By confusing empathy and avoidance, some companies seem to rediscover that managing also involves knowing how to say no.
Over the past ten years, caring management has established itself as a benchmark in many companies. After decades marked by sometimes authoritarian, rigid or dehumanized models, this development represented a largely positive step forward. More listening, better consideration of individual realities, increased attention to working conditions and human relations have made it possible to correct certain excesses which fortunately belong to the past.
Few serious leaders today would like to return to management based on fear, humiliation or permanent pressure. The question is therefore not whether benevolence constitutes progress. She is one. The real question is elsewhere.
In some organizations, benevolence seems to have gradually changed in nature. It has no longer just become a managerial quality. It has sometimes become a justification for avoiding difficult conversations, uncomfortable trade-offs or unpopular decisions.
A largely positive managerial development
Modern business has long underestimated the importance of the human factor. Technical skills were often enough to make a manager, even when the latter possessed neither the interpersonal skills nor the listening skills necessary to manage a team.
New managerial approaches have made it possible to rebalance this situation. Understanding the difficulties encountered by employees, adapting support, taking into account certain personal contexts or encouraging dialogue are reflexes today that we can only welcome.
But as is often the case in the business world, a relevant idea can end up producing its own excesses when pushed to the point of caricature.
Empathy is no substitute for courage
This is probably where the debate gets interesting.
Because understanding a situation has never exempted us from acting on it. A manager can perfectly understand that an employee is going through a difficult period while being obliged to point out to them that their work is no longer at the expected level. He can listen while setting limits. He can remain respectful while reframing problematic behavior.
However, in certain organizations, any form of confrontation seems to have gradually become suspect. As if expressing constructive criticism automatically risks calling into question the quality of management. As if the requirement had become incompatible with benevolence.
The result is sometimes paradoxical: managers who are perfectly aware of their team’s difficulties choose to say nothing, not out of lack of lucidity, but out of fear of the relational consequences of a difficult conversation.
The problems that no one dares to name
In many companies, the most problematic situations are rarely the most invisible.
The employee who no longer achieves their objectives, the latent conflict between two members of a team, the behaviors which degrade the working atmosphere or the decisions which should have been taken several months ago are generally known to everyone. Often, the teams themselves perfectly identify problems before management even raises them.
What is missing is not information. What is sometimes missing is the ability to transform this observation into a decision.
Some companies then spend weeks, sometimes months, skirting around topics that everyone already knows. The meetings multiply, the discussions become cautious, the formulations gradually soften until they lose their substance, and the initial problem continues quietly on its way.
The teams also expect clarity
One of the most common mistakes is to believe that employees are only looking for relational comfort.
In reality, teams also expect consistency, readability and understandable rules. They need to know what is expected, what is acceptable and what is not. They need to understand how decisions are made and according to what criteria they apply.
When a manager systematically refuses to decide, reframe or arbitrate, he does not necessarily create a more serene environment. It often creates more confusion.
In the long term, a difficult but accepted decision generally produces less frustration than a prolonged lack of decision. Employees are often more accepting of a clear position than an ambiguous situation that seems unlikely to ever change.
Kindness has never dispensed with courage
The paradox is undoubtedly there.
The most respected managers are not necessarily the most permissive. They are often those who manage to combine listening and demands, respect and responsibility, understanding and decision. Those who know how to support without giving up their role. Those who understand that a difficult conversation conducted with respect is preferable to a problem left unanswered for months.
By confusing benevolence and avoidance, some organizations have ended up forgetting that a manager is not only there to reassure. He is also there to decide, arbitrate and sometimes say things that no one wants to hear.
Kindness can make these conversations more human.
It does not make them any less necessary.
