From Emotional Triggers to Values-Based Leadership: A Practical Framework

Craig Dickerson

July 1, 2025

This is the third post in our series exploring how the ladder of inference can impact and improve leadership effectiveness. In our first post, we introduced this mental model, which explains how we unconsciously leap from raw data to firm conclusions. Our second post expanded the framework to reveal how conclusions harden into beliefs that drive our actions. In this post, we’ll explore the emotional aspect of the ladder, showing how our inferences and stories become the source of our emotions and reactions, and how developing emotional agility can free us from these automatic patterns.

By connecting the ladder of inference with emotional agility, leaders gain tools to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics and foster productive conflict—elements crucial to human-centered leadership and the resilience required for today’s complex business environment.

Identifying the source of emotions

Before we dive into dealing with emotions, it might be helpful to spend some time thinking about their origin. Pause and think for a moment—what would you say is the source of your emotions? Many people believe that emotions are reactions to external events and, therefore, we have little control over them. Have you ever thought or said, “You are making me mad”? Is the other person solely responsible for creating the frustration welling up inside you? While external factors play a part in our emotions, psychological research points to our internal narratives as playing a significant role in how we feel about a situation.

Imagine this scenario: Two managers review their team’s performance report indicating that half of their goals have been met. Five goals completed out of the 10 objectives, in total. While one manager sees it as a step toward achieving success and is excited by the progress made so far, the other manager views it as falling short on half of their targets and feels disheartened by what seems like a setback. The data is the same, but the emotion is different, because story and mindset are different. We all know the old adage “glass half empty, glass half full.” Intuitively, we know that it is our thinking that drives our emotions, and this is good news because it means that we need not be held hostage to our emotions. However, we often don’t act according to that knowledge.

Understanding that our emotions arise from the narratives we construct empowers us to examine those narratives and choose our reactions with intentionality, an essential skill for human-centered leadership.

Ladder of inference meets emotional agility

In our last post, we saw how our conclusions about people or situations can solidify into stories. Remember Alex and Javier’s meeting? Alex concluded that Javier was rude when he arrived late, and this story influenced how Alex felt and acted for the remainder of their interaction. The story “Javier is rude” made Alex feel disrespected and perhaps angry, which affected his behavior toward Javier.

Had Alex chosen a different story, perhaps “Javier might be dealing with a crisis,” he would likely have felt concern rather than anger, a more productive emotion. In their Harvard Business Review article on emotional agility, Susan David and Christina Congleton describe how leaders get “hooked by their negative thoughts and emotions” like “fish caught on a line.”²

According to them, when we are hooked, we lose the ability to respond thoughtfully. Instead, we react from a place of emotional intensity that often contradicts our values and how we want to show up in the world. Think again of Alex. How likely is it that he wants to be known as an angry person? Is it more likely that he values collaboration or empathy (or at least prefers to be seen that way by his superiors)?

Think about a recent time when you felt triggered at work. What story were you telling yourself about the situation? How did that story shape your emotional response? Did your actions align with your values, or did you find yourself behaving in ways you later regretted? Was your resulting behavior productive or counterproductive?

The challenge is that these emotional hooks feel incredibly real and justified in the moment. When we’re at the top of our ladder, our conclusion feels like an absolute truth, and the emotions that follow seem like the only reasonable response. But as we’ve learned, these conclusions are often based on incomplete data, assumptions, and biases.

Four ways emotional agility can help

In their article, David and Congleton outline four key practices that, when combined with our understanding of the ladder of inference, can help leaders unhook themselves from unproductive emotional patterns.

1. Recognize your patterns: The first step is noticing when you’ve been hooked. The authors note that “your thinking becomes rigid and repetitive” and “the story your mind is telling seems old, like a rerun of some past experience.” When you find yourself climbing the same ladder repeatedly—making the same assumptions about certain people or situations—that’s a signal you’re caught in a pattern.

2. Label your thoughts and emotions: Instead of saying “My coworker is disrespectful,” try “I’m having the thought that my coworker is disrespectful, and I’m feeling angry.” This simple act of labeling creates distance between you and your experience, allowing you to see your thoughts and emotions as “transient sources of data that may or may not prove helpful.”

3. Accept them: Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation or acting on every feeling. It means acknowledging what you’re experiencing without immediately trying to suppress it or act on it. Take 10 deep breaths and notice what’s happening. What story are you telling yourself? What assumptions did you make as you climbed your ladder?

4. Act on your values: Once you’ve created space between yourself and your emotional reaction, you can choose actions that align with your values rather than your triggered state. Ask yourself: Will this response serve me and my organization in the long term? Am I taking a step toward being the leader I most want to be?

In real life: resolving a generational conflict

Let’s look at another scenario to see how this might work in practice. Maya, a Millennial project manager, and Robert, a baby boomer senior analyst, are constantly at odds.

Maya sends Robert a Slack message asking for urgent input on a proposal. When Robert doesn’t respond for two hours, Maya’s ladder kicks in: Robert saw the message (data selection), he’s ignoring me because he doesn’t respect younger colleagues (assumption), he’s dismissive and stuck in his ways (conclusion), Robert is slowing down the team (belief). This story triggers frustration and resentment (emotions).

Meanwhile, Robert checks his messages at scheduled intervals to maintain focus. When he sees Maya’s message labeled “urgent” for what seems like a routine question, his ladder goes to work: Everything is urgent to Maya (data selection), younger workers have no sense of priorities (assumption), Maya is impatient and demanding (conclusion), millennials don’t understand professional boundaries (belief). This story triggers irritation and dismissiveness (emotions).

Both are hooked by their stories and emotions. But what if one of them practiced emotional agility?

Maya could notice her pattern; she often feels dismissed by older colleagues. She could label it: “I’m having the thought that Robert is ignoring me.” She could accept her frustration without acting on it. Then, she could choose to act from her values of teamwork and collaboration by asking Robert how he likes to communicate.

The power of “strong opinions, weakly held”

Leaders who understand the ladder of inference know their conclusions might be wrong. Stanford professor Paul Saffo calls this having “strong opinions, weakly held,” which is the capacity to reach conclusions quickly but discard them when encountering conflicting evidence.³ To go a step further, leaders should actively look for data that challenges their stories.

This posture naturally leads to curiosity about opposing positions. Instead of restating your position louder or in different ways, you ask questions like: “We seem to be coming to different conclusions while looking at the same data. Can you help me understand how you came to your conclusion?” This communicates both curiosity and inclusion.

Additionally, no one wants to have a debate with someone unwilling to be swayed by new information. Think about disagreements you’ve had with others. Are you more willing to engage with someone steadfast and unshakable in their position, or someone curious about your perspective? How does it feel to discuss something with someone who listens to understand versus someone who listens only to respond?

The trick is to genuinely listen—not to trap them or prove them wrong, but to understand. Find things you agree on. Ask questions until you can paraphrase the other person’s ladder back to them accurately. Then—and this is key—be willing to change your own mind based on what you learn.

