Empathy in Leadership, Part 2

My conversation a few weeks ago with Melissa Robinson-Winemiller, EQ via Empathy Coach and Consultant, was so rich with information and insight, I decided to share it in 2 parts. If you missed Part 1, check it out here.

In this second part we dig into retention, exit interview patterns, culture and discuss some action items for leaders! Let’s start with retention-

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Melissa: SHRM (Society for Human Resources Management) says that for every employee that you lose, you basically eat one third of whatever their salary or wages are.

So, naturally, the higher paid ones, you're going to lose more outright. But that doesn't include the amount of time it takes to get a new employee up and running. That doesn't include the institutional knowledge that goes walking right out that door. That doesn't include the money that it takes to set up more interviews and taking other people away from their jobs to do it and trying to find the right person to get in there.

You are so much better to retain employees, but I can tell you from personal experience, I've left a company because their communication is terrible and it's not getting better.  And moreover, what the leadership says they stand for, they obviously don't because they don't care enough about their employees to just make sure that we understand what they're saying.

So you end up with this employee revolving door, you know, and it's expensive and it's hard on everybody. It creates this ripple effect because one person leaves and then two more people get their work and it's too much. So then they leave and now four more people, and then they leave.

Kirsten: To fill those gaps temporarily, a lot of businesses use agencies to do temp placements, and you're gonna be paying a lot for that.

And also  if you're using recruiters you're gonna be paying, like, 20%- that's the standard rate for a recruiter. And that's a lot. I feel like a big part of that too, like retaining talent  and communication if you ask employees questions, right?

So let's say you do an employee engagement survey. You're looking for feedback. If you're asking questions, you have to be prepared to take action on the answers. It ties into employees being heard. If you're providing them space to be heard, even if you're unable to do what they're asking or everything you're asking, you at least have to acknowledge, you know, what they asked and give reasons why you can't act on it.

Sometimes Employee Engagement Surveys are sent with the best intentions, right? Like, people think I'm going to be showing I'm an empathetic leader or an active listener, but then  It falls away to the wayside and honestly, it does more harm.

So I always tell people to keep that in mind if you're asking questions like that. 

Melissa: There's three parts to practicing empathy. So there's the initial part we, that we talked about where I feel what you're feeling. There's the second part where you feel something in a response to that stimulus. So I feel sad because you told me you just had to put your dog down.  And the third part of that is a display of action in response to that feeling of discomfort, which sometimes is categorized as compassion.

So exactly like you said, if you don't take action on that, even if that action is to say, I've considered it, and this is just not the right way to go, but I've heard you, you've been heard, and I want you to know that you weren't dismissed.

Without that action, it's not really empathy. 

Kirsten: I always have to assess when people come to me with problems and complaints. Like, are we venting or are we problem solving? Because with venting, it's fine to do once in a while, but there's a limit to how much you can vent on the same topic before it's absolutely necessary that action needs to be taken. 

Melissa: Yes. Or the venting needs to stop, one or the other.  

Kirsten: Yes, or you need to change the situation. Right? There's a reason you're complaining 

Melissa: So much yes. Well, let me ask you, I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I know usually your heart is with smaller businesses. And I know that's what you really like, but like with a larger organization where you see a mass exodus, and you know that there's money being wasted, you know that this is not being handled the way it could be with their leadership.

What would you do when you walked into something like that?  

Kirsten: I mean, it's definitely harder if it's a larger company, right? Because you're not really able to, and this is why I went out on my own, I felt it was really difficult to have my voice heard as an HR person who was fighting for the people, but balancing business needs, and larger corporations for the most part, it's less human.

For all size businesses, I think that it's important to do exit interviews first of all. The information you get from them can sometimes be a little emotional. 

Sometimes an exiting employee may share nothing.  Or they may just share their list of grievances from the past five years they've worked there that they've been building up and never expressed to anyone.  So, it's not so much the content and the specifics that I'm looking at. I always say kind of like take that with a grain of salt in a way.

But it's the trends that I look at. So, if you have three people in a row citing the same issues, leaving for the same reasons, to me, that's where the truth lies. This is a problem. This is what we have to solve for. You definitely want to get ahead of those things. You don't want people to just leave all at once, but if that does happen, those exit interviews may be good resources and data for you to then act, for your employees that you have left, act in advance.

Stay interviews or check-ins  with your employee to be like, hey, what are some roadblocks? What are some things you're struggling with right now? What are some things that are going really well? I always recommend people do that anyway with their employees like quarterly check ins and yearly reviews. Giving them space, like dedicated space on their calendar to come with questions to talk about the job itself not just “What am I working on? What are the daily tasks? What needs to be completed?”  But more big picture conversations. You find out a lot when you give people that space, I find. And asking what roadblocks are, I think, in my opinion, is always my favorite way to ask, what they're struggling with, because it could be something as small as, I've been trying to get in touch with this one person, and I can't, and it's jamming up everything else I do.

Maybe you didn't know that, and you just saw that they weren't getting anything done. You know, so there's definitely a lot you can peel back. But, with that being said, I think the exit interview is the place to start, right? If you already have people leaving, Figure out why they're leaving. 

Melissa: Yeah. See, and that is so powerful for, for two reasons.

Here's two things that I heard. Number one, you're approaching the whole situation with empathy and compassion, and that doesn't mean that you're not going to get the job done, that you're not going to get to the bottom of what's going on, but it's actually a people centric approach. It's a human centric approach.

Beautiful. But here's the second, to be able to bring in someone who is the expert, who's like, These are the steps we need to take. This is what we need to do to make sure that this is  satisfactorily taken care of for everybody involved. You know, you're not just looking at this person or that person.

