Managing With Compassion

It can be difficult as a manager to hold employees accountable for business outcomes while still demonstrating empathy. Your team has a lot to accomplish, but at the same time, they are humans and their personal lives affect their professional personas. To be successful, you need people to be motivated to deliver, but if you’re too critical and draconian, you’ll burn people out, undermine motivation, sow mistrust, and reap dysfunction. If you’re too permissive, deadlines no longer matter, the quality of work suffers, and productivity becomes an afterthought. To reach a happy medium as a manager, be extremely clear in your expectations and provide frequent, low-impact feedback to team members. Understand the processes and tools employees need to be successful, and ask them where they see deficiencies. Explore training opportunities to address knowledge shortcomings, and provide them with the autonomy to direct their own learning. Your employees know how to do their jobs best—it’s a manager’s job to support and coach them.