You're probably one of the most caring leaders your team has ever worked for. And that might be the thing that's slowly costing you the most. That is coming up next.
Welcome to The Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks.
I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. Today we are talking about one of the most misunderstood leadership strengths out there.
And I say misunderstood because most people are told it's a gift, and it absolutely is. I am one of those people who promotes it like crazy, and it is a gift until it isn't. And I'm talking about empathy.
Here's the thing. The leaders I work with who struggle most with accountability, they're not the cold ones. They're not disconnected ones. They're the ones who care the most.
And their empathy, the very thing that makes them great to work for, is the exact thing that's quietly getting in the way today.
I want to show you exactly how that happens and what to do about it. So let me kind of explain this to you.
What Empathy Looks Like When It's Working (00:01:25)
Empathy, when it's working correctly, when it's working right, it's one of the most powerful leadership tools in the room.
Empathy is putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, understanding what they're experiencing, even if you don't understand.
Trying to understand, trying to read people well, trying to give grace generously because you're understanding that somebody is going through something that's painful or difficult.
It's helping you to see the human behind the role instead of the role itself. And this is incredibly valuable. So do not lose that. But here's where it turns.
When Empathy Becomes a Liability (00:02:09)
When empathy becomes your default response to a performance problem, then you're not leading anymore. I will tell you, in my earlier years of leadership, I was guilty of this.
I'm somebody who is a high Altruist. I am somebody who is a high S on the DISC personality profile.
I love people. I want to take care of people. I want to develop people. I want to remove the pain of the world as much as I can. And I can tell you that that is something that people who, if you've been around me for probably five minutes, you can see that.
And if you're very controlling or manipulative, you try to manipulate that pretty quickly. Praise God. I do what I do for a living.
That helps me to put healthy boundaries in place. With a lot of people, the key is that you're not leading when you are always defaulting to empathy. Instead, you're absorbing.
You're absorbing the weight of the person's struggle. You're absorbing their circumstances. You're also absorbing their potential. And somewhere in all of that absorbing the standard quietly disappears.
When you are spending way more time trying to experience or put yourself in the shoes of the person who's having a bad experience, instead of listening to what's going on and evaluating it through a lens of quality standards of our business, our culture, then what happens is you spend way more time experiencing what they're experiencing instead of asking yourself, is there a better way?
Did this need to happen this way? Should I stay heavily focused on their experience instead of evaluating the situation?
All of that creates a level of confusion, confusion that causes you to let go of the actual standards that you may have in your culture.
It's not that you stopped caring about the standard. It's that caring about the person started to feel like the same thing as protecting them from consequences that they're probably experiencing.
The problem is, it's not. Those are two completely different things. And the longer that confusion goes on, the more it costs everybody, including the person you were literally just trying to help.
Here's the thing that people don't tell high empathetic leaders. The same wiring that makes you exceptional at building loyalty and, and trust and culture is the exact same wiring that makes it almost impossible to make a hard call when one needs to be made.
Think about it:
If you are in the position of the other person, if you are experiencing it in your mind, if you are putting yourself in their shoes, then instead of focusing on whether or not it's right or wrong, you may be focusing on whether or not they're a victim or not, whether or not something bad has happened to them or not.
When what we should be doing is evaluating the whole, not just being empathetic, not just putting ourselves in their shoes, but actually looking at the entire situation simultaneously.
Being empathetic and being a great leader, being somebody who is gaining perspective:
What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again?
Those are our processes that we do at our company. How do we solve the problem? And if we dig in with some of those questions, we can start to see why the person is where they are.
Caring and leading aren't the same thing. And sometimes the most caring thing you can do is hand somebody the truth delivered with dignity and trust them to do something with it.
So let me kind of dig into this a little bit in situations that, you know, I've experienced over time. I can tell you I have always been somebody who is decently empathetic. I, again, I'm somebody who wants to remove people's pain.
I'm somebody who wants to help. God made sure that I was a teacher so that I could help people do better, change things, fix things, lead better, all of this stuff, right?
So because of that very early on, and well, let me back it up even a little bit further than that.
My Story: The Enabling Trap (00:07:06)
As a youth, I came out of some pretty heavy duty stuff, just like many of you, some very traumatic and abusive situations and controlling situations and all kinds of junk.
All kinds of junk that caused me to really be a people pleaser.
And my belief was if I could just get you happy instead of wherever you are and whatever you're experiencing, then if I could do that, then I was a good person, then I could be a good person.
And boy, am I so glad that God smacked me upside the head and helped me fix that one.
Right? Because it just doesn't work. You can't do that.
But carrying that over into my early days of leadership, one of the things that I noticed is how much I will spend time just listening to somebody's problem and then trying to solve their problem, trying to help them, trying to, you know, think about what it's like to be in their shoes in their situation, and then trying to help them to solve it from their perspective.
The problem is, is I'm not asking the quality questions.
Back in those days of, you know, what could you have done differently? Why is this such a struggle? What are you experiencing with this situation?
You know, asking questions to gain quality perspective and then basing whether or their situation being in their shoes, if you will, was actually correct or not.
Because many times people might be stuck in victim mentality, People might be seeing their situation from a perspective that's not totally accurate.
People might be struggling to take responsibility for what they're doing, experiencing, or what they've done or what they've chosen.
And so by doing so, a downfall of me putting myself in the other person's shoes so many times in my early days is that I had some folks that loved being rescued by me, if you will.
It allowed them to have more problems, it allowed them to have more issues.
Because I was somebody that they could come to to get things resolved which they didn't really care about getting the problem resolved as much as getting my attention in a way that, I don't know, probably helped them to feel like a victim, probably helped them to feel like they're being cared for in a way that they're probably not in their personal life.
