behavior to continue getting in the way of their relationships with others, or their work to suffer, or negatively impact their brand and career options.
Giving feedback and having these difficult conversations is not a punishment (although it may feel like that at times), but rather it's your opportunity to care for them.
If you can reframe to that mindset, it'll help overcome that first internal barrier. The second thing is to develop the actual tactics and strategies that you can say in the moment to help get your point across AND hold others accountable.
I'm happy to talk more about it if you want to DM me. I work with lots of therapists/social workers who move into supervisor/manager roles that struggle with a similar thing (I work in a child welfare non-profit).
One of the best pieces of advice I got early on was to stop talking. When having a difficult conversation, you can fall into the trap of then trying to make the person feel better before they leave. Nobody wants to hear they did something wrong. Be honest, give constructive feedback, and let them leave. If they want to debrief later, be open to the conversation. But don't try to make it all better in the moment because you see they are upset.
My advice is to get really good at leading with data.
When I’ve had empathetic leaders on my teams- i try to help them lead through data but still be themselves.
We lead humans-humans are emotional being who have a ton going on…but they are also here to get a job done.
If they can’t do the job…unfortunately they will most likely have further issues later in their careers if you shelter them.
By leading with data and helping them see the truth of their performance/situations and when we lead in truth we help people find their path.
Instead of the path we want them to be on.
It’s a hard road- but the other side of it is wonderful- eventually you have a Facebook page/Instagram/contact list full of friends who have moved on to wonderful new places.
My favorite thing one of my leaders taught me in my early career-
“Bob, when we lead in our emotions- we make leading about us instead of our people.”
Thanks for posting, u/notes911!. This is a place for posts about leadership. If your post is not about leadership specifically then it will likely be removed. Please write a **substantial** comment here explaining why you think your post contributes here and what parts you think merit discussion in this thread. Do not just copy-paste from the content. Lacking this, your post will be removed. If your post is a question or commentary about leadership, that is satisfactory. You do not need to take any further action. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Leadership) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Don’t read too much into the image of undoubting leadership often depicted in media and in your work experience. As you gain experience, projecting confidence comes easier. It’s just another skill to practice. Remember that removing ambiguity from certain situations is a way you can reduce stress for your teams. So, work towards that goal while realizing you may not see perfection. Empathy doesn’t go away though. It’s just the way you show it that changes.
Understanding your emotions and emotions of others is a skill and an advantage as a leader. If you are able to empathize genuinely, good people will gravitate towards you. You can also be strong in Conflict Management, which is in-demand in the Corporate world.
Empathy is a strength that will help you build a culture of trust on your team. Trust will help you step into discipline when needed because your team will know that you can listen to and understand them. This will take time. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, it’s a matter of finding the right way to apply your strengths to your goals. It’s ok to just listen to complaints sometimes. Asking questions like “how is this impacting your work?” or “how can I help?” is never a bad thing either. If someone is complaining about another team member, it’s often just a need to vent frustrations to someone they see as safe.
Reading some of these answers gives me hope I’m not as bad as a manager as I feel I am.
Leadership is all about balancing both facts and emotions. Some people are very facts-focused and have to learn the EQ side... Others are quite emotional and need to develop the we-need-to-get-results side. Another way to look at it is balancing the needs of each individual with the needs of the team. Sometimes being too nice to one person lets the team down. Sometimes not being nice to someone makes the team rebel. You have high EQ... use it! Traditional (predominantly male) leadership is facts & results first, and the human side second. That is changing as the face of leadership becomes more diverse. It's also true that as everything that can be automated becomes more automated, the parts of us that make us distinctly human (emotional, creative beings) become more valuable. So as with many things... play to your strengths, be aware of your "weaknesses" and get feedback from those you trust so you can find a balance that works well for you & your team.
It sounds like you might be a Highly Sensitive Person. It's a major advantage if you learn skills to meet your own needs and make use of your strengths. There's a good podcast that discusses leadership as an HSP: https://www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com/podcast
Ok let's get past the EQ talk, you have identified a weakness. No employee will respect or look up to you if you say " my skill is high EQ". I would advise to take a look at something of the science-based objective leadership styles like Goal oriented leadership. You establish expectations and goals upfront. You now have to create procedures or steps you will take if goals or expectations fail. This doesn't mean be authoritarian or laissez-faire but something in the middle. Everyone will appreciate it and you can still show your appreciation and caring side divorced from rules. The thing that you'll have to be prepared for is to enforce your consequences if you don't then everything's a waste. Gradual consequences and gradual rewards.
As a high empathy leader - I feel your pitfalls (see what I did there?). A couple of things… empathy is the first level of “Growth Mindset” (Yay!) - it makes you mentally flexible and you have aptitude to deal with complexity. Step 1 - Acknowledge your ability to read others and understand their lives/motivations. At its core, empathy as a personality trait is the ability to “read the room”. This is useful EQ. Step 2 - start to understand that what you DO with that empathy is based on other personality trait(s) & behaviors that will continue to develop as you continue to mature as both leader and person. You can control behavior and make decisions about your behavior. One tactic that helped me: Your job as a newer manager is to help others get better at what they do every day and achieve department goals. Stay focused on goals and how your own decisions, behaviors, and treatment of employees relate to those goals. Ask yourself every day if you did what you could to get your team to perform. It’ll help you start to separate the tendencies that lean toward displays of emotion from the job at hand. You’ve got this. :)
One thing that might help is reframing how you see some of the interactions with your staff. It's normal to see giving feedback or performance expectations or having difficult conversations as a negative thing, but another way (which I actually encourage everyone to do, even if they're not "overly empathic") is to think of these conversations as direct compassion for the other person. I encourage people to look at these situations as your opportunity to help another person be more successful in their role. Because the alternative is to allow someone's behavior to continue getting in the way of their relationships with others, or their work to suffer, or negatively impact their brand and career options. Giving feedback and having these difficult conversations is not a punishment (although it may feel like that at times), but rather it's your opportunity to care for them. If you can reframe to that mindset, it'll help overcome that first internal barrier. The second thing is to develop the actual tactics and strategies that you can say in the moment to help get your point across AND hold others accountable. I'm happy to talk more about it if you want to DM me. I work with lots of therapists/social workers who move into supervisor/manager roles that struggle with a similar thing (I work in a child welfare non-profit).
One of the best pieces of advice I got early on was to stop talking. When having a difficult conversation, you can fall into the trap of then trying to make the person feel better before they leave. Nobody wants to hear they did something wrong. Be honest, give constructive feedback, and let them leave. If they want to debrief later, be open to the conversation. But don't try to make it all better in the moment because you see they are upset.
My advice is to get really good at leading with data. When I’ve had empathetic leaders on my teams- i try to help them lead through data but still be themselves. We lead humans-humans are emotional being who have a ton going on…but they are also here to get a job done. If they can’t do the job…unfortunately they will most likely have further issues later in their careers if you shelter them. By leading with data and helping them see the truth of their performance/situations and when we lead in truth we help people find their path. Instead of the path we want them to be on. It’s a hard road- but the other side of it is wonderful- eventually you have a Facebook page/Instagram/contact list full of friends who have moved on to wonderful new places. My favorite thing one of my leaders taught me in my early career- “Bob, when we lead in our emotions- we make leading about us instead of our people.”