Don’t Just Be the Nice Guy — How Falling Into the ‘Empathy Trap’ Made Me a Bad Leader
If you are a founder stuck in the “nice guy” cycle, you need to remember that you can be a nice person and a demanding leader at the same time.
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Key Takeaways
- Empathy without accountability is not a sign of a good leader. It’s akin to business sabotage.
- Tolerating “non-performers” is an injustice to clients and customers.
- The founder sets the culture. A company is defined by the standards you are willing to enforce.
Before starting UKHI, I was running a digital marketing agency. It was a small team of young people. It was a vibrant team. We had passion. We had tasted some success and had the hunger for more. Though things looked functional on the surface, we had clients and were getting organic leads. But inside, things were stalling.
Our client base was pretty large, but “well-paying clients” were limited. I was desperately trying to pivot to mobile application development, as it was an “in” thing. Had we succeeded, it would have ended many of our financial woes. The company would have taken a different trajectory altogether.
My thinking was in the right direction. However, things did not go the way I had expected. Instead of being a leader who makes hard, objective decisions, I acted like a peer who didn’t want to hurt feelings. The reason was that I was trying to be a “nice” leader.
Whenever I lost projects because of buggy code, missed deadlines or other issues, my immaturity became a real bottleneck. I knew the quality was the issue — clients were complaining about UI/UX and performance — but I failed to hold people accountable.
I tolerated their poor performance. I kept giving them one lifeline after another in the futile hope that it would eventually pay off. It took years of failing projects and financial bleeding to realize that the mediocrity wasn’t coming from my team; it was being permitted by me.
This is what falling into the “empathy” trap taught me.
1. I believed ‘being nice’ was leadership — it isn’t
I wanted to be viewed as a leader who cares and is humane. I took pride in being a good guy. I wanted to win my employees’ loyalty. I didn’t like asking tough questions one-on-one in the context of a performance review. When a developer delivered a buggy app or a designer missed the mark on a UI, I would tell myself: They’re trying their best.
I assumed that by being patient, I was building loyalty. But I was wrong. In reality, by not taking timely action against the people who were dragging the project down, I was hurting the business.
It is essential to understand that as a founder, you are not running a family; you are running a professional sports team. If you keep retaining players who can’t perform when it matters, you should give up the hope of winning. This is certainly not the right leadership trait that founders should emulate.
2. Tolerating a ‘non-performer’ is a betrayal of your clients and customers
I believed I needed to support every employee irrespective of their performance. I didn’t want to disrupt their lives — but I was not being honest with my clients.
When a client trusts you and invests their capital, they aren’t paying for your “nice guy” reputation; they are paying for results. Real leadership is realizing that your primary loyalty belongs to the mission and the customer, not to the comfort of an underperforming employee.
3. If you don’t fire the wrong people, the right people will fire you
This was my most painful lesson. When you allow a “non-performer” to stay for long, the best people take notice. They see that “B-level” work gets the same paycheck and the same lack of consequences as “A-level” work. Eventually, your “A-players” lose interest in continuing with you and join a company that values performance.
By the time I realized this, I had lost precious time and significant capital. The projects that “totally failed” weren’t just lost revenue; they cost us credibility.
‘Empathy’ can be a liability if you fall into the trap
I learned the hard way that what founders need to do is set a high bar and hold everyone to it. After all, it’s a commitment to the mission. Today, at UKHI, the standards are non-negotiable. I am empathetic to my company, its stakeholders, investors and my clients — but certainly not for B-grade performers.
Looking back at what I did in the past, I now know better that a founder’s primary job isn’t to be liked by everyone. His role is to steady the ship and ensure the growth of everyone on the team. That will happen only when the ship reaches its destination.
If you are a founder stuck in the “nice guy” cycle, you need to remember that you can be a nice person and a demanding leader at the same time. In fact, if you want your company to survive, you don’t have a choice.
Key Takeaways
- Empathy without accountability is not a sign of a good leader. It’s akin to business sabotage.
- Tolerating “non-performers” is an injustice to clients and customers.
- The founder sets the culture. A company is defined by the standards you are willing to enforce.
Before starting UKHI, I was running a digital marketing agency. It was a small team of young people. It was a vibrant team. We had passion. We had tasted some success and had the hunger for more. Though things looked functional on the surface, we had clients and were getting organic leads. But inside, things were stalling.
Our client base was pretty large, but “well-paying clients” were limited. I was desperately trying to pivot to mobile application development, as it was an “in” thing. Had we succeeded, it would have ended many of our financial woes. The company would have taken a different trajectory altogether.
My thinking was in the right direction. However, things did not go the way I had expected. Instead of being a leader who makes hard, objective decisions, I acted like a peer who didn’t want to hurt feelings. The reason was that I was trying to be a “nice” leader.
