Misconception about empathy and performance

 Misconception about empathy and performance

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the responses for last week's discussion on "empathy or looking at the things from other's views" is that if we start looking at things from other's views, that leads into lenience and, in turn, mediocrity in the performance, particularly in a professional environment.

We need to understand the slight difference between empathy and being lenient.

Empathy means we listen to other's views and recognize the cause in it. That does not mean that we are accepting the consequences as such.

For example, let us imagine a typical scenario in the workplace,

One of your junior colleagues on a particular day left the office early due to personal issues. He/she may be the authorized person for a financial transaction, and he/ she had not delegated the task to anyone on that day. Due to his/ her absence, the important financial transaction did not happen, which affected your organizational performance.

In this scenario, as a manager/leader, what choices you had the next day when the junior colleague reported the duty?

Choice 1:

You might have displayed your dissatisfaction with the performance without listening to his/ her situation. In this process, both of you experienced negative emotions or hurt personally.No learning from low performance.
 
Choice 2 :

You might have listened to personal issues, and both of you felt sorry about the performance. In this process, you are lenient and accept mediocre performance.
 
Choice 3:

You might have listened to personal issues, acknowledged it and you might have assertively conveyed your dissatisfaction and his/ her lack of delegation to the work. You made him/ her responsible for not completing the task.He/she might have learned from the mistakes.
 
Choice 3 is the appropriate method of understanding others and ensuring the right management process in place.

Most of the time, we are witnessing either choice 1 or 2 in which mediocre performance is encouraged.

 i recall an incident that happened to me some years back. I drove my car first time in a new city and violated the signal as I was not familiar with the signal points and free left etc. A traffic policeman stopped me and got my license. I briefed him about my first-time driving and lack of awareness about the signal points. He listened to me and advised me to be careful in city driving. But he was firm to charge me fine as punishment and I also paid. In my view, the policemen were very empathic about my ignorance but, at the same time, firm on his duty. That is what required for the people who are at the commanding level as a manager or leader. Just imagine if the policeman displayed choice 1 or choice 2  behavior, then we both were not doing justice to ourselves as humanity consideration or duty consciousness.!
 
The point is being empathetic does not lead to lenience; you need to be firm on your role as a leader in a professional environment for ensuring performance!

Looking from other's view

 Looking from other's view

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have been discussing the method of channelizing or regulating the emotions in the workplace, one more effective approach is "looking at the things from other's view."

In most human interactions, everything is right or wrong from the person's standpoint, exposure or experience, context, and timing only.

When i am considering my decision is right, that is based on my experience, my today's context and that decision may be proven wrong by some one's point of view from their expertise, background, and timeline perspective. When we realize this truth, we can develop the ability to look at things from other's views.

This ability will help us to channelize or regulate emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy from competitiveness into positive emotions.

For example, you may get momentarily anger with your junior colleague's quality of work, say preparation of the presentation. When you understand his/ her background, experience, you may realize their weakness, which will help you to cool your emotions and divert into compassion to develop him/ her.

I am not advocating other's mistakes to be accepted as such, but for every error of others, if you suffer from negative emotions, it is not going to help you. Instead, if you develop the ability to recognize the causes for the mistake or low performance from other's perspective, at that moment, that will make you be in positive emotions.

Some people are good at look at things from other's perspectives, and it is a skill to be developed!

Channelizing Anger

Channelizing Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

We are aware that anger in the workplace affects the self and the environment as well. It is an outcome of our inability to cope up, non-acceptance of reality, and high expectation.

Some people are developing the capability to channelize the anger for positive turnout. Let me narrate one incident which i have witnessed some time back, and i learned a new insight as well.

I attended a public seminar in which all the age group people attended along with the family, including kids. The speaker is known for the "family wellness" subject, and he was invited to deliver a lecture. So i could see many married couples along with the kids in the hall.

The speaker was delivering the lecture. At some point in time, there were noises from the group of kids. There were chatting, playing, laughing despite their parents tried to control them. The interruption continued frequently, and some audiences got distracted towards the disturbance, and some people got irritated.

Having noticed the disturbance and initially got irritated with it, the speaker turned the audience and said," Let us focus on our objective." He then continued his speaking with enthusiasm and finished the lecture successfully in amidst of the disturbances.

In this incident, the speaker had choices to get angry with the parents like other audiences or asked them to move out of the hall. Knowing the targeted audience background and his purpose of delivering a lecture to them, he channelized his energy to convince the disturbed audience. He went ahead with high energy whenever he countered disturbance.

He put the purpose on a high level than on spending energy on low-level activities even though he has all the power to execute the choices at those moments.

The key lesson for me is that when we focus on petty things, we get angry frequently as the world is not perfect. When we divert our focus on higher purposes, some of the insignificant things cause anger can be avoided and channelized towards higher goals.
 
How can we apply this learning in professional life?

Whenever we are about to get angry with someone in a professional environment, we need to be aware of whether we are going to battle for petty things or shifting towards a higher-level purpose.