Mastering Tough Calls with Humanity and Decency
A guide for business leaders
The crux of your role as a leader often lies in making difficult decisions - those that impact lives. It's daunting, yet failure to make a call often results in more harm than good.
So how do you make those difficult decisions and retain your humanity? If you’ve ever asked yourself this question (or even avoided taking a hard decision because of it) then this article is for you.
We understand the discomfort that difficult decisions and challenging conversations can bring. But despite the barrage of contrary headlines, most execs we work with want nothing more than to be good leaders and good people. The struggle often comes from the perceived conflict between being a 'good' person and driving for results and making tough calls.
So while there’s no denying that doing both well is difficult, it's a key leadership skill.
Clarity and Decency: Pillars of Human Leadership
Two critical elements underpin effective, human-centred leadership: clarity and decency.
Clarity involves understanding "what" must be done, and the decisions required to do it.
Decency focuses on "how" these decisions are reached and conveyed, including examining the motivations behind your actions and words, to affirm the sincerity of your intentions.
Wise Compassion: Balancing the personal and professional
Wise compassion is what authors Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter advocate for in their 2022 book Compassionate Leadership. Making tough calls and being a good person, they say, is not a binary choice. We must embrace both, with wise compassion.
Wisdom is to see reality with clarity, then being courageous enough to take the decision that needs to be taken, even when it’s hard.
Compassion guides your intent to enact or discuss change decently in pursuit of a better overall outcome.
Effective leadership is mastering the blend. It's a bit like ice skating; to glide in leadership, we need both skates of clarity and decency, of wisdom and compassion, working in tandem.
Empathy vs Compassion: Understanding the difference
Hougaard and Carter go to great lengths in their book to differentiate between compassion and empathy.
Empathy being the spark that connects us to others. But getting stuck in empathy, only feeling what another feels, becomes a trap that prevents taking tough but necessary actions.
Compassion encompasses empathy while also considering the bigger picture. It allows us to act in a way that, despite being hard, benefits the whole.
So, what skills do wise and compassionate leaders employ that others do not? Hougaard and Carter suggest it’s these four:
Caring presence: Being fully present to genuinely connect.
Caring courage: Stepping beyond your comfort zone into bravery to build confidence.
Caring candour: Being direct and clear, avoiding sugar-coating. It’s both faster & kinder.
Caring transparency: Clarity is kindness. It breeds trust and prevents confusion.
Navigating Uncertainty & Self-Doubt
In an unpredictable world, we rarely have complete information for decisions. But this isn’t a reason to shy away from making a call.
To move past doubt or spiralling into unnecessary rumination, remember that decisions can only be based on available information at the time.
If your head, heart, or gut, feel misaligned before you make a difficult decision, then it’s probably worth exploring that conflict to see if it has anything valid to tell you. Just don’t confuse nerves about taking that tough decision with genuine misalignment about it being the right thing to do.
To move beyond ruminating over a difficult decision you’ve already taken, particularly one that’s had unintended consequences, listen to your inner voice but question it. Is what it says true? If there’s some truth to it, if there’s an improvement you could make next time, acknowledge that, then let it go.
Leadership demands making tough decisions with humanity
Great leaders are distinguished by their decisiveness and the humanity with which they conduct themselves.
Research shows a direct correlation between wise compassion and both your leadership ratings and rank. In other words, the more you embrace wise compassion, the more your team rates you and the higher you will rise within your organisation.
Particularly in times of uncertainty, human-centred leadership is paramount. People are looking to us for clarity and decisiveness. But they also want us to act and lead with decency. The ability to do both is what sets great leaders apart.
November 2023