Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In part 1 of this series on Lean Communication for Leaders, I talked about the ethos trap, which is the tendency of people in powerful positions to rely on the big stick of their title and authority to influence others, and less on convincing others through the logic of their idea. In short, leaders get lazy.
But laziness is easy to overcome as long as you care about getting the job done right. If you truly care about putting together the best possible message for your followers to hear, you already know how to do it—you’ve done it countless times in your career, or you would not have risen to the level you have. As long as you care about what your followers think, you can avoid the ethos trap.
But, what if you stop caring about what others think? What if you start seeing others more as tools to exploit to get your way? It’s a form of “altitude sickness” called empathy erosion, and unfortunately it’s a condition that is likely to become worse the higher you go.
Let’s first remind ourselves how important empathy is in communication. It’s so important that it’s the first rule of lean communication: I call it outside-in thinking. That’s because the number one imperative of communication is to add value, and only the recipient defines value. That means that you must be able to take the other person’s perspective on every issue, and communicate in a way that they are most likely to understand, believe and accept. Two sides can communicate much more effectively—and pleasantly—when each side strives to meet the other more than halfway by seeing things from their point of view.
In leadership terms, outside-in thinking is about getting followers to do what you want for their own reasons. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
How Leadership Can Erode Empathy
Leaders should be able to effortlessly think outside-in—it should actually be easier for you as a leader, because after all you’ve been in their shoes but they haven’t been in yours.
But what happens in reality to perspective taking as you gain power? Unfortunately, a lot of evidence suggests that you’re less likely to take others’ perspectives into account as you become (or at least think you become) more important. In his book, The Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner says, “When we experience absolute power, our attention shifts to our own interests and desires, thus diminishing our capacity for empathy—understanding what others feel and think.” (p. 101)
Keltner refers to absolute power, but Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky has demonstrated that people who are primed to feel powerful even for just a short time, show diminished empathy in three ways.
- When asked to write the letter “E” on their foreheads, they are almost three times as likely to write it so that it appears backwards to an observer. In their own minds, they see it correctly from their own perspective, and they fail to take into account how it looks to others.
- They’re more likely to suffer from the Curse of Knowledge, which means that when you know something, you assume that others do as well, so you leave out important details and context to help them understand—and probably get impatient when others don’t get it.
- When shown photos of people expressing various emotions, they become less accurate at reading them.
Galinsky summarizes by saying: “…power was associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend how other people see, think, and feel.”
And what could be less conducive to outside-in thinking than feelings of entitlement? Here’s more evidence: In another study, researchers observed a four way stop sign, and counted the number of times a driver cut someone else off by going before their turn. They found that drivers of expensive cars cut off people 30% of the time, four times as often as drivers of less expensive cars.
In another experiment, college students of different socio-economic backgrounds were brought in for a study, and afterwards they saw a jar filled with candies. They were told the candies were for young children involved in another study down the hall, but they could have some if they wanted. The richer students took twice as much candy as the poorer ones.
Finally, there’s the additional problem that Heidi Grant Halvorson, in her book No One Understands You, tells us that people in power tend to view others more instrumentally: how can they make use of them? You see them less as a person and more as a tool. You can even measure the erosion of empathy. There is a phenomenon called motor resonance, which simply means that when we observe someone else doing an activity, the same areas that are firing in their brains during the activity are firing in ours. We feel them, and it’s what helps us imagine things from their perspective. But those with more power showed diminished motor resonance in in MRI scans of their brains. They do think differently! As Halvorson says: “It’s not so much that they think they are better than you as it is that they simply do not think about you at all.”
Why does it matter?
If you step back and look at the problem practically and non-judgmentally, is it really such a bad thing if leaders are less empathetic? There are times when the job demands less empathy; sometimes you have to make hard decisions for the greater good and if you tore yourself up about each person it’s going to affect, it would probably paralyze you. Eisenhower knew that thousands of those troops he led would not survive executing his orders—but he had to issue his orders anyway.
And you have so many important tasks on your plate that it’s tempting to put efficiency and speed over relationships. You just don’t have the time, and if you don’t get it done, they’ll find someone who can.
But there’s the paradox: the fact that you don’t have enough time to devote to thinking about the people side is exactly why you need to take the time to think about the people side: no one can do everything by themselves. They have to trust others to do things, and they need for them to give their best efforts. Who will give their best efforts for someone they don’t think cares about them? When someone does something because they have to, they will generally do exactly what they’re told—and not a bit more. When they do it because they want to, they do it for pride, for meaning, for each other—maybe even for you as a leader whom they respect and admire. (If they respect and admire you, that is…)
So, think of empathy as an investment in long-term leadership effectiveness.
The good news about empathy erosion
But wait, there’s good news in all of this. There’s evidence that the condition is not incurable.
Other research shows that when leaders are reminded that the goal requires them to see others’ individual differences, they can actually do it more effectively than the less powerful—so maybe their empathy isn’t eroding—it’s simply being put aside for most of their tasks.
So, the simple cure is to accept that empathy is a critical tool in your leadership toolbox, and to remind yourself that it’s not something you “have” or “don’t have”; it’s a skill that you can and must cultivate. As a leader, you have countless opportunities to strengthen and demonstrate your empathy—as long as you make it a priority.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an excellent book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times. In this podcast, I extract useful lessons in leadership communication from the careers of four presidents. Three of them, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, were unquestionably great. The fourth, Lyndon Johnson, did great things in domestic affairs but had his legacy tarnished by the Vietnam War.
Each had a different style and approach to leadership communication, but all four are excellent models for timeless lessons in leadership communication.
