Exercising compassion without sacrificing accountability
In today’s fast-paced, high-intensity work environment, things are bound to slip off your plate and others may struggle to keep up with meeting your expectations. High performers are often hardest on themselves and expect just as much from others, but this can be exhausting and is non-sustainable in the long run. Learning to extend grace to ourselves and others is an important step in managing expectations of yourself and other team members and providing the space to learn and grow in a purpose-driven culture.
We are often our own harshest critics. Whether we struggle with understanding an important business concept, completing projects as planned, making a mistake, or even a general feeling that you are letting yourself and your team down, there are many reasons why we are hard on ourselves. Whereas self-reflection is an important component of getting better, when introspection becomes an exercise in punishing criticism, morale flags for individuals and teams creating suboptimal performance in achieving company goals. Extending grace can help break this vicious cycle and help people reclaim and even enhance their “mojo” to get back on track and contribute to the success of the company.
What Does It Mean to Extend Grace?
In essence, extending grace is being gentle with yourself and others, particularly under stressful conditions. Some may liken this to a form of compassion, others as a form of patience.
While it is important to learn and improve, this can be hindered by the distraction of excessive criticism of oneself and others. To be fully receptive to getting better, it is important to create the cognitive space to clear your head of unproductive negative thoughts and acknowledge that we, as humans, are bound to falter from time-to-time and may require more support to achieve results.
With that said, extending grace should not be confused with a lack of accountability. Results still matter to the overall performance and success of a company. When a track record of underperformance emerges, this requires its own approach (see the EverSparq article, Exiting Underperformers with Respect for additional details). Extending grace is a way to acknowledge that we all fall short at times, not a means for excusing underperformance.
I remember a time early in my fitness journey, participating in a group class in which all the other clients seemed to be completing the workout with seeming ease while I was falling behind and having a difficult time completing the exercises as quickly. I automatically assumed there must have been something wrong with me and that I was terribly out of shape. I grew practically despondent and wanted to give up until the trainer and I discussed the importance of acknowledging that it wasn’t about me not being good enough but about taking the time to improve. This was a way of extending grace to myself without making excuses and cleared the way for me to improve my endurance and strength over a realistic time period.
There have been numerous times in my professional life when I have grown frustrated with myself and been tempted to wallow in unproductive self-doubt. I often think of the fitness example to remind me to extend grace to myself so that I can get out of my own head and back on track.
Why Is Extending Grace Important?
Most employees do not show up at work with an agenda of intentionally underperforming. They want to do a good job and feel that they are making a difference (especially when it connects to their personal sense of purpose). So, when they do not accomplish these goals, it can be easy to slide into a vicious cycle of self-criticism, chronic underperformance, and even burnout and employee turnover. Recognizing the signs for when you or others are not meeting expectations is a reminder to take a brief pause and create the cognitive and emotional space to take a breath.
I have lost track of the number of times when I have beat myself up in the moment or even years later for not performing at a level that I expected or desired of myself. Early in my career, I allowed this self-flagellation to get in my way of focusing on how to get better and I often was just as hard on those around me. None of this resulted in sustained improvement, but it certainly created avoidable and non-value-added anxiety, stress, and disengagement.
Extending grace to yourself often includes acknowledging that you are not a failure, incompetent, or unqualified when grasping a concept is elusive or when you are unable to keep pace with the rest of the team. This can go a long way to reframing the situation from dwelling on shortcomings to one that illuminates a path for getting better. Similarly, being patient and intentional in supporting others by providing them with the space to learn and a safety net for them to develop through trial and error also enhances individual performance in the longer term to collectively propel companies to success.
Common Barriers to Extending Grace
Extending grace to oneself has similarities to and differences from extending it to others. While there are likely numerous reasons why it can be difficult to extend grace to oneself, here are some of the more common ones I have experienced or observed:
Extending Grace to Oneself
- Feeling unworthy
It is easy to fall into a trap of self-doubt in which you think you are unqualified, unprepared, or even incompetent as reasons for not being as effective as you think you should be. There are a lot of feelings associated with this state including shame and embarrassment. Also, if you do not realize that you have set unrealistic expectations for yourself, granting yourself patience may feel like a cop out. - Comparing yourself to others
Feeling you should be better at something because of how others are performing is another snare that is not particularly helpful. Under stressful conditions, we tend to go into more of a primal survival mode that can cloud our judgment and ability to recognize that every individual’s journey is different. Perhaps the people you are comparing yourself to have had significantly more time or experience with the subject matter. All you are seeing are their results, not what it took for them to get there. - Lack of connection to purpose
Having identified a personal sense of purpose helps to keep you grounded and connected to the work ahead of you. Amidst tumultuous and stormy work conditions, it can be easy to lose sight of this anchor and to forget to pull up long enough to see the bigger context and put whatever you are struggling with into perspective.
