Women’s Month: Compassionate accountability: Overcoming empathy-accountability binary

By Rikky Minyuku

Our world is not black and white, yet we like to reduce our understanding of the world into binaries. One consistent binary that we hear in leadership spaces is the idea that empathy limits accountability.

This year as Womaniko Transforming Spaces has rolled out our Elevate Coaching Programme in partnership with Systems Thinking Africa, we have received constant feedback that women leaders are the biggest culprits in maintaining this binary.

On the one hand, women leaders are accused of being “soft” – too empathetic and thus unable to drive performance and excellence. On the other hand, women leaders are also accused of being “ambitious” – lacking empathy in driving performance. In response, women leaders argue that they have to perform at 200% to be seen, valued and provided opportunities at work

Women leaders are stuck between this rock and a hard place because of social expectations. As women, we are expected to be nurturing, supportive and empathetic. As leaders, we are expected to demonstrate our competence in organisational systems that demand that we outperform male counterparts and show “strong” leadership. Strong leadership is measured by productivity, output, revenues and outcomes. Our KPIs (key performance indicators) seldom focus on leadership outcomes relating to culture, employee experience or inclusion (unless you are the human resources leader).

The result is that women leaders have often focused on accountability to demonstrate their competence. Yet, we are now living in a world where there is growing recognition of the need for well-being, work-life balance, mental health and inclusion for driving performance.

These demands are pitted against the personal development needs of women leaders who also need to cultivate the same for themselves in order to show up best as leaders. Turns out its not two walls, but all four walls closing in. Stuck in this catch-22, women leaders are now asking hard questions on whether there is a balance at all and how to achieve it.

The truth is that the business case for empathy has been established. As far back as 2016, research by DDI established that, “Leaders who master listening and responding with empathy will perform more than 40% higher in overall performance, coaching, engaging others, planning and organising, and decision-making”.

This study brought empathy into the business lexicon and annual studies are now conducted by companies like EY, McKinsey, Harvard Business Review and Businessolver.

A review of annual studies shows a growing gap; leaders know that empathy is a leadership superpower (as coined by Harvard) but are unable to translate that into organisational culture and performance. As a result, leaders fall back on tried and tested accountability-driven leadership practices of the past to drive performance.

In practice the empathy-accountability binary does not serve leaders when facing day-to-day dilemmas. This is because one can put oneself in another’s shoes and understand their circumstances; yet still have organisational responsibilities, and still find organisational standards and systems direct one’s actions. In a recent example, an employee shared that they had been fired for under-performing at a time when they were dealing with domestic violence in their lives.

While the leader in this situation could empathise with the terrible impacts of domestic violence, they were also confronted with the negative impacts on team performance which triggered a performance review process.

This dilemma is even harsher for women leaders who face social expectations on empathy and pressures to ensure performance as proof of their competence. The answer lies in compassionate accountability. This approach moves beyond empathy to action – we are compassionate when we are moved to act to assist.

While accountability is usually conceived as vertical and looks more like compliance, this approach focuses on mutual accountability. When we combine compassion and accountability we recognise the importance of relationships and trust. With such a foundation, employees become more accountable and name all the challenges they face with the confidence that they will be heard and supported.

The “lean-in” culture often demands of women leaders that they develop themselves without examining the ways the organisational culture and systems disable compassionate accountability. However, the systems thinking lens we apply at Womaniko Transforming Spaces has shown us that coaching to build a compassionate accountability capability is not enough.

The supportive action that shifts empathy to compassion often requires teams to adjust for a time to maintain team performance. Moreover, leaders need the courage and willingness to change long-respected organisational systems that were not built to prioritise employee well-being. Women leaders need spaces to develop themselves, their teams and their organisations. This is the way to unlock the productivity, engagement and performance that leaders are looking for.

Rikky Minyuku is an executive leader in gender transformation, advocacy and social justice, orchestrating transformative change through strategic programme development, innovative leadership and expert facilitation. She has worked with organisations in the corporate sector, non-profit sector, social movement sector and multi-lateral sector. She is a director at Womaniko Transforming Spaces.

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