Striking the Balance Between Accountability and Empathy

By Eric Sprague C & R Magazine 10/29/2024

We all heard the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears when we were kids. Goldilocks tries out the bear’s porridge, chairs, and beds in search of the one that is “just right.” Not too soft, but not too hard. Not too hot, but not too cold, either. Goldilocks was on a quest to find balance.

Like Goldilocks, we restoration leaders are often in search of balance when dealing with our teams. When it comes to our people, we often go too hard on them or, conversely, far too easy. We are in a constant search for “just right.” We seek balance in the quest for accountability versus empathy. Especially with our younger workforce, the balance between empathy and accountability is at the forefront of many managers’ daily lives. So how do we find our “just right”?

Let’s start by identifying the problem. Why do these two concepts conflict so much? It seems that holding people responsible for creating results and showing genuine care for them would not be a conflicting concept. For many of us, it seems the two are mutually exclusive. However, as we all know, this is rarely the case in real life. As leaders, we want to uphold standards and make sure the work we do is on time and done right. To some, that can come off as too tough on our people. Most of us also want our people to be happy and fulfilled, but that can be, at times, taken advantage of. Now, we are being perceived as too soft. How do we find the balance?

The Consequences of Leaning Too Far Toward Accountability

When we lean heavily into accountability, we often can create a fear-based work environment that can seem cold and calculated to the employees. The value of the employee is based on facts, production efficiency, and data. While we need to be able to hold people to do a good job, we also need to remember that human beings are the ones who do these tasks. Human beings have emotions and needs. A culture heavily reliant on accountability can sometimes overlook these needs. It is common in very task-driven environments for the workers to feel a general distrust of management, poor morale, and burnout. These organizations tend to have high employee turnover, and worse than the employees leaving, they engage in “quiet quitting,” where they stick around for the paycheck but do only the very minimum to stay employed.

The Consequences of Leaning Too Far Toward Empathy 

There are issues with leaning too far toward empathy as well. At the end of the day, our businesses exist to get things done. In the world of restoration, we often are under huge amounts of decline stress and many other factors that require a high degree of accountability to be the driver in our business. When we lean into trying to keep our team members happy and engaged, it can, at times, slow these things down. We start spending an inordinate amount of time coaxing and trying to get team members to get past whatever issues they may be having and get them to produce the results the company needs to survive. Leaning heavily into empathy, while a noble cause, can lower production rates, tolerate underperformance, create a lowering of standards, and undermine the respect of the manager who needs everyone to get work done. Leaning heavily into empathy can create a culture of coddling, and this will have ripple effects on the whole business as the drive to make things happen can be eroded.

So What Do We Do to Strike the Proper Balance?

While there is no easy answer to striking this balance, there are some tried and true methods of finding the “just right” in our quest to lead in the best and most effective way possible.

1. Set clear expectations: Have a well-defined job description and key performance indicators that each team member will understand they need to meet or exceed.
2. Review frequently: People desire feedback, and as managers, we oftentimes go too long between formal feedback sessions. Set frequent, quick reviews to let people know where they stand and create plans of action for them to learn how to win at work.
3. Build social capital: As a manager or owner, we are busy people. However, to strike the accountability vs. empathy balance, we need to make time for our managers or us to build a relationship and social capital with our team members so we know and understand them better. This also helps us when it is time to have harder conversations about their performance.
4. Live it yourself: Make sure the team understands that you are not perfect, you are not a robot, and just like them, you also have hard things happen in your life. Be a little vulnerable; this goes a long way. It also allows you to explain the methods you employ to overcome the challenging things in your life and the strategies you use to forge ahead at work in the face of these challenges. If they see and hear how you are “walking the walk,” they will be more inclined to do so themselves.
5. Provide Support: Have a plan in place or some resources the team members can use to help keep them on track in their personal lives. It may be providing them with a work mentor or battle buddy they have to turn to when going through hard things. Maybe you offer some type of resources, such as access to a therapist or social worker. Whatever you can provide will go a long way to helping them realize you are not so cold and not treating them like just a number or a machine.

My dad once told me everything in business is easy until you get people involved. His years of experience managing others paved the way for me to want to follow in his footsteps. During his decades as a manger, he learned the art of balancing production and caring for his team. Like my dad, we all understand that our job as leaders is to make sure the work gets done, gets done right, and gets done in a timely manner. We also realize we need to be empathetic to our team’s needs and desires.

In the end, we all just need to act a bit like Goldilocks and make sure to work on getting the balance “just right.”

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