Tough times: how to lead your team with empathy?

As companies, management, and employees emerge from the pandemic and the difficulties it caused, stress and burnout are the legacies and after-effects affecting all teams more than ever.

Going through unprecedented events, the population has never talked so much about mental health as in recent times. 

As a result, leaders are faced with a new challenge: to find a balance between showing empathy and, at the same time, insisting on responsibilities in the workplace.

What is empathy anyway?

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand how they feel when they experience certain situations. 

It is trying to understand feelings and emotions, and also to help better understand other people's behavior in certain circumstances and decision-making.

Small tasks can relieve anxiety

Work expectations are changing, delegating smaller and shorter tasks can work well. This way the employee has something to work on at short notice, but without feeling like they are producing less.

It is also important to understand that this person's non-deliverables can affect your department or company, so daily goals rather than weekly, monthly, or quarterly ones can help people move forward during turbulent periods in personal or professional life. Remembering that the emotional or mental state of an employee is a vital part of their performance.

But hey: helping and providing means for the completion of tasks does not mean doing them for them or delegating them to teammates. This is not a wise choice in the long run! 

Always respect everyone's limits and everyone wins.

Understand the person's moment

This is because the decrease in productivity can represent something beyond the walls of the company, so it is also important to understand if this person is dealing with stress inside or outside this environment, or both.

Usually, these are the situations that cause people to have difficulty in performing their activities. The key here is to find out what these influences are and where exactly they affect.

Ask the person what is going on, but avoid the classic "how are you?” An approach more similar to "how are you today?" may generate a less generic response than "I'm fine."

Offer support within the possibilities

The first step is to assess the employee's workload and understand if it's higher than recommended, and also if they've been able to handle all the assignments recently. From there, offer support to help them overcome these possible obstacles, an open conversation can save a lot of time and stress on both sides, as well as being more assertive.

When looking for a solution to the problem your team or employee is facing, try to be direct and ask what you can do to help them reach their full potential and do their job more smoothly.

If the answer is not feasible (for example: not attending any meetings), try to negotiate and come up with a reasonable solution (for example: shortening the meeting time).

Avoid the hubbub

It is important that everyone on the team receives the same attention and treatment. Adjusting the workload or making too many exceptions for just one person can create a negative perception in the team, even if they are the only one facing problems at the time.

If possible, try to be transparent about the whole situation (without going into details, of course). This avoids rumors, hubbub, and spares the team a lot of drama.

With each passing day the pandemic is more in the past and under control, but the effects of the last two years will remain in each individual who has experienced this phase of human history.

And just as the author Marie R. Miyashiro (a reference in empathy in business) would say in her book "The Empathy Factor": effective leaders are those who seem to combine the soft leadership skills - trust, empathy and genuine communication - with the harder but necessary skills to sustain an organization in difficult times.