The Empathy Gap

CHAPTER 7Building an empathic organisational culture

Have you ever been in a meeting with your boss and they didn't quite perform as you'd have hoped? Maybe they were disorganised, unprepared or didn't meet your expectations in their input. What would you do? I've asked this question of hundreds of people and the most common responses I receive range from saying nothing to complaining to other staff about their performance, but almost no-one says they would actually tell their boss directly. Many would call this too dangerous: a career-limiting move that would only end badly for them.

What about not only telling the boss, but telling them very bluntly in an email? This is exactly what Senior Portfolio Strategist Jim Haskel did. In 2013, after a research meeting that included the boss, Jim sent a scathing email directly to him. This wasn't just Jim's line manager in a large hierarchy. Jim's boss was the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of the largest hedge fund in the world: Ray Dalio.

The email read:

Ray — You deserve a ‘D–’ for your performance today in the meeting. You did not prepare at all, because there is no way you could have been that disorganised. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare … but we can’t let this happen again.

How do you think an email like this would be received by some of the managers you've had in the past? How would you respond if it was sent to you?

In response, Ray Dalio did something out of the ordinary. ...