How to be an empathetic manager (without becoming a therapist)

You don't need to absorb everyone’s frustrations. Here’s how to listen to grievances without having folks dump their frustrations onto you.

👋 Hey, it’s Wes. Welcome to my bi-weekly newsletter on managing up, leading teams, and standing out as a high performer. For more, check out my intensive course on Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers. The October cohort is the last cohort of the year. → Save your spot

Read time: 7 minutes

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Empathetic leaders often do a lot of invisible emotional labor.

One newsletter reader said this:

“I consider myself an empathetic leader and after conversations sharing tough news, I tend to have 1:1s with my team members so I can do a sentiment check after. While I am happy that they share openly with me, sometimes these conversations become about everything at work they don't like. How would you recommend handling this?”

Yes, your team should be able to talk about problems at work and how it’s impacting them.

At the same time, this is a matter of degrees. After a certain point, the more you only focus on what’s wrong, the more your team may feel angrier and more disempowered.

Putting a limit on your team sharing their frustrations prevents you from feeling drained and emotionally dumped on.

Setting that boundary is useful for both you and your team.

Here’s how:

1. Don’t try to be their therapist.

I believe most managers act as therapists sometimes, in the sense that you listen and support.

But as a manager, you must assess your direct reports’ work and potential.

Therefore, there’s a conflict of interest that actual therapists don’t have.

If your team thinks they can share all their frustrations completely unencumbered and at full strength, you can’t help but take this into account when considering their ability to be promoted. You can’t help but judge their emotional regulation and ability to handle stress.

In other words, you don’t want to mislead your team into believing they can talk to you too openly.

You want to listen AND you want them to be remember that you are still their manager—mainly for their own sake.

2. Listen, then direct the conversation in a more actionable direction.

I like to let the person share and to listen thoughtfully. Then, I try to direct the conversation in an actionable direction:

• How can we make this better?

• What’s within our control that we can do?

• How can I (their manager) potentially provide air coverage in the meantime?

For example, you can say something like:

“I hear you that X is really frustrating. I agree it shouldn’t have to feel this hard and you’ve been handling it well so far. What can we do to potentially improve this? What might help you feel more confident and grounded in this situation?”

^ Notice how I’m directing the conversation away from venting, and toward what we can do about the problem. You want your direct report to start thinking of potential solutions, and to know you support them in figuring out a solution.

The more airtime you give a topic, the more concrete and real it becomes. Obviously, this does not mean we can only talk about happy things and pretend problems don’t exist.

It means to find balance in:

(A) allowing direct reports to speak openly, knowing they can air their grievances

and

(B) reminding them that as individuals who have agency and your full support, it’s also part of their responsibility to try to think of a solution.

More on what you give airtime to will expand.

3. Don’t jump too quickly to offering solutions.

One of the common mistakes I see when leaders try to execute this empathetic-yet-realistic approach is they move on TOO quickly to a solution.

When you go straight to a solution without acknowledging what you heard, it reads like you’re dismissing them. It sounds like you were waiting for them to finish, so you could solve this and move on.

This might be efficient, but it’s not effective, because your team member likely doesn’t only want solutions--they also want to feel heard.

Instead, spend a few minutes restating what they said, so you demonstrate that you were, in fact, listening.

🚫 “Hmm I agree, this isn’t ideal. What might we do to improve this situation?"

✅ “Hmm I agree, this isn’t ideal. I knew this was a challenge but I didn’t realize until now that it was taking this much of your bandwidth every week. I’m glad you’re speaking up because I can see why you’re feeling frustrated. What do you think we could do to make this better?”

Notice the “after” was still concise, but comes across as more sincere. I wrote more about the “add one more line” rule.

4. Push back gently to encourage a right-sized reaction.

If I believe my recipient is being a bit hyperbolic, I may push back gently to help them see the situation through a different frame.

This is not only kind, but necessary.

If your direct report has an aggrandized extreme view of the situation, this has a real cost. Due to their beliefs, they may act assuming they have a moral high ground for being right, when in fact they have an incorrect or incomplete mental model about the situation.

You could say something like,

“X is definitely frustrating--[add an extra line about this so they see that you understand]. At the same time, we don’t want to catastrophize. X is a change for sure, but in some ways, it’s not super different from what we were doing before. For example, [ways the new process is similar to the old process]. But I totally see your point and agree the change will take some time to get used to.”

or

“I hear you that during launches, it’s a more hectic time. I’m here and ready to support, and I’m going to need to rely on you to tell me how I can help. Also, on the bright side, we have to do X every few quarters, so while this does make things more hectic, it’s also cyclical. We know this too shall pass. We know things will feel upended for a week or so, then will settle into a new rhythm, so I want us to remember that too."

I feel like modern discourse is often about how you should let people feel how they feel, there's no wrong way to feel, everyone processes news differently, etc.

And while I generally agree, I believe it’s our responsibility to help our team develop right-sized reactions or correct mental models about what’s going on around them.

In my first job out of college, I remember a VP at Gap Inc telling our team,

“It’s the holiday season. This is our busiest quarter and things will feel a bit nuts. This happens every year, and every year we get through it. Let’s hang in there.”

I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, this does happen every year. Okay this isn’t THAT bad. And even if this is a more stressful period, it’s a time-bound problem. It’s not going to last forever.”

More on how to help your team develop right-sized reactions.

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Remember: If your team has gone too far into venting mode, this may impact their performance and feed delusions that aren’t useful for anyone.

I think most leaders focus 100% on validating their direct reports (to the point of feeling emotionally burdened and accidentally creating an overly-negative conversation) because pushing back (of any sort) creates a micro-moment of friction, which is inherently riskier than only listening.

But as a manager, you can listen thoughtfully, honor what they’re sharing, and help guide the conversation in a productive direction.

Your goal is to be both empathetic and real with your people, which I believe is ultimately what they want from you.

To recap, here are the four points:

1. Don’t try to be their therapist.

2. Listen, then direct the conversation in a more actionable direction.

3. Don’t jump too quickly to offering solutions.

4. Push back gently to encourage a right-sized reaction.

Which jumped out at you? Which are you most excited to try?

Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you in two weeks on Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

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