Supporting leadership fitness through emotional agility

This integration of the ladder of inference with emotional agility directly supports what we call Leadership Fitness . Specifically, it enhances flexibility (the capacity to leverage new strategies and behaviors in response to changing circumstances) and balance (the ability to manage tensions between opposing forces and ideas).

When leaders can unhook from their automatic emotional responses, they create space for the metacognition necessary to challenge their subconscious encoding processes. They can intentionally choose leadership behaviors that serve their goals and values rather than merely reacting from triggered states.

The bottom line

The ladder of inference isn’t magic; people will still disagree, and emotions will still arise. But when leaders combine this awareness with emotional agility practices, they can transform potentially destructive conflicts into productive dialogues. By recognizing that our emotions stem from the stories we tell ourselves and that these stories are built on potentially flawed assumptions, we gain the power to choose our responses more intentionally.

The capability to create space between stimulus and response, to unhook from our stories and emotions, and to act from our values represents a fundamental shift in leadership effectiveness. In our complex, rapidly changing environment, leaders who master this skill build stronger relationships, make better decisions, and create cultures where productive disagreement and learning can flourish.

The next time you feel emotionally triggered at work, pause and ask yourself: What story am I telling myself? What assumptions led me here? And most important: How can I respond in a way that aligns with my values and moves us forward? In that space between trigger and response lies your growth as a leader.

1. Covey, S., 2017. Prisoners of Our Thoughts. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Foreword; Also see: https://www.viktorfrankl.org/quote_stimulus.html ︎
2. Davis, S., and Congleton, C. 2013. Emotional agility. Harvard Business Review ︎
3. Saffo, P., 2007. Six rules for effective forecasting. Harvard Business Review ︎

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The Importance Of Being Curious

Dalia Molokhia

“Why do I feel cold and shiver when I have a fever?”

I knew the day would come when my little girl would learn to talk and inevitably start asking those much-anticipated questions. The questions themselves weren’t worrying me.  I was actually looking forward to seeing where her curiosity would lie.

What was bothering me was whether or not I would know the answers.

In the age of the smartphone, this may seem like a silly worry.  Surely, the answers to almost everything would be just one Google away.

Still, I struggled with how I was going to prepare to become an all-knowing mother. Then one day it struck me: I didn’t need to have all the answers. What a great example I could set if I let my daughter know that I, too, am still learning. And I realized how much more I could learn if I took another look at things I thought I already knew the answer to with the curiosity of a child. My little girl’s mind is a beginner’s mind – curious, open to new ideas, eager to learn, and not based on preconceived notions or prior knowledge. I decided that I would approach her questions with a beginner’s mind, too.

Once I decided to become more curious, I started noticing that curiosity was becoming more prominent in the workplace, too. Leaders, it seems, don’t need to have all the answers, either. But they do need to be curious.

Curious about curiosity, I searched for answers, and found frequent references to Albert Einstein’s famous words, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” We might well quibble with the notion that Einstein had no “special talent,” but he wouldn’t have solved the riddles of the universe if not for his passionate curiosity. Then I came across another Einstein quote: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”

Curiosity’s reason for existence in the workplace

Decades ago, management thinker Peter Drucker placed knowing the right questions to ask at the core of his philosophy on strategic thinking. Many of today’s leaders have adopted Drucker’s “be (intelligently) curious” philosophy, an approach that is becoming more salient as the world increases in complexity.

Warren Berger, in “Why Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite,” cited Dell CEO Michael Dell’s response to a PwC survey that asked leaders to name a trait that would most help CEOs succeed. Dell’s answer? “I would place my bet on curiosity.” Dell was not alone. Alan D. Wilson, then CEO of McCormick & Company, responded that those who “are always expanding their perspective and what they know – and have that natural curiosity – are the people that are going to be successful.”

Leaders don’t need to know everything. In fact, it’s an impossibility. Things change too rapidly for that. What worked yesterday can’t be guaranteed to work tomorrow. Disrupters are just around the corner. If you’re not one of them, you may well end up a disruptee. Today’s leaders need to be curious, and know how to ask the questions that lead them to consider new ideas.

How we can all develop curiosity

Becoming a mum has taught me how to handle my little girl’s curiosity. It strikes me that leaders in new roles also have to learn what to do and how to act in ways that are new and different. What I find works best is approaching your new role with a curiosity mindset, completely open to new ideas and suggestions. Here are some ways to develop your curiosity:

• Apply a beginner’s mind: Be open to and look for new and novel ways of doing things.
• Ask questions, listen and observe: Seek first to understand, not to explain.
• Try something new: Take a different route to work, read a book in a genre you usually avoid, go to an art gallery you wouldn’t normally go to. Each of these activities opens your mind to new points of view.
• Be inquisitive: Ask others their opinions, perspectives, and their approaches to certain things. Everyone does things a bit differently, and there are potential new answers and solutions to problems hidden in other people’s thinking.

These are a few of my ideas. I’d be interested in hearing yours. How do you stay curious?

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What Makes Storytelling So Effective For Learning?

Vanessa Boris

This is the second of two posts co-written by Vanessa and Lani Peterson, Psy.D., a psychologist, professional storyteller and executive coach.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that leaders have to influence, teach, and inspire. What makes storytelling so effective for learning? For starters, storytelling forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, and values that unite people. When it comes to our countries, our communities, and our families, we understand intuitively that the stories we hold in common are an important part of the ties that bind.

This understanding also holds true in the business world, where an organization’s stories, and the stories its leaders tell, help solidify relationships in a way that factual statements encapsulated in bullet points or numbers don’t.

Connecting learners

Good stories do more than create a sense of connection. They build familiarity and trust, and allow the listener to enter the story where they are, making them more open to learning. Good stories can contain multiple meanings so they’re surprisingly economical in conveying complex ideas in graspable ways. And stories are more engaging than a dry recitation of data points or a discussion of abstract ideas. Take the example of a company meeting.

At Company A, the leader presents the financial results for the quarter. At Company B, the leader tells a rich story about what went into the “win” that put the quarter over the top. Company A employees come away from the meeting knowing that they made their numbers. Company B employees learned about an effective strategy in which sales, marketing, and product development came together to secure a major deal. Employees now have new knowledge, new thinking, to draw on. They’ve been influenced. They’ve learned.

Something for everyone

Another storytelling aspect that makes it so effective is that it works for all types of learners. Paul Smith, in “Leader as Storyteller: 10 Reasons It Makes a Better Business Connection”, wrote:

In any group, roughly 40 percent will be predominantly visual learners who learn best from videos, diagrams, or illustrations. Another 40 percent will be auditory, learning best through lectures and discussions. The remaining 20 percent are kinesthetic learners, who learn best by doing, experiencing, or feeling. Storytelling has aspects that work for all three types. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.

