I have been thinking about compassion this week. I want to be a compassionate leader, but I also want to motivate people to do their best. Can both of these things be accomplished by a single leader?
As with many things, it is important to balance these characteristics. If you are too compassionate, you may send the message that everything is just fine the way it is, resulting in a lack of interest in improvement. If you push for change too hard or criticize too harshly, then you put people on the defensive and make it harder for them to hear your motivational message.
I found this article to be helpful: How to Lead with Compassion by Roger Schwarz of Roger Schwarz & Associates. I think this can be helpful for all staff who are showing leadership as team members and co-workers. In IT, it can be easy to focus on the technology or the preferred solution without recognizing the feelings that can go along with them.
I am particularly challenged by all this when I get a complaint from a customer and need to take it back to staff for review and improvement. Most complaints from customer involve at least two sides of the story. Yes, customers can be irrational and rude sometimes, especially when stressed by technology that isn't working properly. But staff can sometimes forget to turn on their compassion when faced with an angry customer. It is very easy to get defensive when you are being yelled at, even if the customer has a valid point. Communication breakdowns often occur as a result, which just exacerbates the situation. It is important for us all to dissect these incidents when they happen and learn from them. To do that, I have to press the IT staff to see if from the customer's point of view, even when I agree that the customer didn't handle the situation well. Is this a compassionate approach? I hope it can be, especially if it results in better handling of future situations, leading to less stress and fewer tough incidents in the long run.
Now for a change of topic. I would really love to read some thoughtful comments in response to my blog posts, but I recognize that it can be a stretch to put yourself out there. In order to entice some comments, I'll make this offer. I will deliver a cool prize to the reader on the UMD campus who posts the most interesting or thoughtful response to this post. The deadline is noon, Friday, September 7. Apologies to readers who are not local, but feel free to post anyway.
I think that Apple's leaked employee training manual offers some good advice on working with upset customers.
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Show empathy. Apple Store Geniuses deal with angry, frustrated, or worried customers all day long. It’s essential that they display empathy. According to Gizmodo, Apple trains its employees—Geniuses and salespeople— to follow the Three F’s: Feel, Felt, and Found. “This works especially well when the customer is mistaken or has bad information.” Here’s an example from the Apple training manual:
Customer: This Mac is just too expensive
Genius: I can see how you’d feel this way. I felt the price was a little high, but I found it’s a real value because of all the built-in software capabilities.
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Gizmodo and others take a bit more of a cynical view of the “fearless feedback” technique Apple trains its employees to use, and I agree that it seems pretty artificial. However, keeping a path open for that sort of dialogue is important. Can it work for people not from planet Vulcan though? It seems to me that the real challenge is figuring out how to successfully negotiate between all of the different personality types out there.