Empathy Without Giving Ground
Apply empathy in disagreement without confusing understanding with agreement.
A sales lead asks you to approve a client-specific feature by Friday. You believe the team can build it, but maintaining it will create support debt. You own product quality for the feature area. How do you respond? Refuse quickly You protect the standard, but the sales lead may feel the revenue pressure was ignored. Reflect the pressure and state the bar You say, I see why this account matters. My bar is that we do not create an unsupported path. What guardrail would make this safe? The disagreement gets more exact. Approve to preserve the relationship You reduce immediate…
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