Stories stick

Storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to remember. Organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found that learning which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer, than learning derived from facts and figures. Similarly, psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggest that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart, considers storytelling serious business for business. He has written:

Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, belief, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for exerting influence.

Stories about professional mistakes and what leaders learned from them are another great avenue for learning. Because people identify so closely with stories, imagining how they would have acted in similar circumstances, they’re able to work through situations in a way that’s risk free. The extra benefit for leaders: with a simple personal story they’ve conveyed underlying values, offered insight into the evolution of their own experience and knowledge, presented themselves as more approachable, AND most likely inspired others to want to know more.

Connection. Engagement. Appealing to all sorts of learners. Risk-free learning. Inspiring motivation. Conveying learning that sticks. It’s no wonder that more and more organizations are embracing storytelling as an effective way for their leaders to influence, inspire, and teach.

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The Ladder of Inference: Building Self-Awareness to Be A Better Human-Centered Leader

Craig Dickerson

May 8, 2025

“Contrary to popular belief, studies have shown that people do not always learn from experience, that expertise does not help people root out false information, and that seeing ourselves as highly experienced can keep us from doing our homework, seeking disconfirming evidence, and questioning our assumptions.”[i]

Boost Self-awareness with the Ladder of Inference

A study by Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning focused on the importance of human-centered leadership (HCL),[ii] but getting leaders to change behaviors or even see the need to change can be a challenge. Additionally, HCL is a complex topic with many facets, which begs the question: Where do I start? Helping leaders develop self-awareness might be a good place to consider.

Think of a time you were in the presence of a leader who lacked self-awareness—it shouldn’t be hard. Research indicates that only about 15% of people are sufficiently self-aware[i] and that there is less than a 30% correlation between people’s actual and self-perceived competence.[iii] That same research shows that a leader’s lack of self-awareness negatively impacts decision making, collaboration, and conflict management.

Self-awareness, a fundamental component of emotional intelligence, is a cornerstone of HCL, as it enables leaders to cultivate a deeper understanding of themselves and their impact on others. Leaders with strong self-awareness are attuned to their emotions, strengths, and areas for development, allowing them to make conscious decisions and navigate complex situations with clarity and integrity.

So, self-awareness is important, but how do you help leaders build it? A good first step is teaching them to use the Ladder of Inference, a model introduced by Harvard Professor Emeritus Chris Argyris.[iv]

The Ladder of Inference

The Ladder of Inference illustrates how people unconsciously climb a mental ladder of assumptions and beliefs based on their observations and experiences.

This process occurs rapidly and often subconsciously, leading individuals to filter information, make interpretations, and take action—all of which can be influenced by biases and past experiences. It represents what Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, would call a System 1 process.[v]

• System 1 is the fast, automatic processing that requires little energy.
• System 2 is the rational, conscious, effortful processing.

Kahneman explains how System 1 makes educated guesses to come to quick conclusions but shows no record of how it came to its conclusion. “System 1 does not keep track of alternatives that it rejects, or even the fact that there were alternatives.” The problem is that the guess it makes may be wrong (the conclusion as well) but you will believe it unless System 2 steps in to evaluate it. This often does not happen because System 2 is “lazy” or is often distracted. By using the ladder, we can employ System 2 to guide our conclusions and provide a framework to analyze them, with more faulty conclusions being identified and corrected.

Select data from available information

Imagine a ladder leaning against a wall, sitting in a puddle. The puddle in which the ladder sits is data or facts. The amount of data in any given situation is more than our brains can handle, so filters are applied. Two people looking at the same data will filter and retain different data, but no one will process all the data completely or in the same way. As you step on the first rung of the ladder, your brain selects and triages data, keeping some and ignoring others.

Add meanings to selected data

Up one step on the ladder, our brains push the data through the filters and lenses of our paradigms. These are biases, worldviews, and mindsets. Think of glasses with yellow lenses. When you first put them on, things look yellow; then your brain adjusts and everything looks normal until you take off the glasses, and then everything looks green. What you were looking at never changed, but how you perceived it did.

Interpret the data and make assumptions

On the next rung up the ladder, you interpret the data and begin to assign meaning to it. You make assumptions and fill in gaps. Have you ever been reading an email and realized that you were hearing the writer’s voice and tone in your head? The tone of voice you hear is likely your interpretation being added, and our interpretations are powerfully affected by context, experiences, and culture. This is also the step where you may start to assign valence to the situation: good or bad, threat or reward, benevolent or evil.

Draw conclusions from assumptions

As you get close to the top of the ladder, you draw a conclusion or an inference. From where you stand, your conclusion is clear, obvious, and important. Your inference feels like a fact, and you cannot imagine any other sane person coming to a different one. Because of this certainty, when we share our brilliant insight with others, we feel no need to explain how we arrived at it because the validity of our conclusion is so obvious to us but, sadly, not necessarily to anyone else.[vi]

Adopt beliefs based on assumptions

Adding complexity to the situation is the profound influence of our mental models—our ingrained values, assumptions, and beliefs about the functioning of the world—on the way each of us ascends our respective ladder of inference. To depict this concept visually, one could also liken these mental models to the sides of the ladder, providing structure and coherence to our reasoning process. For example, people who embrace the “think positively” mindset often infer that the world is largely benevolent. On the other hand, those who hold an “expect the worst” mentality are inclined to filter and judge occurrences in a way that reflects their negative outlook.[vi] Carol Dweck’s work points out how profound an impact mindset (fixed or growth) can have on behavior and outcomes.[vii]

This is how different people standing in the same puddle of data can wind up with their ladders against different walls, reaching vastly different conclusions.

Applying the Ladder of Inference to raise self-awareness

Self-awareness should increase the moment a person learns about the ladder. The fact that an opaque and mostly unconscious process is being brought to the consciousness is the first step (pun intended) in raising self-awareness. It is like breathing; if you pay no attention, it happens automatically. However, when you notice your breathing, you can control it. It moves from Kahneman’s System 1 to System 2,[v] from automatic to intentional.

The second step is to slow the process down and examine how we climbed the ladder—an act of self-reflection. What data did we choose? What data did we reject? What assumptions did we make? What biases may have influenced the process? Reflecting on the thought process and examining the assumptions we make can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our interaction with others. This is the beginning of self-awareness.

The Ladder of Inference is easy enough to teach and practice. Most people can recall a time when they jumped to a conclusion that later turned out to be wrong. Have them climb back down the ladder of that conclusion to analyze their reasoning. Also, have them reflect on the consequences of faulty conclusions.

Consistent awareness and evaluation of our ladders should lead to the insight that many of our conclusions that feel like facts are only strongly held opinions, although some learners may need help getting here. It can be uncomfortable to realize that many things you thought were solid facts are actually flimsy opinions, so your ego will put up some resistance.

