Empathy Is Not An Absolution

Good article here from Greg Satell about modern-day business myths, and he has a section on the buzzword that “empathy” has become, which I’ve also written about 12–15 times. Here’s his best part:

Still, the one-dimensional use of empathy is misleading. When seen only through the lens of making others more comfortable, it seems like a “nice to have,” rather than a valuable competency and an important source of competitive advantage. It’s much easier to see the advantage of imposing your will, rather than internalizing the perspectives of others.

Empathy is not absolution. You can internalize the ideas of others and still vehemently disagree. There is a reason that Special Forces are trained to understand the cultures in which they will operate and it isn’t because it makes them nicer people. It’s because it makes them more lethal operators.

What’s amazing about this quote is that most senior decision-makers inside organizations desperately want “lethal operators,” to the literal point of killing their rivals, and when they hear words like “empathy” and “inclusion,” they groan and assign that stuff to HR, where they know it will die a slow death.

But maybe if we reframed empathy around “Hey, this could be a strategic competency and advantage,” people would care more. As it stands out, it feels like something you attend three mandatory HR-led trainings about, but then said thing is never baked into the actual work.

I’m not entirely sure how to bake it into the work, but I do believe it can be done organically if you switch up teams and meeting schedules and push people into meeting with those with different backgrounds and worldviews. This is admittedly harder when you’re more remote than in-office.

The easier, faster way to make “empathy” stick in a workplace is to change where the messaging emanates from. If it emanates from sales or business development or the highest-paid people, others will start to consider it in their own work lives more.

It’s always been interesting to me how the best sales guys are truly empathetic, and listen to their prospects, nurture the relationship along, understand their concerns, work to resolve those concerns — and yet the general perception we have of sales is brute-force assholes shoving deals down the throats of weak-willed corporate executives in the name of commission and bonus.

So instead of trying to force an Indian employee to sit with a lily-white employee and discuss their kids, which can feel forced and cause people to recoil, maybe we just have the top dogs of an org give five-minute frameworks around how they use empathy in their life and careers, and how it’s a strategic advantage for them. Maybe that could get some neural pathways firing in others, as opposed to forcing them into worthless trainings.

More about empathy.