Clegg argues leaders should respond to workplace complacency with empathy, not judgment. Poor performance stems from laziness, stress, fear, or bad training, not character flaws. When someone underperforms, ask "Are you okay? I'm worried about you" instead of spreading gossip that damages people.
Complacency can take many forms. Laziness is one of them. Lying, hiding, and faking is another one, but we don't know which one it is. Stress could be another one.
Poorly trained, afraid. There's many reasons people are complacent. And the problem is, is when we label it as laziness or stupid. And then when we're talking amongst our peers and that person's name comes up and we go, oh, so freaking lazy. Right now we're creating a narrative about a person and those other leaders will treat that person as lazy and damage will be done because we've now created a narrative for a person called Gossip.
My favorite company I have. There's one company I know where gossip is a fireable offense.
And so, number one, if you're amongst leaders and that starts to happen, number one, we catch each other. Wait, wait, wait, wait. They might be lazy or they might be going through this. So why don't we just back off a second? By the way, we don't like it when people create narratives about us being horrible and toxic and aggressive and all these things. So it goes both ways. But we have to model behavior. Empathy is king. Empathy is king. So here's what no empathy looks like in a corporate environment, and it directly addresses something like complacency. You walk into someone's office or you zoom with them and.
Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. If you don't pick up your numbers, I don't know what's going to happen. That's very often how we address complacency. Now let's infuse empathy into that. Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. Are you okay? I'm worried about you. What's going on?
Very, very different dialogue. So the way I like to address complacency is with empathy, very often the truth is revealed 99 times out of 100, we can support or we can coach. And my rule is if someone is uncoachable, then that's a different conversation. So that's when laziness or true complacency will be revealed, is when they reject coaching or support.
