Empathy is not Uni-dimensional

Recent Harvard Business Review survey shows some organizations score very high on empathy whereas there are others who do not. While the survey does show some industry trends as far as empathy scores are concerned, to me, it seems that is more coincidental. Whether an organization is high on empathy or not is more a matter of individual company characteristics rather than any industry trend per se. True companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Microsoft all belong to the Technology sector who feature in the top ten most empathetic companies, but the same list also has Unilever, Southwest Airlines and Johnson & Johnson each of which belong to completely different industry sectors. The size of the company does not seem to have much influence on the company’s ability to be empathetic either- there are large companies on either end of the empathy spectrum.

While some companies (like the ones mentioned above) seem to be doing pretty well in terms of creating an empathetic organization, there are others who get it horribly wrong. The same HBR survey has names of organizations which are large companies with thousands of employees but score poorly in terms of empathy. What differentiates the companies topping this list from the companies which rank way below?

Many organizations consider empathy to be a unidimensional aspect. Nothing can be as far from truth as that. An organization is an amalgamation of individuals and just like an individual cannot be empathetic in a unidimensional way so is the case with organizations. Rarely, if at all, one would have come across an individual who is empathetic with his colleagues but not so with his friends or vice versa. Empathy is a capability or skill to be able to relate to people around you- if you have that capability you would be demonstrating it everywhere and if you don’t, you would not be able to demonstrate the same selectively. In a similar manner, for an organization to be empathetic, it needs to build this capability across all its stakeholders, namely, employees, customers, shareholders. If it attempts to build it across any one dimension, even if it succeeds in doing so, that success would be short-lived. Organizations which aspire to live successfully for half a century or more (and that has been and would be even more daunting in the years ahead), would have to become empathetic across all three stakeholders.

Empathy, as mentioned above and very simply put, is the ability to connect. It is not about being “nice” nor is it about “bending backwards” but it is the ability to see the world from the other person’s perspective in the exact manner in which the other person would see. That is possible only when one is able to connect with the concerned stakeholder with the objective of understanding the latter’s perspective. It is different from connecting with the objective of explaining one’s own perspective. Most of us engage with the aim of explaining our point of view to the other person, at least to a larger extent, than to understand the world from the other person’s perspective.

There is a reason behind why empathy is a rare skill at an individual level and hence become even rarer at a collective level. Traditionally we are assessed and rewarded for our ability to communicate effectively and assertively, by our ability to influence others meaningfully, our ability to motivate and persuade others to follow a course of action that we would want them to, so on and so forth. Nothing wrong with this per se. The issue is our mistaken belief that all the above is linked to our ability to converse and not really with our ability to understand. That is a myth many of us live with which prevents us from listening (whether literally to the person we are speaking to or metaphorically to our customers, shareholders and employees whom we may not be in direct contact with) to the very people we are supposed to influence, motivate, persuade. And when we engage with the sole purpose of downloading our point of view and at best having “responses” to any contra or different point of views, we bolt the very door which could have led us towards being empathetic.

Nowadays most organizations do realize that there is a merit in empathy after all. However, several organizations, involuntarily perhaps, end up making choices about being empathetic. Some choose to be empathetic towards customers while there are others who may choose to be so towards their employees or shareholders. It certainly gives them a longer rope than not being empathetic at all but ultimately it does become a noose around their neck if that empathy is not extended across other two dimensions. For instance, if empathy is focussed only on customers with scant regards towards employees, the organization may not be left with too many committed and competent employees in the long run who would be able to serve the customers well and thereby jeopardize the shareholders’ interests as well. Similarly, it would be na?ve for an organization to be empathetic only towards it employees while showing apathy towards it customers because if the latter disappears, the employees would have no one to cater to! Or if the organization is only empathetic towards shareholders with no regards for either customers or employees, not sure how long it would be able to meet the expectations of its shareholders if it is not able to retain either customers or employees. The examples may look absolutely bizarre but unfortunately they are not.

Empathy is a habit. As the late Stephen Covey had mentioned several years ago, it is the habit of “highly effective” people who “first seek to understand before being understood”. Do we first seek to understand what our employees are seeking in the workplace before making them understand our point of view? Do we first seek to understand our customers’ wants before trying to influence them to our product or service which we sell? Do we try to understand our shareholders or simply assume that we know exactly what they are looking for? Assumptions may take us up to some point; it may give us short term results and if our assumptions are right to a large extent we may even get results for a longer period. But it would never be sustainable unless we inculcate the habit of seeking to understand. And do so across all the three dimensions with equal vigour and persistence.

While theoretically this habit can start at any level in the organization but to be effective and long lasting this needs to start right at the top. We all know that followers do mimic the behaviour of their leaders. If people sense that leadership is making a genuine effort to connect and understand its employees, customers and shareholders, they start emulating that behaviour and soon it becomes the norm and culture of the place. On the contrary, if employees at large see that leadership is focused on only one dimension, the same effect percolates down the rank and file in the organization. While it does bring in reputation for the company of being focused on employees or customers or shareholders, in the long run, the organization may find itself difficult to sustain itself.

The good news is that “empathy” as a skill or competency can be both identified at the time of hiring or promoting employees to higher echelons of responsibility as well as developed while in the organization. The not-so good news is that several organizations pay no heed to this. It is not checked-for at the time of hiring nor is it given adequate consideration for internal promotions. As a result, organizations end up hiring and promoting employees who lack this skill which, in turn, is seen by others in the organization as not an essential but more a desirable kind of competency to have at best. In a steady state environment it may be so. But not so in a world which is increasingly becoming volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The ability to sense and understand others’ perspective in this world is as critical as IQ or verbal communication skills, so on and so forth.

Empathy, at the end of the day, is an essential part of emotional intelligence something which Dr. Daniel Goleman had emphasized upon several years ago. However, till date not sure how many organizations actually check for EQ for hiring and not certain how organizations rate employees on EQ before considering for internal promotions. It is high time we shift gears and start focusing on them for long term sustenance of the organization.