All four developed their leadership communication skills early in their careers, and formed their personal styles through their successes and failures. What they all had in common was that there was no shortcut to greatness: they all spoke a lot during their early years, which seems to be a common theme for all great communicators.
The middle section of the book details the personal adversity that each suffered in the middle of their careers. The common theme is that those difficult experiences changed their outlooks and shaped their characters in ways that ensured they emerged through from their personal trials stronger than before. One common theme seems to be that they all to various degrees learned—or strengthened—empathy, especially for “common” folk.
Finally, Goodwin examines one aspect of each of their presidencies to illustrate lessons for four types of leadership: transformative, crisis management, turnaround, and visionary.
There are so many lessons in this book that I only have time in the podcast to provide a sample. I urge you to read the book and take lots of notes, because you don’t have to be President to benefit from what these masters can teach you.
How the hell did they do it?
Guys like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, I mean. These poor guys did not have the opportunities to learn about leadership that we have today—no business schools to learn all the latest research about leadership, no Amazon to ship them the latest leadership tome, and certainly no blogs dispensing daily wisdom. It boggles the mind that they could even function as leaders without the resources we have today.
Yet somehow they managed to do OK. In fact, when you compare them to the political pygmies who populate Washington today, you might say they did better than OK. If you would like to learn how, I strongly recommend Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book: Leadership in Turbulent Times.
Goodwin examines the lives of four American presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. The first three were unquestionably great presidents, and the fourth at least achieved great things for civil rights in America.
She divides the book into three sections, and they read like the acts in a play.
The first section is called “Ambition and the Recognition of Leadership”, and it takes us through the early years up through their twenties, each in a separate chapter, covering their motivations and aspirations, as well as the soil conditions where their budding leadership skills took root. What’s obvious is that leaders—at least the great ones—are both born and made. None of the four had “natural” leadership competencies; they all made mistakes and they all developed their skills through thousands of hours of study, speaking, and interactions with thousands of people. But the only reason they put in those hours, was that each was gifted with extraordinary ambition and drive, and that’s something no one can teach you. If your father told you education was a “doubly wasted” because it cost money and kept you from work, and pulled you out of school at age nine, would you walk for miles after work to borrow books and then read them at night by the light of a fire, as Lincoln did?
The second section, “Adversity and Growth”, is about the introduction of conflict and crisis, of heartache and challenge that could have easily crushed the spirit of each. One wonders if any of the four would have been the leaders they became if they had not each undergone their personal ordeals. How would Theodore Roosevelt’s personal approach to life have developed if he had not suffered the unfathomable tragedy of his mother and his young wife both dying on the same day, and had not gone west to live and work on his Dakota ranch? Would FDR, born to a life of luxury, have had the compassion for the less fortunate if he had not been paralyzed by polio? Maybe, maybe not—there’s no way to prove it one way or the other. But what is useful and even inspirational to know is that, if you go through a personal crisis of your own, you might be able to take heart and know that it’s just possible that you can come through on the other side as a better person for it.
The third section, “The Leader and the Times: How They Led”, recognizes that there is no single flavor of leadership that applies in every circumstance. Goodwin examines four types, transformational leadership, crisis management, turnaround leadership, and visionary leadership, using a case study for each. Some of the “lessons” feel a bit bolted-on, as if an MBA graduate student helped her translate historical lessons to appeal to a wider business audience, but that’s a minor quibble. (In fact, I probably wouldn’t have written this post if it didn’t have an appeal to a wider business audience.)
But I don’t recommend you read the book for its specific “lessons”. Yes, they’re useful in a bullet point sort of way, kind of like lists of things that great leaders should do. But the problem with lists is that they generally dispense generic advice that everybody already knows anyway. Read it instead to soak up the ethos of leadership: the character development that prepares a person to rise to the unprecedented challenges ahead of them.
When times are turbulent and your organization or team most needs a steady hand, it’s not going to be the formulas that you learned in business school that will get you through. It’s the strength that is forged in the crucible of personal crisis, the compassion developed by thousands of individual personal encounters with real people, and the clarity of purpose that comes from long hours of introspection and careful thought about who you are as a person and as a leader. And one of the best ways to think productively about leadership is to read this book.
I began by asking how people learned about leadership in days gone by. They studied the leaders who had gone before them. Lincoln revered and studied Washington, and was in turn revered by Theodore. Franklin consciously modeled his own career on that of his cousin, and in turn mentored LBJ. You don’t have to stop reading all that other stuff that we have today, but there is a lot to be gained by studying great historical figures, and Leadership in Turbulent Times is a n excellent place to start.
No! No! A thousand times no! Business is too serious to take rhetoric seriously.
Business is all about producing maximum results with minimum input, and its lifeblood is effective and efficient communication. Business communication is plain, business communication is direct, and business communication is above all utilitarian.
If you’re cooking a meal, always remember that while people may want fancy flavors and exotic spices, what they need is healthy nutrition at a reasonable price. That’s why business communication is not about inspiration, it’s about information and illumination. It’s about profit, not poetry; efficiency not excitement.
If you try to get too cute, you’re liable to fall flat on your face. Anyone in business who enters the lion’s den of the C-suite and tries to sail against the current of logic and analysis will run aground on the shores of skepticism.
So, if you want to soar to the heights of business success, leave the airy abstractions and pious platitudes to the politicians; leave the flights of fancy to the fakers, and keep your feet firmly planted on the clearest and plainest path.[1]
[1] I hope I convinced you. If so, go back and count how many rhetorical devices you found in my 200 words.