And in my mind, I was doing the right thing. I was solving, I was taking care, I was helping to remove pain. I was doing all those things that are so important to me.
Until one day I realized a specific team member. Again, this is decades ago. A specific team member kept coming to me and having more and more problems and things that as we would talk through the solution, the solution just didn't seem like the important piece.
And one day it just hit me. I am enabling this person to come to me with more issues. And it's my fault because I have been focused more on solving the person than running it through the filter of is this thing even an issue?
Is this something that we handle this way culturally? Is this something that, you know, is following our standards and guidelines? All of that helped me to realize that I was enabling somebody instead of helping them to become a better version of themselves.
So many people would come to me for help and then they'd be helped and then they would go back to doing what they're doing or go back to their life or whatever.
But there was a certain number of folks that the way I was handling it was actually enabling them to be a problem, to be an issue, to be a victim, and to continue to come to me for more solutions.
The Turning Point — Asking Better Questions (00:11:42)
Well, when I realized that, I started doing what I should have been doing the entire time and I started asking perspective gaining questions.
I started asking questions that instead of focusing on the emotional aspects of the person, focused on the problem solving quickly.
You know, really looking at their situation and asking, is this a problem? Is this an issue? What happened? Whose choice was that? And as I did that, I'll never forget this, the very first person I started doing that with, really pushing hard on, blew their lid.
I mean, absolutely lost it. And I just sat there listening to this and this person just exploded. And I just continued to tell myself, this was your fault. You enabled this, you allowed this.
Now, after this person was done, there was a very harsh comment that came from me about what they just did. And there was a very difficult conversation that I had right then and there. I can promise you that situation never happened again.
But it was a massively eye opening experience for me to see that empathy is such a gift until it's not, until it's being utilized, used, manipulated.
You know, somebody's creating issues to come and get more empathy from you, to get you to focus on them as an individual, whatever it is the moment I realized that empathy became the gift that I used in the right situations.
Coupled with, coupled with the wisdom of running through the situation and finding out if this was a situation that needed empathy.
Was it something that I should be empathetic about? Or are we talking about something and somebody is maybe being a victim? Solve the problem, do what it takes.
You know, start asking questions, gain perspective, dig in and find out.
So my kindness was actually keeping that person stuck and healthy.
Would have looked a heck of a lot more like me having healthy boundaries.
It would have looked a lot more like me understanding when to be empathetic, when to gain perspective, when to push back, when to guide with gentleness, when to have hard, tough conversations.
That balance is so massively important. I know you've experienced this as a leader. You've had many times when somebody was over the top, being dramatic or struggling, and maybe it's your kid, maybe it's a family member, right?
That you've seen this response and you're like, that is absolutely ridiculous. That is absolutely unnecessary.
Well, sometimes we can get sucked right into that if we are focusing too much on helping and solving the person instead of helping and solving the situation.
Once again, not every situation needs you to fix it. Not every situation needs you to not be empathetic. It's about finding the balance. Another very important aspect here.
Not everybody wants to respond like this one person did on my team. Not everybody is looking for you to rescue them. Not everybody is looking for you to, you know, be somebody that they consistently come to and dump on again.
This was one person on a large team, and nobody else was doing this, right? But there are plenty of times we still respond too empathetically when somebody is not looking for us to.
They're looking for us to help solve the problem. They're looking for us to communicate well. They're looking for us to help them to understand what the standards are and hold them to them.
They're looking for us to hold them accountable. They're trying to figure out what accountability even looks like. But when we don't respond correctly, we can get ourselves stuck in a side that does appear like we're trying to rescue somebody.
What Clarity Actually Looks Like (00:16:19)
What we should do is walk through with clarity, talk about the situation, ask perspective, gaining questions, be curious, make sure that you're not cold, but instead you're very clear.
Stop absorbing their role, their problems, their issues. Talk with clarity. Where are we? What needs to change in this situation? What's the timeline? What are options that we can do to fix this clarity is one of the most loving things a leader can offer.
Not softened clarity, not hedged clarity, but clear clarity. I'm just making stuff up now. When you can focus on that, then you can have a solid conversation.
You can come up with great outcomes. You can come up with great solutions. You can. You can help the person to solve their own issues. You can help them to think for themselves.
And on top of that, delivering honesty to somebody in a situation like this can be one of the most giving things that you can do.
Honest Question for You (00:17:27)
So here's an honest question. I want you to think about the person on your team, the person in your family, whoever it is that you keep making exceptions for.
You know, the one whose circumstances you weigh before you weigh the standards of the culture, the standards of the business, or even the culture of the family.
Now ask yourself honestly, is what I'm doing actually helping them? Or is it helping me to avoid a hard moment?
Or is it helping me to feel like I'm more worthy? Or is it helping me as- as a people pleaser to think that I have helped somebody to be happy?
Who is it actually helping? Name it for what it is. There is a version of empathy that's really just conflict avoidance.
Wearing a compassionate face. You don't have to stop caring. Don't do that. Your empathy is genuinely one of your strengths.
But recognize that caring and leading are not the same thing. Your biggest leadership blind spot might be the thing everyone calls your greatest strength.
Now, if this landed, go back and listen to episode 681. It goes hand in hand with it. We talked about the Fear-Control Loop.
What's actually driving most team conflict before it ever surfaces. Same kind of route, different face, but it's definitely worth a listen.
Also, if this hits home, come find me on Instagram @chrislocurto. I talk about this stuff every single week.
Real leadership, real teams, real situations. Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.