Why is getting leaders to this realization important? Because, as pointed out earlier, most leaders overestimate their competency, so getting them to be less certain of their conclusions is beneficial. Certainty is the enemy of curiosity. Knowing is a barrier to learning. Why would I learn what I already know? Research shows that two outcomes of rising up the corporate levels of leadership are loss of empathy and an increase in hubris.[viii] The antidote is self-awareness and curiosity; the ladder supports both.

How the Ladder of Inference supports leadership fitness

In Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning’s study on HCL and a more recent paper, we propose that leadership fitness, like physical fitness, requires strength, balance, flexibility, and endurance.[ii] The ladder most directly supports the middle two.

We suggest that part of balance is the “ability to read situations more accurately by challenging subconscious encoding processes that lead us to ignore some cues in favor of others” that is, disrupting unconscious bias and default behavior patterns through metacognition, or thinking about your thinking. After consciously disrupting these thought processes, leaders display greater balance by intentionally choosing leadership behaviors. The ladder is a tool that helps leaders make implicit thought patterns explicit, allowing for analysis, choice, and correction in leadership style.

The ladder supports flexibility by interrupting habits. Does a person have the choice to act differently without noticing their default thinking? Maybe, but the chance seems slim. Imagine that you are driving home from work, tired and hungry. The traffic is really bad, and someone cuts you off. For most people, the response is automatic; the only option is what word is chosen to describe the other driver: jerk, idiot, moron.

However, those are conclusions. If that default process is interrupted and assumptions are evaluated using the ladder, you may realize that the person who cut you off may not be evil or lacking in intelligence and that there are many possible alternate conclusions. You might also realize that you yourself have accidentally cut people off before, and you are not evil or stupid, right? Now that you have access to different possibilities of how to react, you can choose to send positive thoughts toward that person, hoping they get where they are going safely. Before the ladder, you only had options; after the ladder, you have new possibilities of how to act. That is flexibility.

The bottom line

The Ladder of Inference is a simple but powerful tool for self-awareness that can be used in many situations to increase leadership balance and flexibility, supporting human-centered leadership. But this is not the limit of the application of the ladder in leadership. In the next post in this series, we will look at how the ladder can be used to support better decision making, manage productive conflict, and create space for building trust and collaboration.

For more on how the Ladder of Influence supports the four dimension of Leadership Fitness, download our paper “Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capacity to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity.”

Perspectives

Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capacity to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity

Download

[i] Tasha Eurich (2018), What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It), Harvard Business Review.

[ii] Harvard Business School Publishing (2024), Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capability to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity, Harvard Business School Publishing.

[iii] Erich C. Dierdorff and Robert S. Rubin (2015), Research: We’re Not Very Self-Aware, Especially at Work. Harvard Business Review.

[iv] Chris Argyris (1982), The Executive Mind and Double-Loop Learning, Organizational Dynamics.

[v] Daniel Kahneman (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Macmillan.

[vi] William R. Noonan (2011), Discussing the Undiscussable: Overcoming Defensive Routines in the Workplace, Rotman Management Magazine.

[vii] Carol Dweck (2016), What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means, Harvard Business Review.

[viii] Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro (2021), Don’t Let Power Corrupt You: How to Exercise Influence Without Losing Your Moral Compass, Harvard Business Review.

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How to Help Gen Z Early-Career Professionals Navigate Their Careers

John Hall

May 8, 2025

Who Are the Early-Career Professionals?

Early career typically refers to the initial stage of a person’s professional journey after completing their education or training. It is this phase when individuals are in the early stages of building their work experience and establishing themselves in their chosen fields. While there is not a universally defined time frame, early career generally encompasses the first few years of professional work.

Understanding Generation Z Is A Leadership Imperative

Born between 1997 and 2012, the generational cohort with the highest percentage of early-career professionals is Generation Z. According to public relations and communications firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Generation Z is the largest generation in the world, and by 2025, they will make up 27% of the global workforce.

Leaders cannot afford to be reactive; rather, they must take a proactive approach to attract and retain talent coming from this generational cohort. Nowadays, it will take more than a competitive compensation package to retain Gen Z workers; this cohort is also looking for an emotional paycheck. In the article “WTF is an emotional paycheck?” author Hailey Mensik states, “Traditional salary packages are no longer enough to retain talented professionals today. Instead, there’s a growing insistence on emotional fulfillment—a currency long overlooked in the employer-employee exchange.”¹

Simply put, the global workforce is changing, and so are the expectations of early-career professionals. Leaders will need a new set of skills to effectively influence and impact this up-and-coming cohort. To begin to understand Generation Z, it is important to first understand some of the challenges that they have faced.

Challenges Faced by Generation Z

Many Gen Z workers started their careers during the tumultuous times of the Covid-19 pandemic. While previous generational cohorts had the benefit of beginning their careers with in-person support, collaboration among team members, and overall consistent onboarding processes, the Gen Z worker onboarding experience was starkly different.

As new entrants in the workforce, Generation Z workers were forced to work remotely, and they experienced pandemic-induced roadblocks to collaboration and new onboarding processes that were being created on the fly. To make matters worse, many of these workers experienced being furloughed or fired before they could establish themselves during the infancy of their careers. As a result, Gen Z workers formed a distrust of the establishment and had legitimate concerns about job security and career advancement.

What Practical Steps Can Leaders Take to Support Early-Career Professionals?

1. Prioritize helping Gen Z workers succeed and find fulfilment at work

As mentioned previously, compensation alone is not enough to attract or retain talent. Today’s leaders must be cognizant that company culture will either make or break the relationship between their organization and its Gen Z talent. Leaders can start by demonstrating an authentic desire to help Gen Z early-career professionals flourish and find a sense of satisfaction and happiness while at work. This requires taking a human-centered approach.

2. Proactively ask Early-Career Professionals how to best support them

Leaders would benefit by taking a proactive approach to asking how to best support Gen Z early-career professionals. Gen Z is very pragmatic and will seek concrete examples, directions, and advice to help them navigate their career journey. Unfortunately, sage advice is not always readily available. Given the manner in which these early-career professionals were onboarded during the pandemic, it has been difficult to build developmental networks.

As Harvard Professor Linda Hill stated in her seminal article “The Three Networks You Need,” “Your developmental network is the collection of individuals whom you trust and to whom you can turn for a sympathetic ear, advice (depending on their experience), and a place to discuss and explore professional options.”² Assuming that these types of networks would form organically would be a mistake. Leaders can help connect Gen Z workers to more-experienced colleagues who can help provide guidance in addition to the support the leaders provide themselves.

Take the guesswork out of how to support Gen Z workers by simply asking them how to best support them as their leader.

3. Ask them “What does success look like?”

Successful projects are predicated on taking time out to define what success looks like and identifying the indicators of that success; planning a career is no different. Ask Gen Z early-career professionals to describe their ideal state as it relates to the first years of their career. This thought-provoking question can act as a catalyst for a deep conversation about their aspirations, thoughts, and ideas as they relate to their career. The benefit of describing an ideal state is that leaders can help early-career professionals begin identifying the gaps between the current state and the desired state and help them map out the required steps to get there.

