Empathy - A Trap

Human Resource Understanding is by far the most complex senstivity, which a Manager needs to develop. The more adept he is in mapping the conduct and capability of a person and maximizes his output to the benefit of the organization, the more successful team he builds.

One of the biggest traps,which we all fall into is the " Empathy " . The social, moral and political values of ours continously drag us to point towards being sensitive to the issues of a person. Sometimes these issues are realistic , but most of the times, these are only the economic and social weaknesses, which the manager tries to cover with his flexible oversight of work quality , expenses or behavior .

I recall , all my executives over inflated their travel expense statements. I still signed it and allowed the little extras to be taken by them, though I knew, it was an unfair reward. However, since the salaries of these executives was quite low, I would still ignore the inflated expenses. In the long run, the executives started disproportionately charging the expenses and it became a virus difficult to control. Second, having tasted blood, most of these exeutives later were finding it difficult to manage with the real situation. This was the cost of " Empathy "

But Empathy is most complicated with the Labour Force. Every single day, all of us try to give a little more to our workers. More out of sensitivity to his condition and less on account of his productivity and behavior. But the same worker, then stands up against us and fights that the little extra, which we gave as our generosity is now his right and infact, he actually deserves to get the same as the MD of the company. Here Empathy is the biggest Trap. Even the smallest gesture of goodwill extended to a worker can then become a major cause of conflict.

Somedays back, I was watching a movie on HBO. I dont really recall the name. Wherein a US Millionaire lady steps out to the Latin America to see the sufferring of the people outside US. Within the first month of watching and listening stories of rape, crime, drugs, cheating, corruption she is a pshyic case. But the most interesting line in the movie was. " Poverty is less of a curse to a person who was experiencing it, but more of a curse to those who see it around them "

In my own personal experience, my biggest waterloo in my management style was my spirtualism. What I considered as my spirtual duty to service people around me of higher order then maximizing the profit of the share holders. Later turned out that the very same set of people considered me a weak manager and started exploiting the generosities that I was extending to these low performing executives. Finally, ofcourse all of them paid a heavy price for their misdeamenour.

The reason, I am sharing this is to keep all the readers enriched with this experience, that " Empathy" is a Trap and do not allow it to overtake your professional decisions, no matter, how compelling the situation.

Do not try to be a social reformer or play Godfather in Business. Motivation of a team does not need empathy. It needs success as the driver of any job.