Empathy: A Blessing and a Cure

When I was twenty-five my father and I got into an argument. Disapproving of my ex, he called me, three thousand miles across the country, and yelled at me for making what he judged “a stupid decision.”

Defensive and angry, I yelled back. 

“I’m twenty-five,” I told him. “I’m in graduate school, I have two jobs, and I pay my own rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Who are YOU to yell at me? Who are YOU to care who I date?”

That fifteen-minute phone conversation turned into ten months of silence. 

In Daniel Goleman’s framework of Emotional Intelligence, empathy refers to our ability to sense and feel the thoughts, emotions, and perspectives of others. One of two social awareness competencies, it’s broken into three types:

• Cognitive Empathy: We understand how someone sees and thinks about the world. We can see their perspective and communicate with consideration of their point of view. 
• Emotional Empathy: We understand how someone is feeling, either because we can directly relate to their experience or because we can “feel” what it could be like to be in that experience. With this understanding, we deepen our emotional connection. 
• Empathic Concern: When we not only understand and feel someone else, but our compassion motivates us to do something on their behalf. Succinctly put: empathy in action.

These three types of empathy are supported by different parts of the brain which explains why some of us struggle to show empathy in one way, but not another. 

Demonstrating any of the three types leads to stronger, healthier relationships. Not only with others, but with ourselves. We all deserve to be understood. 

Why empathy?

Patients with empathic physicians are more likely to follow their medical regimes; kids surrounded by empathetic adults are less likely to have behavioral issues; people who demonstrate high amounts of empathy are less likely to feel depressed. 

In the workplace, the benefits of empathy are many.

Psychological safety is described by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson as a “climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.” It creates the conditions for high-performing teams. 

In 2016, Google's Project Aristotle looked at the competencies needed to create a culture of psychological safety. They found that members of successful teams individuals learned to pick up on one another’s non-verbal cues, were willing to address unspoken feelings, and gave group members equal time to contribute their ideas.

In short, they all demonstrated empathy. 

Hilton, Kimpton, Wegmans, Salesforce, and Edward Jones: these companies have long dominated the upper quarter of Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Places to Work list, recognized as organizations with cultures rooted in a high degree of trust and inclusion.

This culture of trust doesn’t emerge out of nowhere. These organizations not only engage in a LOT of listening, but they consistently make decisions that address the perspectives, wants, needs, and struggles of their employees. 

When we think of effective leadership we often cite qualities like “good communication,” “strategic thinking,” “a positive outlook” and “strong decision-making abilities.”

In these 100 Best Places to Work, leaders not only demonstrate these skills, but they use empathy to sharpen them. 

Listening to and, in some cases, predicting the wants and needs of their people, enables the leaders within these organizations to speak and set goals in a way that resonates with their workforce. They use empathy to call out bias, build inclusion, and foster collaboration and innovation at every level of the org chart. They offer health screenings, disaster relief funds, onsite daycare, elder care services, and ample time off—efforts to help their people thrive.

We’ve all known a leader who is distant or aloof— someone who fails to listen, pay attention, and attune to those around them. They might be excellent at achieving goals, but without empathy they are constantly bowling people over. Their decisions might bolster the bottom line, but their lack of care fosters burnout, disengagement, and high turnover.

If you were to share a story of the very best leader you’ve worked for, what would you say?

Most people recall a moment of empathy: a time when they felt seen, understood and cared for by someone in power. 

When I imagine a genie shrouded in smoke emerging from a golden lamp—EMPATHY is what I wish for.

How would we build our professional culture if we understood what our colleagues were experiencing? How would we relate if we really knew the degree of someone else’s suffering? If we used that knowledge and our resources to help them? 

Family ties, self-doubt, systemic bias, world hunger, the climate crisis: empathy gives us a lens through which to more holistically understand any one of these intersecting problems. 

Work The Muscle

In the case of my dad, I felt disrespected and unseen, he felt disrespected and unseen and, for almost a year, we stayed locked in conflict— neither of us ready to make amends. 

Fixated on one another's failings, we engaged in a mental and emotional standoff. 

It’s a classic conundrum: we yearn for others to consider our perspective and feelings, and yet, so much of the time, we fail to do the same for them.

