POOP Time: An Empathy Ritual for Leaders.

At the beginning of 2018, I was given some tough feedback. My manager said I spend most of my time working on my own tasks and not thinking about my co-workers’ needs. It was a jarring criticism — especially since I was recently elevated to a leadership position in my organization.

Initially, I was defensive. I started demonstrating all the ways that sentiment was wrong:

“How can you call me self-centered?,” I asked incredulously. “Just last week I helped so and so with such and such.”

“What about the time I did XYZ for you?”

How quickly you forget, I thought.

The conversation soured and we both decided to take a break. Later that night, as I thought more about it, I recognized the truth in the feedback. Despite efforts to help out people on my team, I still had an Individual Contributor (IC) mentality: a self-centered focus on my own tasks.

In brain-speak: I was high on dopamine, but low on oxytocin.

My predicament wasn’t unique. As someone who trains managers for a living, I see this frequently. The skills that get ICs promoted to managers (technical competence) are not the same as needed for their new role (i.e. enabling others to achieve). It’s the difference between being a soloist and a conductor.

Clearly my mindset needed to change. But, how?

It wasn’t good enough to just say I would try to make a greater effort to think of others. That kind of commitment is bound to wane once the demands of work strain the capacity for empathy. I had to approach the challenge in a structured manner.

I thought it would be best to carve out time during each week to think of others. I recalled that my manager likes scatalogical humor and decided to populate my calendar with POOP time: perspective on other people.

The idea is simple: set certain times during the week to solely focus on the needs of your co-workers, managers, and direct reports. Then, a few days before the scheduled time, send the POOP recipient a brief email asking what they’re working on and what you can do to help out.

Here’s a sample:

Howdy!

On Monday I have an hour scheduled for POOP time.

POOP stands for Perspective On Other People. It’s basically an hour when I think exclusively about my co-workers and see if I can lend a hand.

Please let me know if I can take anything off your plate, if there’s anything you need help with, or if you just feel like chatting.

If it’s not a good time, I’ll pass the POOP to someone else and return to you at a later date.

Look forward to hear from you.

Warmly (cause, you know, POOP),

Roi

The reaction to POOP time has been great. People have entrusted me with tasks where I’ve been able to help. More importantly, they felt cared for.

Of course, setting time aside to focus on others has a lot of side-benefits: research shows that when co-workers and employees feel cared for, they’re more likely to be engaged, committed, and resilient. They’re also more likely to reciprocate in kind.

But the primary benefit of POOPing is that it helped me make the leap from productive IC to burgeoning leader.

The stickiness and potential of the ritual became apparent when I received the following text message from Robyn Long, the head of our BD department at LifeLabs. Robyn reminded me of the value of scheduled empathy as a life skill, as she described utilizing POOP time with her boyfriend.

Apparently, everybody POOPS. Or at least they should!