Empathy - What’s the Point?

As a person who is interested in better understanding leadership, I find that the word empathy pops up often in the literature. By definition, empathy is the ability to understand and relate to someone else’s feelings or perspective. In my opinion, just leaving it at this really does no one any good. I feel that you need to be observing and studying the situations intently, and reflecting on what could be productive actions, or at the minimum, actions that do no harm. In some cases, some of the conclusions may even appear to be counter-intuitive at first. As such, being empathetic is context sensitive and not simple at all. I will elaborate on the thoughts above with the extreme example of taking care of your aging and ailing parents, from the perspective between siblings.

Context of taking care of aging and ailing parents

If I were to summarize the topic of taking care of aging and ailing parents, I would choose the words grueling and unrelenting, and recommend everyone watch a movie entitled Amour. Based on my personal experience, there tends to be one dominant sibling (DS) who helps the healthy parent to take care of the ailing parent. When I say dominant, I mean that much of the work of taking care of the ailing parent is dominated by a single sibling. I tip my hat to anyone who has been a DS – an extremely demanding role that is done out of love but under-appreciated by everyone (the toll on the healthy parent is just as nasty, if not nastier, but I will stick to siblings for this post).

I was one of the other siblings (OS) in multiple situations, where I desperately wanted to help the DS and my parents. The multiple situations include: in the case of my dad, he had a very bad fall which caused him to be immobile for a year, before he passed away. My mom and sister (DS with a full-time job) took care of things during that year, because they lived in Toronto (I live in Vancouver). In the case of my father-in-law, he had a stroke many years ago, and his health has been slowly deteriorating to the point of being immobile and suffering in his last couple of years. My mother in-law was the main care-taker. My wife was the DS, while struggling to remain in a full-time job, be a mother (of a young boy) and wife. 

For the rest of this post, I am speaking to the OS when I refer to "you", and the topics are based on my experiences in being an OS and seeing other OS in action. Thus, I know my comments do not represent universal truths in all care-giving situations, but are intended to provide a different perspective.

Your empathy towards the DS

The DS does not care whether he/she just has your empathy, he/she needs your contributions. As the OS, even if you do little to nothing to help your ailing parents, you can still be unknowingly contributing negatively to the already overloaded DS. This does not mean you are a bad person, but you have not really thought through the intensity, implications and complications in taking care of aging and ailing parents.

Commit to tasks. The OS is usually asked to handle a small number of simple & regular tasks, or asked to handle the rare emergency tasks. The best thing the OS can do is to do complete those tasks at all times. Even if there are complications, such as “I have to work”, or “it’s snowing”, find alternative solutions without putting it back on the already overloaded DS. Those tasks still need to get done somehow - your ailing parent’s needs won’t stop just because “it’s snowing” or “I have to work”, and as if the DS does not need to work, and snow does not affect the DS.  In fact, this is a simplification of my favourite saying “Do, or do not – there is no try” – the simplification being “Just Do!”

Support the hard decisions, not question them. The DS is in a non-ideal situation, and is doing the best for the ailing parent.  When my sister phoned me to explain some of the difficult decisions she had to make for our dad, I told her she’s got my full support at all times, because I know she’s doing the best she can. She does not need to justify anything to me. In fact, the only time I will speak up about those decisions, is when someone else questions or criticizes the decisions. 

I also see the OS questioning the hard decisions by asking the DS “have you tried this, have you done that?” That is the advisory nature in many of us, but it can be inappropriate in many situations. Consider the following: if you have ideas to try, research it to the point of certainty that it’ll really help, otherwise, you are just eating up time of the overloaded DS to research those topics that probably end up as wild goose chases. As well, the DS knows the situation much better than the OS, so you may want to consider why you think you have better options or have higher-priority items that have been missed? 

It’s not about making you feel better. In the movie Armour, there was a scene where the daughter shows up infrequently, and was drilling the dad for updates on her mom’s ailing situation and what’s being done about the problems. The dad responds with: “I have no time for your concern.” I love that response so much. If there is nothing that you intend to do to truly help, it may make things worse by demanding updates. Consider whether the only thing it achieves is making you feel better that at least you got an update, as a visible way to show concern and interest, but wasting valuable time from the DS as a result.  I asked my sister to update me only when she has the time and energy, or when I need context to be able to help out, otherwise I left her alone, though the lack of updates worried me often.

I also thought I was being a good son, by regularly travelling to Toronto to see my dad. I usually stayed for a few days at a time. However, I then realized that during my time there, I was pretty useless because I was not able to relieve my mom or sister (I don’t know what needs to be done, and what the situation really is), and they spent time taking care of me when I was in Toronto. I was causing more harm than good. If I were to do it all over again, I would stay for lengthy periods at a time, so I am able to help because I would know what needs to be done and what the situation really is (during that lengthy stay).

So, what’s my point about empathy?

Whether it is about personal relationships or strength in leadership, if empathy is the only step that is taken, it means nothing – as can be seen in the above examples. There is absolute need for the person or leader to observe and study the situations intently, and reflect on what could be productive actions. The reflection is very important because innocent actions could be harmful, or productive actions could be counter-intuitive at first blush.