The truth dies in shame - it flourishes in a culture of empathy

Born and raised in Germany, I am very familiar with the feelings of shame and guilt. And I am familiar with the effects of how shame and guilt can control people. Looking back into my childhood, many of my first strong memories were around the emotion of shame.

Shame is the feeling of being unworthy of love and connection. And humans are wired to long for love and connection. So, they will do a lot in order to get it.

Yes, there are some leaders who deliberately abuse shame and guilt to make people do what the leaders want. There are plenty of systems in place that allow for such shenanigans.

But I strongly believe that in most cases, environments of shame and guilt occur almost by accident, because all of us carry some guilt and shame, and because leaders are force multipliers: they amplify and project whatever they hold onto their team.

And in an environment of shame, the truth dies, because people are scared of speaking it.

I know this feeling very well.

In 10th grade, my philosophy teacher told us how much better students were in his day, because his teachers were still able to force their students to learn long, archaic poetry. These days this wasn’t possible anymore: parents would come and force him out of his job. Whether true or not, he was bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t pass on this experience, because the only way he knew to get students to do something difficult was by force — by threatening a grade that would clearly say: “You’re not good enough for this. Unless you do what I tell you.”

The fun fact: I knew a different way. The poem he had to learn as a young student (Die Bürgschaft by Friedrich Schiller), I knew by heart! Because I loved it. It is about adventure, friendship and trust. I sat in the classroom, baffled, not knowing what to do. I kept the truth to myself, because I felt too ashamed of making a mistake and being ridiculed — and because I didn’t want to put more shame on the teacher by proving him wrong.

I got close to sharing my truth: I had some empathy for the teacher, but not for myself.

Personally, I tried to work on it with logic. Yes, I love mathematics and science. And as a child, I especially loved how universally accepted their truth is. When I say that 2*4000 is 8000, I don’t have to brace for an emotional reaction. It just is. It’s a bunch of stories that have been cleared up and taught with such rigor that it is impossible (or very difficult) to disprove.

A beautiful idea, but turns out it doesn’t save anyone:

In academic research, we can discuss truth and advance this story. It can be a joyous way of creation.

But outside of academia, such as in businesses, I noticed that data and hard facts alone don’t necessarily influence decisions - especially in a culture in which people fear failure, or take it personally when something they advocated for, doesn’t work. (They might feel ashamed, wink, wink).

It became very clear to me, when I created a metric for a feature that my company spent a lot of resources on. The metric showed that everyone overestimated the popularity of this feature. But just sharing the results with everyone, did not create an immediate strategic adjustment, or the questioning of hypotheses. It required a lot of empathy for the previous work and the people involved, to actually unlock change.

It was experiences like those that inspired me to learn as much as I could, about successful leadership that can navigate big changes. And the message is clear:

Successful leaders have empathy! For themselves and for their teams. And successful leaders help and expect everyone on their team to be a leader themselves.

This is hard work, and it begins in ourselves. It’s one reason I write a newsletter every week that includes some vulnerable stories about myself: I prove to myself that I survive anyway. Every time I do it, some of my shame dies. Thanks for being out there.

Reflection of the day

• What shame do you want to overcome? And what does it need? Empathy for yourself or for others?

With care,

Martin