Simon Sinek argues leaders should respond to poor behavior with empathy and curiosity instead of judgment. When someone underperforms, they're often struggling under pressure or a bad boss, not terrible. Ask more questions, affirm their feelings, and skip the hero-worship.
Chapters
I went for a walk with a friend of mine who's struggling at work, and this is how the conversation started. My boss is a terrible person.
I hate working for her. She's a terrible person. And I said, oh, my God, does she abuse her children and kick her dog?
And she said, no. I said, ah, so we don't know that she's a terrible person. We just know that she's a terrible leader. They have pressure on them that you and I can't even comprehend. Right? Maybe they weren't given an education about how to lead. Maybe they have had terrible role models. Maybe they've got screwed up incentive structures. Maybe they have a terrible boss. You know, like, we don't know what they're operating in, and we have to assume that they're doing the best they can with the circumstances and the tools they've got. So for us to come in with empathy and to affirm rather than argue.
You have to do it this way. They say with confidence, you'd be like, ah, I can only imagine that's. I know that you're interested in some of the stuff that it's frustrating. And I think just leading with empathy and affirming their feelings, I think it's very, very human. We have to be dangerous about the narratives we create about other people. And as leaders, we do this to our employees and employees do this to us. Right? Like, I'm not talking about after work venting. That's perfectly healthy. I have no issue with that. But we've all had the experience where we're sitting in a leadership meeting and the name of an employee comes up and somebody goes, that guy's such an idiot. Or, ugh, so lazy. Oh, my God, what an. Such an underperformer. I don't even know why they're on the team. Right? And the problem is all the other leaders hear that, and then that starts getting repeated. Now the other leaders start saying, ugh, lazy Steve again. Oh, surprise. We got another problem with Stacy. Right? And that narrative now becomes toxic because we now start treating those people as lazy, stupid, unmotivated, Right? And none of that is true. It might be true. Like, they might be lazy, unmotivated, and disengaged, or they might be struggling, or they might have issues at home, or they might be in the wrong job, or they might be freaking out, or maybe they have a bad boss. I don't know. I just know it's not necessarily that. And it's incumbent upon us as leaders that if somebody starts to form a narrative about one of our people that we immediately cut off and say, maybe or maybe. And then you give the list. And by the way, it goes the other way around, which is we also sometimes make heroes out of people. Oh, she's. If you just give it to her, she's. She'll fix everything. Because then the one time something goes wrong, you. You can't give feedback because you created this public hero out of somebody who does no wrong. And that's equally as toxic. And you create your own toxic geniuses. I've done it. I know I'm talking from experience, right? But we do the same with our clients. That idiot just doesn't get it. And now we all treat that person as an idiot who doesn't get it, rather than being like, I know deep down inside they love what we do and they wish they could do it. They're never going to tell us that. They're never going to show us that.
So I think empathy and patience are remarkable things. And to bring it down to a very, very, very human level. And a million questions. Lead with more questions. There's data on this, which is a bad salesperson will ask, on average, seven questions in a meeting. A good salesperson asks an average 32. So it's over 4x. So the more questions you ask, the more data you'll get, the more you know how to lead with empathy.
