Tag: empathy

A selfish act

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There’s plenty of leaders out there these days delivering bad news. And if there’s one thing they should avoid when the time comes, is trying to frame it in a positive light. Particularly if they do not give space to the receiver to digest it all and get there themselves.

Sure, laying employees off can help caring for kids who are forced to stay home, give people the time to take that training, and dedicate hours to the hobby they have neglected.

But if you, as a leader, suggest that, you are merely trying to make it easier for you to deliver the news. It is a selfish act, one that is not needed.

Now

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It is pretentious to frame your marketing messages with the idea that all is the same, nothing has changed, and your product is as relevant as it always was (if not more). People have (momentarily?) shifted their assumptions and priorities, it might very well be that what was worth 100 two months ago is today worth 0. If your message sticks to 100, you are out of the game.

It is also pretentious to take out your crystal ball and assume you know what people will care about two months from now. The new reality, the new normal, is out of your understanding, and picturing your product at the center of it is tantamount to gambling.

Now is the only thing that matter. And the message(s) you are sharing in this moment will define your brand for years to come.

Practical and emotional

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Take care of what is practical. Ensure there’s food on your table, there’s cash in your bank, there’s future for your business, there’s a salary for your employees and a product for your customers.

And take care of what is emotional too. Ask how people around you are, support them with kindness, help them address their needs, be there for them often and completely.

It is your responsibility as a leader to make space for both practical and emotional. If practical takes all of your time, you are doing it wrong.

How much power

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Expectations have the power to shape our reality.

When we go into a situation with low expectations, chances are we will be positively surprised. And the other way around, of course.

This is even more true, and somehow brutal, when applied to relationships. What we expect of and from people vastly impacts the way we think about them, the way we evaluate them and ultimately the way we behave with them.

Nobody can go without expectations.

But we can label them as such, and accept the fact that they are probably unrealistic, as they take only our perspective into consideration.

When we succeed in this, we open up to a whole new set of experiences we can learn from. We end up growing, gradually mitigating future expectations, and eventually behaving with people the way they wish to be treated (vs the way we wish to be treated).

Expectations are like thoughts. We decide how much power to give them.

Finite

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At any one point in time there’s an infinite number of possibilities around you. The number of possibilities to do good is infinite as well.

Sounds like a positive thing, and it is, but if you keep moving from one possibility to the next, if you are overwhelmed by their numbers, if you lose focus distracted by the closest or fanciest one over and over again, that is equivalent to not having any possibility at all.

The understanding that you are finite and can only commit to a limited number of things in the course of your lifetime is needed to make an impact.