The Idea in Brief
Imagine yourself in this nightmare: You’re about to lay off a large group of people—not because they’re incompetent, but because your business may perish if you don’t. But now the nightmare deepens: You’re going to face these angry, sad folks by yourself, rather than foist “the dirty work” on their department heads.
Why would you throw yourself into this emotional crossfire?
Because soft management enables you to build credibility with the people your company needs most to succeed. Soft management hinges on candor, sensitivity, and the willingness to suffer painful consequences of unpopular decisions.
Just ask William Peace. General manager of Westinghouse’s Synthetic Fuels Division in the early 1980s, he had to cut head count to save the business. Rather than asking his managers to deliver the hard news, Peace met alone with the 15 laid-off employees. He demonstrated these soft-management principles:
- Walk straight into adversity.
- Face employees’ grief, anger, and bewilderment.
- Accept personal responsibility for tough decisions.
As Peace’s experience reveals, leaders who make themselves vulnerable and accessible gain huge advantages over traditional armor-plated managers. Employees see them as strong, credible, and trustworthy—and go the extra mile to help them succeed.
The Idea in Practice
Soft Management Payoffs
Example:
Because Peace had delivered his difficult message with honesty, openness, and deliberate vulnerability, he built commitment and optimism among remaining employees—and Westinghouse successfully sold the business. But Peace had also earned the trust of those he laid off: When the new owner funded additional work, Peace was able to rehire half of the 15 employees. Without exception, they accepted return offers. Several even gave up new jobs. Example:
Gene Cattabiani, VP of an unprofitable Westinghouse division plagued by hostile management-labor relations (including a shooting death after a strike), saw opportunities to improve shop-floor performance. Determined to treat union workers with respect, honesty, and openness—and knowing they wouldn’t cooperate unless they understood the division’s real problems—he bravely described those problems to the entire hourly workforce, all while enduring heckling and taunts.
Yet Cattabiani’s openness and honesty, and his ability to take criticism, gradually made him a flesh-and-blood manager in workers’ eyes. Factory workers who used to spit on the floor when he walked by slowly began offering him nods of recognition and even respect. The ultimate payoff? Management-labor relations—and the entire division’s productivity and financial performance—improved.
Soft Management Principles
Explain the real reasons behind your tough decisions—in person.
Take the heat for your own viewpoint, and let people confront the source of their difficulties. Peace urged employees to blame him—not their managers or themselves.
Open yourself to employees’ emotions. Peace squarely faced employees’ criticism, disapproval, anger, and grief. Cattabiani made people feel free to complain, argue, and attack. When he spotted his hecklers, he said, “You really gave me a hard time last week!” They responded with “Well, you deserved it, trying to pass off all that bull!”
I am a soft manager. Unlike the classic leaders of business legend with their towering self-confidence, their unflinching tenacity, their hard, lonely lives at the top, I try to be vulnerable to criticism, I do my best to be tentative, and I cherish my own fair share of human frailty. But like them, I too have worked hard to master my management style, and on the whole I think it compares favorably with theirs.
