When Compassion Harms
Supporting people who drift encourages drifting and de-motivates high achievers.
Leaders who won’t challenge people harm them. Yes, challenging can go too far. But support is most meaningful when people are stretching themselves.
Harmful compassion:
- Parents who coddle children.
- Team members who tolerate weaknesses under the guise of supporting the boss.
- Leaders who prefer keeping the “peace” to developing the team.
- Spouses who smile and say everything’s OK when it isn’t.
Compassion is weakness when support takes the form of avoidance.
Challenging compassionate supporters:
Tell compassionate supporters that they’re hurting their leaders/team members when they avoid issues. Use language like ‘hurt’ and ‘harm’.
Use the language of compassion to confront avoiders.
Try saying, “You wouldn’t intentionally harm anyone. But, what’s happening when you won’t point out negative patterns, poor performance, or disappointing results?”
Explain how they might make life better by encouraging improvement. You might say, “If you help the boss improve, you make life better for everyone on the team.”
Challenge compassionate supporters when they justify weaknesses and minimize poor performance. “How are you helping when you allow poor performance to continue?”
Powerful voices:
I’ve seen compassionate team members refuse to point out a leader’s weaknesses. In reality, they’re the best ones to do it.
Start the conversation for them. Compassionate supporters may be reluctant to point out problems. If you start development conversations for them, they may find ways to keep it going.
Help compassionate supporters give tangible expression to their heart. “I know you support the boss. One thing you can do to help your team is encourage the boss to be better.”
Compassionate supporters – who won’t speak to weaknesses – are like parents who blame Johnny’s teacher for his poor grades. It doesn’t help when you shift blame, avoid issues, and encourage irresponsibility.
How might leaders help compassionate supporters have tough conversations?
Read: How Haters and Supporters Produce the Same Results
may seem a strange answer to your question but…..show their own compassion, show themselves as an ‘equal’, this in turn can encourage ‘openness’, the “tough conversations” may then not be so tough, or at least not as tough as may have been originally thought!
actually have ‘conversations’, not written word, not email or any other form of written word, ‘ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS’!, unless of course, you are able to insert tone into these, as few people appear to be able to do so these days.
Couldn’t agree more. I see this a lot. I always say that, while you may think you are ‘helping’ or ‘protecting’ the person by not challenging them or calling out their poor performance, you are actually doing them a major disservice. You are denying them information that will help them to grow and develop. When managers still don’t get it, I ask them how they themselves would like to be remembered. Being remembered as someone who did not prepare people for the next step, and who held people back from growing and developing, is not an attractive legacy image. People do not thank you in the long run for protecting, covering up or concealing sub-par performance, especially when they see others around them blossom and fulfil their potential.
Dan, you seem to be confusing the word compassion with indifference. It is never wrong to show compassion
We’ve always viewed compassion to be a strong and good word. For me, it’s a good thing to show compassion, but I also agree with you that it, too, can cause harm. Just like with anything else, too much of something is never good.
I don’t see what you describe as being compassion. The word “compassion” in Latin means to “suffer” or “struggle” with. In other words, to try and understand the person’s experience, empathize and actively work with them to reach a better state. It is not avoidance.