You Can’t Lead People You Don’t Understand
Discovering the Human Side of Leadership: Why Listening and Empathy Drive Real Results
For more than 25 years, I worked in leadership roles where numbers mattered.
Sales mattered. Labor mattered. Customer experience mattered. Profitability mattered. Results mattered.
At one point in my career, I was responsible for 13 locations representing approximately $40 million in annual business. When you are responsible for results at that level, you learn very quickly that numbers cannot be ignored.
But I also learned something I believe is even more important:
Behind every number is a person.
There is a person serving the customer. A person staying late when someone calls out. A person trying to learn something new. A person having a terrible day who still showed up. A person hoping someone notices that they are capable of more.
If you want to understand the performance of a business, you had better understand the people creating it.
Empathy Is Not Lowering the Bar
There is a misconception about empathetic leadership that has always bothered me.
Empathy is sometimes treated as being nice, avoiding difficult conversations, giving people endless chances, or lowering expectations because someone is struggling.
That isn't how I see it.
Empathy does not mean removing accountability. It changes how you deliver it.
Some of the most important conversations I have had as a leader were uncomfortable ones. Sometimes I had to tell someone their performance wasn't where it needed to be. Sometimes I had to challenge someone's behavior. Sometimes I had to make decisions people didn't like.
You can be direct without being disrespectful.
You can hold someone accountable without humiliating them.
You can have standards while still asking, What's going on?
Those things are not opposites.
Fair Doesn't Always Mean the Same
Another lesson I learned is that the same leadership style doesn't work for everyone.
One employee may want detailed direction. Another may need you to give them the goal and get out of their way.
Someone may love public recognition, while another person would be mortified by it.
One person may immediately tell you they're struggling. Another may say absolutely nothing until you take the time to ask.
Leadership requires learning those differences.
That doesn't mean changing the standards for every person.
It means changing how you help different people reach them. To do that, you have to listen.
Your Employees Know Things You Don't
As I moved into larger leadership roles, another lesson became increasingly important:
Your title does not make you the smartest person in the room.
The people closest to the work often understand problems better than the people responsible for managing them.
They hear what customers are saying. They know which processes don't work. They know where time is being wasted. They know when morale is changing.
If you create an environment where people are afraid to disagree with you, eventually they stop telling you what you need to hear.
That might make leadership more comfortable. It doesn't make the business better.
I'd rather have someone respectfully challenge an idea than quietly agree with me and watch it fail.
Leadership Is What People Experience From You
I've read plenty of leadership books and sat through plenty of leadership meetings over the years. But I don't believe leadership is ultimately defined by what you say you value.
It's defined by what people experience when they work with you.
Do they trust you?
Can they tell you the truth?
Do they know where they stand?
Can you have a difficult conversation without making them feel small?
Do they believe their voice matters?
Those questions tell me far more about someone's leadership than the title on their business card.
Because people may forget the sales target. They may forget the meeting. They may even forget exactly what you said. But they tend to remember what it felt like to work for you.
After more than 25 years of leadership, that's the lesson I keep coming back to:
You can't lead people you don't understand.
And you can't understand people if you never take the time to listen.
