Empathy can help prevent blind spots

Allie Tinnier had an office problem that was keeping her from sleeping. She was also losing weight, and on the ten-point misery-happiness scale, the one that goes from zero to 10, Tinnier was a good, solid one. 

Interestingly, her problem was a common one, and it’s one you as a journalist might encounter.  It’s also a problem that she was able to get past. She’s now an eight on the happiness scale.

What was it, and how might it apply to you?

Tinnier had a blind spot. She has a sales job in the biotech industry, and up to now, at age 40, she had enjoyed her work.  But then came the new boss.  It was blindingly obvious to her that he was unfair, a bully, and was perfectly content to turn her life into a fractured nightmare. He insisted that she work late and on the weekends.

It didn’t stop there.  He put so much pressure on her to reach her new sales quota that she stopped taking lunch breaks, afraid she might miss a sale. Her office environment felt so tense that she even felt she needed to limit her bathroom breaks.

She was at her wit’s end; the only response she had in her repertoire was to try to work harder and longer.  That response, unfortunately, solved nothing.  It did, however, increase the stress on her marriage. A friend noticed that Tinnier had changed, that she wasn’t the carefree woman she had been even four months before.  

“Is it the new boss?” her friend asked.

“Yes, he hates me and he’s bullying me,” burst out Tinnier.

“You need coaching,” the friend advised.

“A coach won’t make my problems go away.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” admitted her friend. “You can’t change someone else, but you can change yourself.”

And that’s how Tinnier came to Laura Thompson,  an adaptive leadership coach with strategic communications expertise and author.

A Blind Spot

Thompson recognized the problem immediately. Tinnier was looking at everything exclusively from her own point of view and had zero understanding of her boss’s point of view.

With Thompson’s guidance, Tinnier did some sleuthing to figure out where her boss was coming from. She learned that her boss was under extreme pressure from his boss to have the sales department be more productive. And that pressure, in turn, was coming from the board of directors.

Once Tinnier had a greater understanding of what was going on in her boss’s world,  she had more empathy for his situation. Before, she had thought he was unapproachable, but now, when she talked with him, she herself was less defensive and more empathetic, with the result that he became much more willing to talk with her. 

Their conversations began focusing on how they could together help him achieve his objectives. They came up with what should have been an obvious solution, but it was invisible to both of them before they were able to talk in a relaxed, non-defensive atmosphere. 

The solution was for the boss to request hiring an additional employee to help increase sales. This solved the boss’s problem and, it also meant Tinnier could have more normal hours.

Today, Tinnier is doing well.  She no longer sees her boss as a bully, and she’s back to enjoying her work. And she learned some worthwhile lessons from this:

• Beware of blind spots. At the beginning, she had assumed that it was all about her. When she realized that her boss was also under pressure, she was able to frame her problems in a fresh way, taking into account the pressures her boss was under.  

• Trust improves when you take into account what’s going on with the other person. In Tinnier’s case, by becoming more empathetic to her boss’s situation, the trust between them improved to such an extent that they could work together to solve his problem, the need for more productivity, and her problem, that need for more normal work hours.

• When there’s a problem, work on it early, before it gets worse. Tinnier realized that she would have been better off to have pushed back earlier against her boss’s continuous demands for overtime. Instead of just working even harder, and feeling ever more demoralized and resentful, she could have dealt with the problem before it grew into something so personally devastating. 

• If your boss is doing something wrong, learn from it so you can be a better boss. Tinnier intends to make sure that her leadership style is empathetic so that no one who works for her feels bullied or that she’s unreasonably demanding.

As a journalist, you may not be working in a biotech company, but you can still benefit from Tinnier’s lessons in your work life. Beware of blind spots, be empathetic, address work problems quickly, and learn from the mistakes of others.