Criticism comes with the territory when you’re a leader. However, take a minute to hold some empathy before you lob criticism.
Someone once said that every decision a president makes is hard, because if the decision was an easy one, it would have made before it landed on the president’s desk. And I think this idea works for every leader. Good leaders are taking decisions seriously, and they are wrestling with the hard ones carefully before coming to a conclusion. You might not agree with the conclusion, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t weigh all the factors. Indeed, good leaders have thought about aspects of the decision that you might not have.
I’ve been watching literally hundreds of negative comments pour in about a decision made by a leader I respect deeply, and what is hardest is the apparent lack of empathy shown towards this leader. I know that comment threads aren’t the place to seek out human decency, but I’m just struck by how many comments fail to even consider the leader’s humanness, let alone the idea that he took time and care in making his decision.
As always, whenever I think an answer is obvious, I try to imagine a more complex world. Because the world is more complex than we can imagine. In that light, it becomes easy to show empathy.