Your colleague delivers a piece of work that doesn’t meet your standards or expectations.

Your colleague delivers a piece of work that doesn’t meet your standards or expectations.

You look at them, observe their fatigue, their desire for acknowledgment. You don’t want to be the person responsible for kick them when they are down. You see the truth but the emotion wins.

You choose to default to thanks and mild praise.

You choose kindness over fairness.

One of my leadership mantras is to treat people like adults.

We expose adults to the full realities of life and the situation. That doesn’t mean being harsh or even criticising.

There are multiple things that go into causing the effects we experience, but we don’t blind adults to reality to avoid upset. People need to know how their work shapes up against the standards they are measured by.

It seems obvious but it’s one of those things that’s so obvious we tend to miss it.

A common default is to lead as if we are parents.

Avoiding feedback, Repeating reminders, Rescuing people from consequences.

We instinctively want to protect from what we consider hash realities, with sugar coating or simply ignoring the elephant in the room.

Humans are wired to avoid rejection. Both rejecting others and protecting ourselves.

These all come with good intentions but they tend to backfire in a number of ways.

They inadvertently create a parent child relationship dynamic as you protect them from the realities of the world.

Unfortunately it’s a pattern we’re all familiar with and so the brain can quickly recognise it.

They will then often assume the child role to get themselves off the hook and avoid taking responsibility for their actions or inactions.

That might look like excuses, dependence, defensiveness, or waiting to be rescued.

This ‘get out of jail free card’ then ripples into resentment as it so easily does with kids.

We want to know ourselves as free, responsible, powerful and competent adults.

And the adult child dynamic no matter how well intentioned is evidence that we are not.

This dynamic also creates a lack of trust and signals that you believe they are weak and incompetent. Why else would you protect them from reality?

The final problem is that absent clear information on expectation and measures, they cannot make skilful decisions and truly own their role.

Kindness often sits behind this. Where you seek first and foremost to protect both of your feelings and short term connection.

What’s required is to switch to fairness. Where you seek to convey the information they need to fully realise the reality of the situation.

Fairness communicates trust, respect and belief in the strength and integrity of your relationships.

What needs to be know between you to communicate with fairness and integrity:

What do they need to know about their role?

How is their performance measured?

What standards are non-negotiable?

What truths are being avoided?

What consequences are unclear?

What feedback have they earned but not received?

How different would your life be if you started to place fairness over kindness?