Extending Grace to Others
While any of the above can be translated to apply for others than yourself, additional barriers for extending grace to others as a manager may include:
- Fear of creating excuses
A common misconception is that extending grace, patience, and understanding will erode accountability. It can be easy to be fooled into thinking that by exerting ever-increasing pressure on others to perform, we will somehow cause them to magically figure things out and achieve the desired result. Alternatively, pulling your foot off the accelerator long enough to acknowledge your colleague’s struggle does not mean that you are excusing the potentially suboptimal performance. It can pave the way for engaging in a reflective and productive conversation about how to improve the situation. - Fear of creating a culture of optionality
As with the fear of eroding a sense of personal accountability, if grace is blindly extended outside the context of the importance of completing the work, people may be lulled into a false sense of security in which they believe there are no consequences for underperformance. As a result, they may avoid tasks, projects, and requirements of their role that they find less satisfying. Extending grace is not exempting others from performing their duties, it is a means of helping them get unstuck and out of the vicious cycle of self-doubt so that they can resume and improve.
How to Extend Grace to Yourself and Others
Extending grace may be intuitive for some and more mysterious for others. Consider some of the following actions to extend grace to yourself and others. As you practice, reflect and seek feedback on what worked and what was less effective so you can build your own, authentic set of tools.
- Press the pause button
When experiencing extreme frustration and discouragement, it is important to break out of the cycle quickly. Coupled with an opportunity to assess what additional tools, skills, and support would be helpful, taking a break from the task at hand enables the individual to regroup and will often help them to lean back into the challenge with better tools, enhanced skills and support, and even stronger resolve. (Typically, this simple act is enough, though there will be times when a more in-depth exploration of underperformance may be required.) - Find ways to boost confidence
Another way of breaking the vicious cycle of paralyzing self-doubt is to remind yourself of your (or your colleague’s) strengths. Specifically, thinking about situations when you struggled but found an effective path through. What was it that helped you? How can you build on what you learned and apply it under the current circumstances. Did you ask for help? Seek additional experience and mentoring? Get yourself back into the mindset that you are capable of succeeding to set the stage for figuring out what will be required to do so. - Stop comparing yourself to others
In continuation of identifying your strengths, be honest with yourself about where you can get better by comparing yourself to where you are today and where you desire or need to be rather than comparing yourself to others. To the extent that you have observed someone who seems to have figured it out, ask them for tips that you can potentially apply to your own development journey. - Contextualize the situation through your personal connection to purpose
Line of sight from your personal call to purpose to the activities you are struggling with and how they tie to the overall mission and vision of the company is a powerful mental and emotional anchor when things get tough. Reminding yourself of the bigger picture often helps you realize that you are not alone and do not exclusively bear the burden of responsibility for driving company success. Evaluate the impact of the situation you are struggling with on overall company performance. Sometimes what you are stressed about may not have as great of an impact as you thought. Keeping your eye on the bigger picture can help you pull out of the weeds and reset your frame of mind and reinvigorate your resolve to persevere. - Manage expectations
Whether extending grace to yourself or others, take a moment to assess the situation and read the room. How do you feel when under stress and when you are being hard on yourself? What is your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure doing? Similarly, are there certain “tells” that others show when they are struggling with self-doubt? Soundboard with a trusted colleague and/or mentor to determine if your expectations would benefit from an adjustment. Perhaps it is lengthening the timeline, reducing the number of tasks in the day, or reprioritizing the portfolio of activities to create a more manageable workload. - Create a plan to get better
Acknowledge the frustration and struggle and validate that it is okay to not be okay. Create the cognitive and emotional space to break out of the cycle of self-doubt and criticism to enable effective, rational problem-solving. Once you or the other person has had a chance to collect themselves, engage in some concrete steps to reframe the circumstances, manage expectations, and empower you or the other team member to re-establish a sense of hope.
Conclusion
There are any number of stressors that can cause us to spiral into frustration and despair. In this state, confidence erodes and the risk of dis-engagement and turnover is high. Extending grace to yourself and others and intentionally calling a “time out” to break the unproductive cycle of self-doubt and harsh, unproductive criticism is critical for resetting expectations and turning an overwhelming situation into a manageable and even rewarding one.
Extending grace can be easily accomplished without sacrificing accountability. Furthermore, it costs nothing but can yield tremendous returns by contributing to a purpose-driven culture in which one can become even more effective and, in conjunction with the rest of the team, collectively drive the success of the company.
For questions or to find out how EverSparq can help you design and implement any of the tools or practices described in this article to fit your company needs, please contact info@eversparq.com.