Having a conversation about a Gen Z early-career professional’s definition of success will help leaders provide perspective that will help those professionals correct course if their current path is not aligned with their desired future state. Without taking these steps, success will feel nebulous and measuring progress will be difficult.

4. Help Gen Z Professionals take responsibility for their personal and professional growth

While leaders can encourage, build accountability, and monitor progress, it is the Gen Z early-career professional’s job to own their experience which is all about taking responsibility for their personal and professional growth and development. Gen Z workers must be able to see that they are firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to managing their career. It implies taking responsibility for their actions, decisions, and outcomes. Real career growth happens when Gen Z early-career professionals can learn from their experiences, whether positive or negative, and recognize and take ownership of mistakes.

Leaders who will be successful in helping Gen Z early-career professionals navigate their careers will make a meaningful and positive impact. Helping Gen Z early career professionals pays dividends to the employee and the organization alike. There is a growing need for organizations to take a human-centered approach.

Helping each employee succeed and find fulfillment at work does not happen by chance; it takes intentionality.

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To learn how to develop human-centered leaders who drive employee fulfillment, download our report “Fulfillment at Work Requires Real Human-Centered Leadership.”

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Fulfillment at Work Requires Real Human-Centered Leadership

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1. Hailey Mensik, “WTF is an emotional paycheck?” worklife.news, April 2024.
   ︎
2. https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-three-networks-you-need”>Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, “The Three Networks You Need,” HBR.org, March 2011. ︎

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The State of Decision Making in Leadership Development

Smart decisions are critical to business success, yet very few feel their organizations and peers excel at decision making. Some organizations have taken comprehensive steps to improve decision quality in their leadership development initiatives—but why aren’t most treating decision making the way they do other competencies?

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Leading with Empathy: How Understanding Your Ladder of Inference Strengthens Your Leadership

Craig Dickerson

April 17, 2025

Introduction

This is the second in our series exploring how the Ladder of Inference can transform leadership effectiveness. In our first post, we introduced this powerful mental model, which explains how we unconsciously leap from raw data to firm conclusions. Now we’ll expand this framework by adding crucial rungs to the ladder—showing how conclusions harden into beliefs and ultimately drive our actions. By understanding this complete cycle, leaders can develop the self-awareness needed to interrupt automatic thinking patterns, fostering greater empathy and more effective decision making in their organizations.

Revisiting the Ladder of Inference

As a quick summary of the last post, The Ladder of Inference describes the automatic thinking process that humans use, generally unconsciously, to get from facts to a conclusion or action. The model is simple but powerful. Once leaders understand it, they can apply it to reduce bias in decision making, communicate tough decisions, negotiate, resolve conflict, and increase collaboration—and the list goes on.

There is just one problem: We exist in a world overflowing with data. Our brains filter out some data and focus on other data. We then process the selected data by pushing it through our biases, experiences, worldviews, and mindsets to make sense of the situation and apply value judgments. This process fills in any gaps with assumptions and guesses (not much different from generative AI hallucinations), and we make conclusions about what is happening and what it means. It is important to note that this process is constant, automatic, and largely unconscious, unless we make an intentional effort to make it conscious through analysis or reflection.

By continuously reflecting on their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, self-aware leaders gain insight into how their actions influence team dynamics and organizational culture. This heightened self-awareness not only fosters personal growth and resilience but also facilitates authentic connections with team members, creating an environment where trust and collaboration thrive. Self-awareness empowers leaders to lead with authenticity and empathy, embodying the principles of human-centered leadership and inspiring others to do the same.

Expanding the Ladder: How Beliefs Become Actions

One of the consequences of this process is that conclusions feel like facts when they are mostly opinions. To illustrate, let’s examine a hypothetical situation. Javier, a marketing director, and Alex, a product development lead, both work for a large global company. They are scheduled to meet to discuss a cross-functional project and Javier is running late. If Alex thinks, “Javier is five minutes late for our meeting,” that is an observable fact. However, if he thinks, “Javier is rude and disrespectful,” that is a conclusion that contains opinions, judgments, and assumptions. This distinction is important because, as mentioned in the first post, Daniel Kahneman’s research points out that if a conclusion is not challenged or analyzed, it will become a belief.² In Alex’s mind, “Javier is rude” is now a fact. Poor Javier. That is the next rung on the ladder: I believe Javier is rude.

The final rung on our extended ladder is the action you take based on the belief that you have formed. This can be a belief about a situation, a person, or a group of people. Back to our scenario:

• If Alex is thinking, “Javier is rude,” what emotions might that conclusion generate in Alex while he waits for Javier?
• How might Alex act toward Javier when he finally arrives?
• Should we expect Alex to be in a productive mindset for the meeting if Javier eventually arrives?

Let’s press pause on this unfolding scene to look at the judgment “being late is rude.” We know from research done by Erin Meyer that opinions on punctuality are highly cultural. Scheduling (linear time versus flexible time) is one of the dimensions that she uses to describe different cultures.⁴ Simply put, some cultures value punctuality and others don’t; being late is not considered rude in many cultures. As an example: The U.S. scores high on linear time, and Mexico and South American countries would typically score high on flexible time.

In our scenario, if Javier comes from a flexible time culture while Alex operates with a linear time mindset, their differing perspectives create an invisible barrier. The conclusion “being late is rude” would never occur to Javier, but Alex believes that “everyone knows it is rude to be late.” Neither one is right or wrong; they simply have different perspectives, biases, and assumptions.

So, Javier shows up 10 minutes late, excited to meet with Alex to discuss some important business challenge, but is shocked when Alex is in a foul mood and does not seem equally excited to collaborate. Alex’s belief that Javier is rude is confirmed when Javier shows up late and jumps straight into the agenda, acting like nothing is wrong. Javier didn’t even acknowledge being late or offer an apology! How rude (more confirmation for Alex). Javier starts to get the feeling that Alex is not very friendly or cooperative, and so might even be a little rude. Each party thinks the other is rude.

Stop and think about a time when you might have been in a similar situation. How did your assumptions lead to a different conclusion than those of others around you?

From where each person stands, on top of their ladder, their conclusion is clear, obvious, and important. Their inference feels like a fact, and they cannot imagine a sane person coming to a different one.

There is one last detail to the model: It is a loop. The conclusion that a person reaches will impact the data they select and the belief they apply in the next interaction. If Alex thinks, “Javier is rude,” he will tend to notice data that supports that belief and discard data that discredits it. This is commonly called confirmation bias. Unless the loop is interrupted, every interaction strengthens the conclusion, to the point that Alex’s conclusion that “Javier is rude” is stronger than Javier’s actual behavior and becomes the “story” Alex thinks when he thinks about Javier. This is incredibly powerful, and it happens in every human interaction and relationship. Consider the impact to their collaboration. What might this mean for the outcomes of their project?

