When empathy shows up in Fiery Red clothing

In professional services firms, many managers never really set out to become managers. They trained as surveyors, architects, solicitors, engineers, consultants or technical specialists, and for a long time their career progression was based on being very good at the job in front of them. They knew their subject, they delivered for clients, they solved problems, they built relationships and they earned trust. They built their professional reputation, and followed their technical CPD according to their specific chartered memberships.

Then, often almost without noticing, they became responsible for other people... a team, a department, and sometimes... an entire firm.

That shift from technical expert to people leader is not always an easy one, especially in environments where pace, commercial focus, accuracy, resilience and client delivery are often rewarded more visibly than emotional awareness.

Sometimes, empathy shows up in places where we least expect it and I was reminded of this recently by a story someone told me about a senior leader at an engineering firm. Let's call him Gary!

If you use Insights Discovery, you would recognise Gary quite quickly.

He leads strongly with Fiery Red energy; he is direct, fast-paced, decisive, commercial and very comfortable saying what he thinks. There is also plenty of Sunshine Yellow in the mix, which shows up in his humour, his energy, his quick wit and his ability to bring lightness into a room, even if that humour can occasionally sail a little close to the mark. There are hints of Cool Blue too because he knows his numbers, he understands the detail and he can be very measured when the situation calls for it. Gary's lowest colour energy, however, is Earth Green.

This is where it becomes interesting. Earth Green is often the colour energy we associate most readily with patience, listening, care, compassion and gentle consideration. If you were making assumptions based only on colour energies, Gary might not be the person you would immediately expect to notice when someone in his team was struggling.

But he did... one of his team members, let's call her Belinda, had not been quite herself recently.

Belinda was still showing up for work, she was still delivering, she was still doing what needed to be done. From the outside, there would have been plenty of reasons to assume that everything was fine, as she remained professional, reliable and committed.

But Gary noticed that something was different.

She looked tired, and not just the exhaustion that comes from a busy week or a late night preparing for a client deadline. She looked worn down, in the way people do when life outside work is taking more out of them than they let on. You've all heard the usual responses of "I'm fine" - that was Belinda to a T.

Gary knew that Belinda was carrying a lot. A family member had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness and alongside everything she was doing at work, Belinda was also trying to research care homes, understand the options, manage difficult conversations and navigate the kind of frosty and frustrating family dynamics that can make an already painful situation feel much heavier.

Anyone who has ever supported a parent, partner, child, sibling, or close relative through illness knows that this kind of stress does not politely stay outside the office door.

It comes with you into meetings, it sits beside you on the drive home and waits for you when you open your laptop. It wakes you in the middle of the night, slowly chipping away at your mental capacity, even when you're trying very hard to carry on as normal.

Belinda was trying very hard to carry on as normal, which is the part Gary saw.

He did not make a big emotional speech, nor did he suddenly become a completely different type of leader. He didn't use soft, careful language because that would have sounded very unnatural coming from him.

Instead, in his own very Fiery Red way, he said something along the lines of:

"I've noticed you're exhausted, take next week off, fully paid. Please, focus on yourself and most of all, get some sleep."

It was clear, it was direct, it was practical and it was deeply kind.

That story struck me because it is such a good reminder that empathy does not always look the way we expect. We often associate empathy with softness, warmth, gentle conversations and time spent listening, and of course it can be all those things. For some leaders, especially those with higher Earth Green energy, empathy may naturally show up in that calm, patient and nurturing way.

Empathy can also be decisive.

It can be practical, it can be brief, it can be action focused AND it can sound like someone using their authority to relieve pressure from another person before that person has to ask for help. For a Fiery Red leader, empathy may not always come wrapped in lots of comforting language, but it can come with clarity and momentum.

It can sound like:

"This can wait. Your health cannot."

Or:

"You need time, so take it."

Or:

"I do not want you burning yourself out for the sake of a deadline."

That kind of empathy matters, particularly in professional services, where so many people are carrying more than others realise:

• A solicitor may be managing the emotional weight of a difficult client matter while also dealing with something painful at home.
• An architect may be working to demanding deadlines while worrying about a parent, a child, or a partner.
• A surveyor may be driving from site to site, appearing completely fine to everyone around them, whilst privately running on very little sleep.
• An engineer may be solving complex technical problems all day while quietly trying to hold their life together.

In these environments, the accidental manager plays a hugely important role to play, even if they have never been formally taught how to spot the signs that someone is struggling. They may not have been trained in how to have conversations about stress, grief, caring responsibilities, burnout or emotional load and they may not always feel confident knowing what to say.

But they can learn to notice, and it's often 'noticing', that is where good leadership begins.

What Gary did was not complicated. It did not require a line-perfect wellbeing strategy, a new fan-dangled policy, a leadership model, or a carefully choreographed intervention... It required him to pay attention and to see the human being behind the performance. It required him to act in a way that was authentic to his own style, whilst also giving Belinda what she needed in that moment.

That, to me, is what good company culture looks like.

Not a culture with a set of values that are written on a website or printed in an induction pack, but a culture that appears in a real moment, with a real person, when life has become difficult.

A healthy culture does not mean every leader behaves in the same way. It means people are allowed to lead with their own natural style, while still understanding that leadership comes with a responsibility to care.

🟢 The Earth Green leader may sit quietly with someone and give them the space to talk.

🟡 The Sunshine Yellow leader may help someone feel less alone by bringing warmth, optimism and connection.

🔵 The Cool Blue leader may help create order, structure and practical options when everything feels overwhelming.

🔴 The Fiery Red leader may cut through the noise, make the decision and say:

"Go home. Rest. We've got this."

Different colour energy = the same human outcome.

For those of us who work with accidental managers in professional services, this is such an important point. We're not trying to turn technical experts into identical versions of the perfect people manager, because that would be unrealistic and, frankly, not very human. What we can do, is help them understand themselves better, recognise the impact they have on others and see that empathy doesn't require them to become someone they're not.

It simply requires them to pay attention, to notice what is happening, to understand that performance doesn't always tell the full story and to act with humanity when the moment calls for it.

Gary, may never be the leader who naturally leads with high Earth Green energy, he may still be direct, still be quick witted and still use humour that occasionally gets close to the line. but he may still expect high standards and move at pace.

However, on that particular day, he noticed and because he noticed, Belinda was given permission to stop, to breathe, to sleep and to focus on what was happening in her life without having to pretend that everything was fine.

That is leadership.... and sometimes, it comes wearing Fiery Red.

Finally....

If you recognise this challenge in your own firm, where technically brilliant people have found themselves managing others without ever really being shown how to do it well, then this is exactly the space I work in.

As an Insights Discovery practitioner, I help accidental managers in professional services understand themselves, understand the people they lead and develop a more confident, human and effective approach to management.

Whether you are working with surveyors, architects, solicitors, engineers or consultants, the aim is not to turn people into a textbook version of the perfect manager or box them in. It's to help them lead in a way that feels authentic, while building the self-awareness, communication skills and emotional intelligence their teams need.

If your managers are brilliant at the technical work but would benefit from support in leading people, I would love to talk. Get in touch to explore how bringing Insights Discovery can help your accidental managers become more confident, more aware and more effective people leaders. Click the hyperlink below to book a discovery call https://bookings.cloud.microsoft/book/KarenWilcoxPersonalProfessionalDevelopment2@karenwilcox.co.uk/s/AT-vqVh1_0meznd3EuHHmg2?ismsaljsauthenabled

Great technical experts can become great people leaders, but they should not have to become them by accident.