Adrienne Lowe shares her journey as an empathetic leader and how her goal to give people energy (rather than take it away) paved her way through a successful engineering leadership career.
Here are a few of our favorite moments from the conversation
I have given a lot of thought about the kind of person I wanna be in the world, the kind of leader I wanna be. And ultimately, I wanna be someone who gives others energy rather than takes it away. There's so much in our life that takes our energy away, that drains us every day. But I wanna be someone who, to the best of my ability gives it, who inspires, who helps others discover and own and honor their own greatness.
There's this dichotomy between being a leader and being a person's manager. And this can get confused between “I am here to protect you” as opposed to “lead you.” And a lot of failure modes I find when people are overly on one side of the fence.
We should never withhold constructive or difficult feedback out of fear of reaction. I have only ever built trust by being real and giving that very difficult feedback.
When a company says, “we're going to measure the morale of our organization,” and it's abstracted from a leader- Google's really famous for doing this, which is, "Hey, we're gonna measure the overall morale of an organization of several thousand people to see how the executive is doing." It's of the worst things you could possibly do. You have to do it at the micro level to understand how it's working on your team, not the division. But it's not easy. It’s not easy to manage several hundred thousand people.
💡 Topic Explainers
💡 Psychologist vs Sociologist Mode
Executives need to be able to operate in two modes, and to switch between these modes at the appropriate times:
Psychologist mode: You're talking to an individual and working with that person on an individual level. For example, coaching and helping them on their ambitions and dreams, but also performance management.
Sociologist mode: You're thinking about the overall health and wellbeing of the company. The company exists, and you've got a thousand people. That's a thousand mortgages or rent or hopes and dreams. And you're considering that the company needs to exist for those to be even possible.
In sociologist mode, you should think, "what would our organization look like? What would it operate like and how would it act?" But then you have to slip into psychologist mode and answer, "who do we have on staff? Who do we have that's available? Who could we get, or who do we have as stars?"
Jason believes that most executives spend too much time in psychologist mode and not enough time in sociologist mode. You need to operate in sociologist mode to make business decisions and then figure out how they affect individuals.
💡 Sympathy vs Empathy
Adrienne talks about Sympathy vs Empathy from a manager’s perspective as she reflects on something we often say on the podcast: The best engineering managers/leaders are those who come from being individual contributors.
But isn’t sympathy good? Why even compare the two?
Well, actually, as Dr Brené Brown puts it:
“Empathy fuels connection, sympathy drives disconnection.”
The ability to take the perspective of another person in an understanding and non-judgemental way allows you to “feel with the other person.”
Sympathy is distanced. It acknowledges that the other person is going though something, but it doesn’t provide comfort through connection.
“Rarely can a response make something better, what makes something better is connection.”
As a leader, being able to show empathy when having difficult conversations is absolutely key when you’re trying to help someone on your team move through a tough time. And, as a leader, you know you’ll have your fair share of those.
☔ The Shit Umbrella
The shit umbrella is the unnofficional title for the person above you at work, who takes the heat from management. This individual takes the shit, while people below him/her are shielded from management’s, well, shit.
Here’s why this is problematic.
📕 “A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Managing Ourselves”. - Ari Weinzweig
As Part 3 of Zingerman's Guide to Good Leading, “A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves” explores self-management techniques, and the secrets that helped Zingerman’s go from a 25 seat, 4-person start-up to a $49M business with 600+ team members.
The book includes essays on managing ourselves, mindfulness, leadership at the four levels of organizational growth, personal visioning, creating a creative organization, and more.
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
Developing Leadership is powered by Athenian. We are introducing a winning approach to engineering metrics that can help you empower your teams to autonomously improve. If you want to learn more, go to athenian.com
Share this post