To recap Alex’s ladder of inference loop:

1. Javier is late — data
2. Late is rude — assumption
3. Javier was rude — conclusion
4. Javier is a rude person — story

The way to break this loop is for one of them to stop and reflect on his ladder. Brené Brown has often said in her podcasts that when she is having negative feelings about another person, she asks herself, “What story am I telling myself about them that is making me feel this way?” She notices the emotion, then looks for the story causing the emotion. In Rising Strong, she discusses the concept of “the story I’m telling myself” as a tool for recognizing when we’re creating narratives based on limited information.⁵ Once you see the story, you can climb back down your ladder and get curious about the other person’s ladder.

Applying the Ladder of Inference to Access Empathy and Compassion

From Alex and Javier, we can see how two people with the bases of their ladders in the same pool of data can wind up with conflicting beliefs that could lead to a downward spiral in their relationship. How can this vicious cycle be broken? One or both of them must climb down their ladder. If one of them realizes that their story about the other is not a fact but an opinion and that there are many other probable stories, that creates room for curiosity. In other words, if one of them can suspend their judgment of the other long enough to look for data that challenges their story or if they reflect on the meaning that they are applying to the data, they may be able to adjust their story from negative to neutral or even positive.

Looking at our scenario, Javier was impacted by the way Alex acted, which was a result of Alex’s story. If Alex suspended his judgment of Javier’s tardiness or thought about the possibility that his inference was incorrect, he might think, “Javier may be having a bad day” or “Javier might be dealing with a crisis” as options alongside “Javier is rude.” This could lead to a quite different outcome in their meeting.

Curiosity leads to empathy, which creates space for compassion. The ladder of inference is the brain’s way of making split-second judgments, which tend to be singular in nature. These judgments can help us stay alive, but they can also lead us astray when we don’t consciously interrogate them or learn to suspend them.

Just as knowing is the enemy of learning, judgment is the enemy of empathy. Judgment says, “I am right” (because if I were wrong, I would have already changed my mind); empathy asks, “What am I missing?” or “What do I not understand about the other?” Judgment closes off new possibilities; empathy and curiosity open up greater possibilities.

One last thought on compassion. What if Alex, in response to Javier’s tardiness, noticed his judgment and said to himself, “I don’t know what Javier is dealing with. I will forgive his being late and not worry about it.” How might that change the meeting’s outcome? This simple shift—from judgment to compassion—represents the fundamental mindset change that separates reactive managers from thoughtful leaders.

How the Ladder of Inference Supports Leadership Fitness

This ability to recognize and challenge our automatic thought patterns forms the cornerstone of what we call “Leadership Fitness.” In a recent post, we proposed that the first step in developing Leadership Fitness is to challenge one’s thinking: “Leaders need to be able to step back and look objectively at their underlying assumptions, biases, triggers and thought patterns so they can test which ones are helping them and which ones are holding them back.” The dynamic environment that we are in demands that leaders constantly assess their thinking, understanding that patterns and solutions of the past may no longer be effective or relevant.

As this post illustrates, the Ladder of Inference provides a framework for helping leaders assess their thinking about situations, relationships, and people. Assumptions and biases, particularly confirmation bias, play a fundamental role in the development of our stories. Our stories become the thought patterns that limit curiosity, empathy, and possibility.

Our stories also form the triggers that cause us to react emotionally. The next blog post will take a closer look at this dynamic. We will explore how to understand the root of our triggers so that we can disarm them, taking greater control over our emotions.

1. Eurich, T., 2018. What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it). Harvard business review, 4. ︎
2. Kahneman, D., 2011. Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. ︎
3. Adapted from: Howie, P., 2006. Working with the ladder of inference. Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Psychodrama Association Journal, (15), pp. 68 – 75. ︎
4. Meyer, E., 2014. Map out cultural conflicts on your team. Harvard business review. ︎
5. Brown, B. 2015. Rising strong. New York: Spiegel & Grau. ︎

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Empathetic Leadership: How to Go Beyond Lip Service

Michelle Bonterre

November 30, 2023

Empathy is a crucial element in modern workplace settings, as it contributes to building a trusting work environment and supporting employee mental health. Despite its importance, research indicates that many leaders struggle to consistently display empathy towards their teams, highlighting a need for improvement and development opportunities. In this article, we delve into the nuances of empathy in the workplace and explore how leaders can enhance their empathy skills to become effective and supportive leaders. While empathy is essential, it is not enough for successful leadership. Leaders must also take action to address employees’ concerns and complaints effectively.

The role of empathy in workplace settings

Workplaces are building their leadership practices to include the display of more empathy, as society becomes more attuned to the importance of mental health. Research also supports the importance of workplace empathy, citing it as one of three elements of the “emotional framework” leaders must build with their teams to create a trusting work environment.¹

What, exactly, is empathy? Many people use the word interchangeably with “sympathy,” but social science parses out these words into similar, yet distinctly different attributes that leaders can draw upon to interact with employees. In a recent HBR article, the authors describe empathy as part of a continuum of human-centered traits that range from pity (“I feel sorry for you”) to compassion (“I see your pain and am here to help.”) Empathy essentially says, “I feel with you.²

How important is empathy to organizational success? Very. Harvard Business Publishing conducted research that analyzed factors that contributed to “top performing” organizations and found that the top 7% of these companies were decidedly more likely to say empathy is emphasized in their organizational culture.³

What employees want in an empathetic leader

As researchers, we became curious about the nuances of empathy in the workplace. How does this important trait play out in organizations, and are there opportunities for improvement? When collecting data we defined empathy as, “the ability to understand and share the feeling of another.” We discovered that although there’s agreement that empathy is important, direct supervisors still have gains to make in consistently displaying this key relationship-building trait. For example, 78% of senior leaders recognize that it’s important to display empathy, but only 47% believe their companies are doing so.

Other research indicates a troubling gap: 55% of leaders overestimate how empathetic and compassionate they are,⁴ which may point to a gap in understanding what it means to demonstrate empathy in the workplace. This gap presents an excellent leadership development opportunity. Those companies that clearly articulate what it means to lead with this human-centered skill—and model and mentor it—stand the best chance of making it to the elite level of performance we found in our research.

When to use empathy at work

Empathy requires us to sit with someone who’s in some sort of pain—and that’s uncomfortable, especially in business settings.

There are times when walking alongside someone who is suffering is the only thing required—offering empathy to someone who is grieving a loss, for example. These losses might be the death of a loved one, or a job loss. Leaders who show empathy by demonstrating that they can imagine the pain that the other person is experiencing helps the person feel less alone. A leader might say, “I can see how painful this is for you,” or, “I can only imagine what this must be like for you” to show that they care.

Conversely, there are things not to say. It’s best to avoid saying, “I know how you feel” because while well-intentioned, it tends to shut down the conversation. Also avoid, “I’ve been there and let me tell you a story about that . . .” This is not the time to share a similar painful experience. That may prove useful later, but the initial conversation needs to stay focused on the individual the leader is speaking with.

