See The Person

The Human Behind the Behavior

One of the most common leadership mistakes is surprisingly simple: We see behaviors instead of people. An employee gets labeled as unreliable. A customer is “high maintenance” or “difficult.” A team member that struggles is “the problem.”

These labels become shortcuts. We make quick decisions based on the categories we have labeled for each situation and move on to the next issue demanding our attention. In fast-paced environments, we’re seeking efficiency. And responding to the labels we have put on each person and situation feels like the quickest and best way to get to the next step in our day.

In reality, no human is as simple as the labels that we assign to them.

Effective leaders still uphold accountability and standards. They address problems when they occur. But before they decide how to respond to a situation, they take the time to understand the human-being behind the behavior and what actually caused the issue, rather than just assuming it’s the default of the person in front of them.

Effective leaders recognize that behavior is often the visible symptom of something deeper.

Over the course of my career, I have seen this lesson play out repeatedly. Sometimes in situations involving conflict. Sometimes in situations involving poor decisions. Sometimes in situations where the easiest path would have been to focus only on what was directly in front of us.

In each case, the outcome improved when someone looked beyond the behavior, the reputation, or the conflict and took the time to see the person first.

The Human Behind the Threat

I like to talk about Security “war stories” and how you can tell about a person based on the type of story they choose to tell. One of my favorite stories happened to me at approximately 4:30 in the morning.

Security was requested for an intoxicated guest who was trying to fight everyone around him. I watched for a bit as a couple Officers attempted to calm him down, but it was clear they weren't going to be successful. The guest was loud, angry, and threatening anyone willing to engage with him.

After observing the interaction for a short time, I stepped in. In full transparency, my thought process was, “if someone gets punched, it might as well be me.”

Instead of arguing with him, I focused on redirecting his comments. Every threat became an opportunity to change the subject to a more positive focus. Every insult thrown my way was met with patience. Every challenge was met with an attempt to move the interaction forward. For quite some time, the conversation felt like an endless cycle of complaints, threats, and attempts to pull me into a fight.

Once we finally reached the entrance, he agreed to leave and wait outside for his ride. Before walking away, he reached over and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. As I turned around, I saw the rest of my management team walk away laughing and shaking their heads at me. They were all ready for the fight. I had accepted the possibility of it too, but I was focused on something different: the human I was dealing with and the outcome I was trying to achieve.

This will always be one of my favorite stories. In large part because I had to tell my wife about getting kissed at work when I got home that morning.

More importantly though, the story reminds me how easy it is to focus on behavior – leaving us to miss the human behind it. The guest was intoxicated, frustrated, and making poor decisions. None of that excused his behavior, but it did help explain it. My goal that night was never to win an argument or prove a point. Winning in that situation was seeing someone get home safely.

Looking back, I think that is why the interaction ended the way it did. The guest expected confrontation. Instead, he encountered someone who was more interested in helping him than defeating him.

When we see only the behavior, our options become limited. We react to threats, insults, and poor decisions. When we see the person behind the behavior, we gain a better understanding of what outcome we are actually trying to achieve.

The Human Behind the Label

Over many years in Security, I’ve regularly dealt with two brothers with notorious family backgrounds. Drugs, violent crime, in and out of jail. All well known. Neither of the brothers had a reputation that inspired confidence that any interaction with them would go well.

I’ve been called to deal with both of them multiple times for argumentative behavior, disturbances, threats, and other issues. Yet, despite their reputations, not a single one of those interactions ever went sideways.

Not once.

One interaction in particular has always stayed with me. I responded to a complaint involving one of the brothers and a disagreement with table games staff. After speaking with him, he requested a Gaming Commission investigation into the matter. While we waited for a representative to respond, we stood at the Security podium and talked.

At some point, he pulled out his phone and started showing me pictures of his daughter, talking about her and his girlfriend. I saw genuine love of his daughter in the person in front of me. Looking back, that moment stands out because it completely conflicted with the label most people attached to him.

Most people knew him through rumors, arrests, criminal history, or stories they had heard from others. At that moment, I knew him as a father. In reality, both things were true. One didn’t mean that the other wasn’t real.

The criminal history was real. The arrests were real. The poor decisions were real. None of those things disappeared because he was proud of his daughter. But neither did his humanity.

One of the easiest things to do in leadership is allow a label to become the entire story. Once someone becomes "the difficult employee," "the poor performer," or "the troublemaking guest," every future interaction starts getting filtered through that lens. We stop seeing the person and start seeing the category.

Years later, after I had moved to a different property, I was called to a gaming table because a guest was threatening another guest, a dealer, and a supervisor. As I approached, I immediately recognized him.

I asked if we could talk. "No." The answer was short and clear.

Then I said his name. He looked up, recognized me, and immediately walked away from the table with me.

That interaction reinforced the lesson I had learned years earlier: People can tell when they are being treated as a person instead of a problem.

Accountability still matters. Standards still matter. Consequences still matter. But effective leaders never allow a label to become the entirety of someone's identity.

When we stop seeing the human behind the label, we often miss the very thing that would help us lead them effectively.

The Human Behind the Conflict

Only a few weeks into my career in Security, I was part of the response to a call involving four irate guests. They were threatening employees and causing a major scene in the middle of the property.

On the surface, the situation seemed pretty straightforward. The easiest thing in the world would have been to focus on the behavior in front of us. The guests were angry. Threats had been made. Security had arrived and the next step seemed obvious.

But instead of jumping into it, our Manager started asking questions. Not interrogation, but conversation. Most importantly, he wanted them to understand and believe that he genuinely cared about their answer.

One of the hardest things to do in a heated situation is to empathize with the person that appears to be the cause of it all. This group knew they were causing a scene and they knew that we were Security and there to kick them out for it. Instead, the were met by someone that sold the idea of “I care about your side.”

What we found was that a female member of the group had been the target of a highly inappropriate comment from an employee. The group's reaction wasn't acceptable, but it was understandable.

The threats still weren't excused. But the response changed because someone took the time to understand what happened before deciding who the problem was. That lesson has stayed with me for nearly fifteen years.

Empathy is not always agreement. Empathy is never the absence of accountability. Empathy is the willingness to understand someone's perspective before deciding how to respond.

When leaders skip that step, they often end up treating symptoms instead of causes. They miss the human behind the conflict.

Don’t Miss the Person

The longer I lead, the more convinced I become that many leadership failures begin with the same mistake: we stop seeing people.

We see the threat, the label, or the problem. We see the angry customer, the struggling team member, or the conflict that is disrupting our day. And we fail to see the human behind all of these things anymore.

That doesn't mean ignoring accountability. It doesn't mean lowering standards. It doesn't mean accepting behavior that shouldn't be accepted.

The best leaders never allow accountability to replace empathy. They understand that people are far more complicated than the worst thing they have done, the reputation they have earned, or the behavior they are displaying in a particular moment.

When we take the time to understand the human behind the threat, the label, or the conflict, we gain the ability to lead more effectively. We make better decisions. We build stronger relationships. We create better outcomes.

Most importantly, we remember something that is easy to forget in leadership:

The people we lead are people first.