You're like, this is how we fix that. And that's why it's so important to have someone like you with your experience and your background and your expertise in on these kinds of situations. Because like with this place I'm talking about, this has been going on for three years.  

Kirsten: Think about those other employees that are just regular employees trying to do their jobs and that have been there for this amount of time. Think about how they must feel having their co workers leave all the time and getting pummeled with all of the additional work  and have all of that change around them. Change can be good , change can be bad right but regardless if change is good or bad it creates some sort of  feeling an upheaval, right.

Like, it's not comfortable for most people. 

Okay, so we were talking a little bit about, like, taking action, right? I know for me, I'm  an impatient person, and I love to just be actionable. What are some things that leaders can do? To start to incorporate empathy into their leadership. Do you have any tips and tricks not to put you on the spot?

Melissa: That is a fantastic question because  you're, you're absolutely correct. And that's what I say, that if you can't actually do something with it, I've had somebody ask me that when I walk in as a coach, you know, well, what good is this? And I'm like “If you can't do anything with it, nothing.”

It's not worth anything. It's like having whatever other emotion you might feel like having. It hasn't actually helped the situation. So the first way to really develop what's called affective empathy or emotional empathy is to tap into the feelings that you already have. You know, if, if you,  if you've had to experience a death, you already understand what it is to experience a death.

If you've experienced a job loss, you already understand that feeling when it hits you right in the solar plexus, you know, if you've had to deal with. Constant change and change fatigue. You already know what that feels like. So don't be afraid to be vulnerable to these things because it will help you understand the other person a lot better.

But, but don't feel like that makes you weak. Don't feel like that makes you a pushover. It's not at all. And in fact, I argue it's just the opposite because you have to have courage to know that you're going to feel that and feel it anyway. It's hard. So those, yeah, that is hard. Yeah. Those people are more courageous, I think, for being willing to, to actually feel it.

The other thing is that I find that a lot of executives and top level leaders end up getting crunched between two things because they're dealing with the board, they're dealing with, uh, oversight, they're dealing with compliance, they're dealing with government stuff, and because they're constantly in this defensive state. 

Sometimes they forget about everything that comes down, and unfortunately, that kind of always being in a defensive posture can become part of the culture,  and that's a problem.

Peter Drucker said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and that's because it does. 

If this is the kind of defensive culture that you have set, even inadvertently,  then that's what you've got. And the problem is that culture is a lagging indicator. So by the time you see it, it's already there.  

Kirsten: Right. So, right. And, a lot of times too, you know, culture doesn't. It doesn't necessarily come from one person, right, but it's the vision of what, of mostly one or a handful of people that it trickles down.

And it's also about leading by example. So, you know, HR kind of gets a bad rap when it comes to culture, like, you know, people think HR sets the culture, they manage it, take care of it, like that's not even possible. We could do things that support the culture, right? So let's say you you want your business to be really… you're passionate about mental health.

You want your business and your employees to be open, have support. HR can put programs, policies,in place that support that vision. But, if employees have, let's say,  dedicated mental health days, because that's the program we created, but then they're feeling guilty taking it because leadership is like, “ oh, you're, you're taking it on that day?”  then that's the culture.

Melissa: Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. And I think. You've experienced this as well, where you're brought in and someone's like, we'll fix the culture. And it's like,  there's nothing I can do with this. This is what you've created. You've got to uncreate this. Well, no, I just want you to fix it.  Yeah. There is nothing I can do with this without your support. 

Kirsten: Absolutely! And, you know, I've said this so many times, but  a pizza party isn't culture.  I can't, I want to wear that on a t shirt. It's not! It's a nice thing to do for your employees every once in a while, but guess what? Most people don't care. Most people don't even eat pizza because they, you know, have dietary restrictions.
What are you doing about those people? It's a band aid that a lot of companies use and they don't pay attention to what their teams actually want or need and that ties back to empathy.

Melissa: Right. And the best empathic leaders that I've seen actually will go and talk to their people.

Kirsten: Absolutely. And I think that sometimes there's also this thought process where we're, not allowed to have feelings as leaders, right? It's not supposed to be that way. We're supposed to be strictly business, only talk to the employees when there's something business related to speak on. That's a horrible way to think, and that is no way to lead a business. 

Melissa: Yes, and that's when you get turnover.  And that's when you get turnover. Now you're losing money, you're losing people, and I don't think people put enough value on institutional knowledge.

Kirsten: And I will say too, If you're a CEO, if you're a founder, and you're like, “I'm not a people person, I can't lead people”  Hire someone that can. Hire a COO and have everybody report into them, or hire a general manager and have everybody report into them and make sure that one of their main focuses is to lead the team.

That's okay. It's okay to delegate that. You still have to be a little personable and accessible, but you're dealing less with the day to day. Do your job, focus on your job of growing the business then.

Melissa: Have you had, have you run into that experience?  

Kirsten: I have. Sometimes it's not financially possible in a small business. I completely understand that. But put that as a part of your plan, then. Because as your team grows, somebody needs to Lead those team members. Employees want growth opportunities. They want learning opportunities. Finding out what your employees interests are, what their strengths are, and leveraging those really helps retain talent.

Melissa: Yes! And develops talent. 

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I could have spoken with Melissa for hours on this! If you're a leader and interested in learning more about these topics  Melissa offers one on one coaching on Empathetic Leadership and the best place to find her is LinkedIn

If you’re interested in Human Resources consulting, and need a dedicated space to ask questions and receive tactical solutions, book a 90 minute intensive with myself today! https://calendly.com/kdzhrconsulting/90-min-hr-intensives