When talking about business-related pain, say, budget-cutting or department restructuring, that’s where leaders need to start with empathy and then eventually move to some form of action—and this is where empathy morphs into demonstrating compassion, a related, but distinctly different skill.

Why empathy alone isn’t enough for effective workplace leadership

We suspect that one of the reasons for the gap highlighted in our research related to managers showing empathy is that there is a perception of “lip service”—that a leader may say, “I hear you, that’s a really difficult thing you’re doing” but take limited (or no) action to help the employee resolve their challenge. In this instance, empathy feels insincere and may leave the employee feeling like speaking up was a waste of time.

This is especially true when the challenges raised are systemic in nature or policy issues over which employees have no agency to impact. Consider this example from the pandemic: when a large financial services company sent some people to work from home and furloughed others, one department began working overtime: the IT group. Scrambling to add capacity for virtual meetings as well as source tech for the home offices that bloomed overnight, frontline workers in the tech group scrambled to keep up.

After several weeks struggling valiantly, they enlisted their direct supervisors’ help to send a message to middle leadership: we are drowning and need help. Leadership’s response was, “You are working hard, it’s been really tough, and we are so grateful for your hard work.” The action taken? The company bought everyone on the IT team a book on time management. There was a smidgen of empathy, but the action taken was tone deaf and not at all helpful. What was needed in this case was some sort of response that demonstrated not only was leadership listening, but they were willing to make changes to schedules or bring on additional contract workers to lighten the load of the IT workers.

Marrying empathy and compassion for optimal leadership impact

In the realm of building employee relationships, empathy is the starting point for making a human-to-human connection, but it often falls short in workplace settings due to the need to accomplish business goals even though employees are struggling. That’s why empathy alone isn’t enough for effective workplace leadership. Leaders must consider: what are they willing to do regarding the person’s pain, concerns, or complaints?

Harvard Business School professor Arthur C. Brooks writes that, “for empathy to become a full-fledged virtue requires adding a few complementary behaviors that convert it into compassion. A comprehensive study of compassion in the Clinical Psychology Review defines it as recognizing suffering, understanding it, and feeling empathy for the sufferer—but also tolerating the uncomfortable feelings they and the suffering person are experiencing, and, crucially, acting to alleviate the suffering.⁵

It is leaders’ ability to perceive those difficult feelings, sit with them, and then discern what actions are needed that is so vital to their success as a people manager. Yet evidence shows that leaders all along the experience spectrum can become blind to others’ suffering.

Let’s take for example, inexperienced leaders. Authors Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro observe that new leaders feel they have a lot to prove, so they often focus “inward” and use “I” statements to get things done, rather than using pronouns such as “we” and “ours” to enlist the contributions of others. This results in them not always seeing others’ needs.⁶ But it’s not just new leaders who may not read the room properly when it comes to identifying others’ emotions. Research also reveals that those with a higher social status or perceived power typically are less observant of others’ emotional distress.⁷ This lack of empathy—albeit for different reasons—highlights yet another reason organizations should pay attention to role-modeling this important set of traits.

Empathy plays a crucial role in building successful and supportive workplace environments. Leaders who consistently display empathy towards their teams create a trusting work environment and support employee mental health. And while empathy is a critical trait for effective leadership, it is not enough. Leaders must take action to address employees’ concerns and complaints effectively. To become empathetic leaders, it is essential to sit with someone who’s in pain, offer empathy and show that they care. However, empathy can feel insincere if leaders fail to take action to help employees resolve their challenges, leaving employees feeling unsupported and unheard. Therefore, leaders must understand the nuances of empathy in the workplace and consistently demonstrate it to build a culture of trust, support, and success.

Learn more

Our recent research delves into a multiphase study that identified and vetted essential leadership skills and superpowers, including empathy, required for navigating today’s disruptive workplace. Intended to increase awareness and guide decision-making, this report emphasizes the critical need for inspiring leadership that drives business outcomes and cultivates a future-ready workforce.

Download our report “Leadership Reframed for the Workplace of the Future” for insights that help leaders succeed in a changing world.

1. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, “Trust: The Foundation of Leadership,” Leader to Leader, Winter 2021. ︎
2. Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, and Marissa Afton, “Connect with Empathy, But Lead with Compassion,” HBR.org, December 23, 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/12/connect-with-empathy-but-lead-with-compassion. ︎
3. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, “Leadership Reframed for the Workplace of the Future: 10 Capabilities and 7 Superpowers,” 2022. ︎
4. Harrington, Sian, “Leaders need to move out of the ‘empathetic hijack’ and into compassion,” The People Space, April 20, 2022. https://www.thepeoplespace.com/ideas/articles/leaders-need-move-out-empathetic-hijack-and-compassion. ︎
5. Brooks, Arthur C., “What’s Missing From Empathy,” September 8, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/09/developing-empathy-into-compassion/671368/ ︎
6. Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, “Don’t Let Power Corrupt You,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/09/dont-let-power-corrupt-you/ ︎
7. Gerben A van Kleef , Christopher Oveis, Ilmo van der Löwe, Aleksandr LuoKogan, Jennifer Goetz, Dacher Keltner, “Power, distress, and compassion: turning a blind eye to the suffering of others,” Psychol Sci, December 19, 2008. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19121143/. ︎

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Designing Hybrid Work

Conor Sheehan

November 23, 2023

By forcing knowledge work organizations into fully remote collaboration overnight, COVID-19 changed work forever. As the world was grappling with the shock and devastation of a pandemic, flexible work arrangements revealed numerous benefits for employers and employees alike. Data from around the globe indicate improvements in work-life balance, productivity, and business outcomes—truly a win-win. [i]

It’s not surprising that many workers don’t want to go back to the office full-time. A recent Forbes study found that 65% of workers want to work remotely full-time, and a staggering 98% of workers want to work remotely at least part of the time. [ii] Alongside these trends, as pandemic-related health concerns fade, many organizations are trying to reclaim some of the benefits of in-person work. Enter the hybrid work schedule. Hybrid work is aimed at seizing the best of both worlds – remote collaboration and in-office time – yet there is little consensus about what works best. Indeed, the optimal solutions will vary by organization, by team, and by the individual humans involved.

Complicated problem spaces like this, with human needs at the core, necessitate a human-centered approach to resolve.

One size doesn’t fit all.