In my coaching practice, I work with a lot of high-achieving individuals. Some of them have internalized a belief that being highly self-critical is what makes them successful. Here, the goal is to practice more empathy for themselves. What’s possible when we hold as high of an expectation for our own self-care as we do for our work?

Others struggle with a lack of understanding, often for a specific team member. They might feel wronged, undermined, or like they just don’t “like” the other person, which makes it hard to work together. Here, the goal is to cultivate empathy in order to manage their triggers and find a point of connection across the divide. The goal is to soften around the agitation and the judgment— feelings that actually take a lot of time and energy to engage with. 

I also find that the more intense the demands are on a person’s time and the more anxious they are about meeting them, the harder it is to find the patience and time to deeply and meaningfully connect. 

For many, anxiety is a very internal “I-focused” experience—it takes us inward, gets us all wrapped up in our minds, and prevents us from being present and empathic with other people. (Which, ironically is how we want to be approached when we’re anxious.)

Empathy is a muscle. The more we work it, the stronger it becomes. 

Here’s a few ways to start building empathy:

• Flip the Inner Script: Where can you replace self-criticism with self-understanding? In order to create distance from our critical thoughts, it’s helpful to recognize and label them. Sometimes I will ask clients if they would ever tell a friend the things they tell themselves. It’s helpful to notice the discrepancy between how we talk to others and how we talk to ourselves. 
• Put Down the Device: Where can you remove the barriers to your own attention? Demonstrating empathy requires that you genuinely show an interest in the person in front of you by giving them your presence. As my seven-year old says, “Put down the phone and pay attention to me.” Most adults aren’t that brave. In your next interaction, see if you can notice how many times you get distracted. 
• Listen to Understand: Are you listening to respond or are you listening to understand? Empathic listening requires us to stop looking for the place where we solve, fix or interject. Next time you are listening to someone practice rephrasing what you’ve heard, asking clarifying questions, mirroring emotions, and, finally, reflecting what you think is being said and felt by the other person. 
• The Noble Story: It’s easy to build a negative story, but can you build a positive one? Assumptions drive a ridiculous amount of human behavior. Meanwhile, the “Fundamental Attribution Error” shows that we are inclined to attribute people’s behavior to their character, without giving enough credence to context. The “Noble Story” (nod to Matt Taylor) asks us to see where people’s behavior is rooted in a combination of their core values and unique circumstances. It lets us release the negative story and replace it with a more holistic and positive one. 

Of these techniques, the Noble Story is the one that helped twenty-five-year-old me mend the rift with my dad. After ten months of radio silence, I got on a plane and went home to see him. I walked in the door, he cried, I cried, and we both apologized, calling it “water under the bridge.” 

But was it?

For me, the real moment of resolution came afterward. Sitting in my father’s den, surrounded by antique toys, old metal signs, and a glass candy jar full of vintage matchbooks, I suddenly got an insight into who my dad is. 

I saw the child in him -- a boy who knew heartache, loved old treasures, feared loneliness, and would lay down his life to spare me from pain. All of a sudden he wasn’t a villain, trying to control my life, but a human, struggling with a basic need for safety and security. He was trying to protect something he treasured.

Sometimes we worry that empathy will undermine our ability to put up boundaries.

I dispute this. Here’s why.

Seeing my father for more of who he is didn’t mean I consented to him yelling at me or giving unsolicited advice on my personal life. 

What it meant was that I could put up a boundary around the behavior without rejecting him as a person. Having empathy for him meant appreciating his motivations, while also communicating my own limits.

In our closest relationships—at home or at work—this lesson is critical. 

No one wants to be rejected for their humanity. Understanding where someone is coming from, how they see the world, what they feel and what they are going through can help us build a bridge across an incredible span of difference. 

Instead of erecting boundaries based on hate and defense— boundaries that we put up like a shield and take great effort to maintain— empathy can help us cultivate a boundary that sits firm and steady beneath our own two feet. 

Approaching our work and our relationships with an eye towards empathy reminds us to make space for our own wants and needs, while also taking the time to understand the wants, needs, and motivations of others.

Empathy can help us stand in our truth and care for the other person at the very same time.

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How have you benefited from the empathy of others? Where can you replace self-criticism with self-understanding? Comment below.