“True, sustainable flexibility is about more than just work location and hours. It encompasses which tasks people do and how they get them done. It’s about making work ‘fit’ people, not the other way around. When organizations center the design of work on humans, values, and long-term success in this way, they become productive, resilient, inclusive, and equitable.” [i]

—Ludmila Praslova, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Vanguard University of Southern California

Overly rigid, blanket hybrid work policies are unlikely to be successful, because different hybrid workers have different needs. Organizations should embrace a more flexible approach that is adaptable to individuals, encompassing not only work location and hours, but also the allocation of specific tasks to align with people’s strengths. [i] There is no one-size-fits-all solution, thus individual managers should be empowered to do what’s right for each member of their team. [ii]

A model that gives managers discretion to tailor hybrid work arrangements to individuals is a radical departure from traditional top-down corporate policy mandates. This could be a difficult pill for many organizations to swallow, but the pandemic forced everybody to question long-standing beliefs and assumptions about where, when, and how we work. [iv] There is a dramatic transformation underway, and leaders must confront the challenges head on and think differently about the solutions.

It’s a design challenge.

Organizations that embrace flexible hybrid work policies are wisely placing employee needs at the center of their approach, but this is an unprecedented shift, and there is limited data to guide leaders as they navigate it. [iv] How can leaders make the right decisions with all the uncertainty?

Over the last few decades, businesses of all shapes and sizes have adopted approaches to innovation that attempt to understand users, frame product and service concepts around their needs, and rapidly iterate and refine solutions. Often broadly referred to as design thinking [v], these practices have helped organizations across industries navigate the unique complexities of their markets to deliver meaningful value to their customers. Just as it creates value in the design of products and services, design thinking can also be applied to craft hybrid work experiences that lead to positive outcomes for employees and businesses alike. To these ends, hybrid team leaders can follow a process modeled after classic design thinking phases and concepts: begin by building empathy then ideate and iterate, and finally implement and refine.

1. BUILD EMPATHY

Empathy for users is the foundation of design thinking. To build empathy, project teams (consisting of Designers, User Researchers, and often their cross-functional partners) begin by immersing in user environments and studying their unique behaviors. This process uncovers user problems, needs, and opportunities that were often not apparent before.

In a similar way, hybrid team leaders must build empathy for their team members. While immersion in an employee environment may not be feasible or appropriate, the rise of video conferencing has broken down traditional barriers between professional and personal lives by providing glimpses into people’s homes, with family members and pets often making cameos. This shift has brought empathetic leadership to the forefront. Leaders should get to know their employees personally to gain an understanding of their “circumstances for flourishing”. [iii] They should ask questions, listen, communicate their genuine concern, and follow up regularly. This might have been perceived as intrusive in the past, but in the post-pandemic world it’s likely to be welcomed—and it’s essential to building the empathy that will allow leaders to design hybrid work that fits people.

2. IDEATE AND ITERATE

After building empathy, design thinking emphasizes ideation and iteration. Designers develop different concepts aimed at addressing the key user needs uncovered previously, rapidly prototype them, solicit feedback, and iterate. Often this process involves assessing concepts along the dimensions of user desirability, technical feasibility, and business potential. [v]

In hybrid work design, leaders should seek flexibility alignment (when, where, and how work is performed) and strengths-based alignment (catering to people’s unique capabilities) as they develop policy ideas. [i] In addition to individual employee needs, leaders should also be cognizant of relationships and team dynamics, taking care to design a holistic system that is fair and balanced, and ultimately facilitates innovation. [v] From here, ongoing employee feedback will be crucial. [iii] Discuss the solutions with employees, make adjustments, and run a trial period with clearly defined timelines and goals, and repeat.

3. IMPLEMENT AND REFINE

In this last design thinking phase, Designers and project teams transition their focus to implementation and go-to-market activities. [v] They also develop plans to obtain user feedback and measure results on an ongoing basis, which will – in the software world – inform a roadmap of incremental improvements over time.

Similarly, once the hybrid team leader has tested work arrangements with employees, solicited feedback, and made the necessary adjustments, they can settle into a steadier state—while making sure to keep the dialog open, identify any issues as they arise, and make any tweaks needed. Leaders should track the timing of policy changes vis-à-vis measures of productivity, innovation, and overall business results. Ideally, this will reveal positive correlations. If not, it may be time to adjust, but that’s to be expected—this is uncharted territory, and human needs evolve over time.

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE

To illustrate these concepts, imagine the following fictional scenario with Maria (the manager) and Emily (the employee).

Emily is caring for a sick parent at home. She needs flexibility, but full remote work is not the best option because she lost access to her home office when the parent moved in. Given her caregiving responsibilities, office time during normal work hours would be prohibitive. Together, Maria and Emily identify a workable solution: mid-day hours in the office a few times per week and shifting some hours to the weekends when Emily’s spouse is available to provide care. Maria finds “flexibility alignment” in accommodating these place and schedule needs.

Maria also explores “strengths-based alignment” opportunities. Emily is detail-oriented and a good writer. The business has a need for more product documentation, which most of the team avoids. It plays to Emily’s strengths, though, and her weekend hours would give her plenty of uninterrupted writing time. The team could then review her work during the week.

Maria and Emily agree to try arrangements that meet these needs for one month. After this trial period, Emily feels less stressed, and colleagues and clients are pleased with improved documentation. They standardize the work arrangements henceforth, understanding that needs could evolve as the parent’s health situation changes.

This scenario depicts how hybrid work designed to fit people can produce benefits for all. Though contrived for the example, it’s not uncommon for managers to discover complementary needs across their teams. [i] The solutions in this case (more time in the office—not less, shifting some time to the weekend, and new task assignments), weren’t necessarily obvious, but they were discovered by building empathy and through a willingness to entertain and try out new ideas.

In it for the long haul.

Hybrid work represents a dramatic shift, and it will require significant ongoing commitment and focus to get it right. [iv] Design thinking provides leaders with a process framework to inspire and guide them on the journey. As a bonus, embracing it builds muscles that can help them rise to the leadership challenges they are facing, hybrid work-related and otherwise. As leaders practice design thinking, “creative confidence” – the courage to try out novel ideas – emerges, and a mindset for iteration grows. [vi] These will be critical leadership traits in the post-pandemic world.

Learn more

For more guidance on managing hybrid teams, download our report “Bridging the Distance: Four Imperatives for Leaders of Hybrid Teams“.

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Bridging the Distance: Four Imperatives for Leaders of Hybrid Teams

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[i] Praslova, Ludmila N., “The Radical Promise of Truly Flexible Work,” Harvard Business Review, August 15, 2023. https://hbr.org/2023/08/the-radical-promise-of-truly-flexible-work

[ii] Haan, Kathy. “Remote Work Statistics and Trends,” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/remote-work-statistics

[iii] Bingham, Sue, “To Make Hybrid Work, Solicit Employees’ Input,” Harvard Business Review, July 29, 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/07/to-make-hybrid-work-solicit-employees-input

[iv] Gratton, Linda, “Redesigning How We Work,” Harvard Business Review, March 1, 2023. https://hbr.org/2023/03/redesigning-how-we-work

[v] Brown, Tim, “Design Thinking,” Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2008. https://hbr.org/2008/06/design-thinking

[vi] Kelley, Tom and Kelley, David, “Reclaim Your Creative Confidence,” Harvard Business Review, December 1, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/12/reclaim-your-creative-confidence

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