The path from mathematics to #empathy... 3 misconceptions

Welcome to another edition of Leading with Empathy. Have you ever wondered why I became so passionate about empathy? This edition unpacks a bit of the background on why a mathematician saw the need to focus less on Excel spreadsheets and more on people.

What if they don't want to do the work?

Do you like a good plan?

Are you the sort of person who just feels so much better when you can grab a piece of paper and make yourself a To-do list?

If you are like me, you probably throw a couple of things you've already done on there too, which makes you feel like you've made progress already. Doesn't it?

Plans are great tools to have. Complex projects often have many plans, Gannt charts and project managers all working hard to ensure the path is well-lit and progress is being made. Indeed, I've worked on a number of very large programs of work that involved massive arrays of spreadsheets calculating the resources, people and time it would take to complete.

One day, working with a Project Manager, I asked a simple, yet telling question...

"What if these people don't want to do the work?"

There was a column on the spreadsheet titled FTE (standing for full-time equivalent). It is used to record how much of a resource would be assigned to the project. Jane might be assigned full-time, so she is recorded as a 1. Bill is only working 2 days a week on the project, so he is recorded as 0.4. It struck me at this moment as odd because I knew that, at the time, Jane was working ridiculous hours on the project and that Bill's 2 days of allocation was more like 2 hours a week of actual effort.

"So, what if they don't want to do the work?" I asked, knowing that if Jane dropped off her manic pace for a few days it could send the project spiralling into chaos.

The answer, through a puzzled look, was that they couldn't control that. It didn't fit in the Gantt charts so it was assumed that people would do the work.

Assumed... we all know that to assume is to make an... you can Google the phrase. To me, this was an extraordinary moment of realisation. We were building massive pipelines of work that relied on people to deliver and ignored the motivation and effectiveness of these people. It would be like building a piece of heavy machinery and ignoring friction or flying a kite and ignoring the wind. People are a central force in any project, business or community. People can be the thing that makes or breaks any situation. People are the dynamic variables and we too often pretend they are stable and predictable. How silly...

We can't ignore the complexity of people, we must try to better understand it

Understanding people became my passion. Which leads to empathy. In my work, empathy is simply understanding why people do what they do. It doesn't need to be more complex than that. Seeking to understand what drives the thoughts, decisions and actions of another human.

Interestingly, this is where the journey starts to become more complex for a few commonly encountered reasons:

1. Empathy and being nice
2. Empathy for people like me
3. Empathy of a psychopath

1. Empathy is not being nice

This is probably the biggest misconception I encounter from people who struggle with being empathic. This is particularly common in overly busy people leaders.

Let's take the case of Ben (name changed of course), who was given feedback that he came across as cold and transactional with his team. Ben was working very long hours, struggling to keep on top of his work life and home life and was frustrated that his team wasn't delivering - driving more work for him.

An old boss had told him he needed more empathy, so in times like this, he tried being nicer to his team. This led to a familiar yet terrible spiral.

1. Ben's team weren't delivering the work
2. Instead of honest feedback, Ben was insincerely nice to his team
3. His team became suspicious and trust dropped
4. With low trust, his people were more cautious in their work
5. More caution slowed down their performance
6. Ben became frustrated and became overly controlling and bossy
7. His team felt disengaged and their performance worsened
8. Frustrated, Ben did their work for them

Don't try to be nice, try to understand.

Working with Ben, I asked him about each of his team members. What were their strengths and weaknesses? What did they love to do and hate to do? What inspired them and deflated them? What are their aspirations?

Ben didn't know. Unintentionally, he was treating his people like numbers in a box and ignoring the rest. Accordingly, they were treating him like an uncaring dictator who only cared about work. Worse still, when they shared their stories with each other about Ben, his team created a perfect Us vs Them story. Ben was the wolf that sometimes wore Grandma's clothes to try and fool them. Watch out.

This is why curiosity is the path out of Bossy Leadership:

2. Empathy for people like me

The second misconception I see often is from people who claim to be very empathic. Often they come to me with an expression of exhaustion claiming that while they are very empathic, the problem is other people who just don't seem to see the world the way they do.

This is incredibly common in idealistic groups of all kinds and has really strengthened when it comes to politics in our modern world. To put this scenario differently, people are very sympathetic to their tribe and see the problem as the others.

This is a path that leads to ideological warfare. This is a position of righteousness, pain and division. Politics in the United States seems to show it most prevalently where this paper from the Paw Research Centre shows the rapid divergence of what was a relatively united political system: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ .

As I have written about previously, the easy part of empathy is to understand your tribe. Yes, you should, but this isn't the important work we need in the world. The harder yet more important application of empathy is towards those who are nothing like ourselves.

Have empathy for them. Empathy for the strange ideas. Empathy for the enemy (https://empathicconsulting.com/blog/f/empathy-for-the-enemy ).

3. Empathy of a psychopath

The final challenge I have found is that people sometimes argue that empathy can be weaponised. That bad actors can use empathy and understanding of others to manipulate, cheat and maliciously control others. Well, I have some bad news.

Of course psychopaths can use empathy as a weapon

Much like any other skill, it can be used for good and for evil. Soon after humans sharpened rocks, they probably started using them to stab others. Food, shelter and other resources were used throughout history to coerce, control and manipulate. Wherever people have found useful tools, there will be bad actors that will exploit these tools against others - often justifying it as for the greater good.

We see this everywhere:

• Food companies use chemistry to make food more addictive
• Casinos use environmental factors to create more gamblers
• Politicians use psychology and fear to create more supporters
• Criminals use the legal system to avoid prosecution
• Countries kill thousands of innocent people with deadly weapons

Exploiting skills, tools and understanding is not a new idea we should try to avoid. It is essential in our nature. It is what we do as humans.

In a world filled with AI, my concern is that we need to be more aware of our own human nature than ever before. We need to be more adept at understanding these tools, not try to avoid them. We need to be more vigilant when we see them being used to harm.

We need to be clearer on the ethics, values and empathy we have in every decision we make, otherwise AI will accelerate the division and give more power to the bad actors.

This is the focus of my new keynote: Ethics, Empathy & the world of AI

In a world of AI, we need more humans to have more empathy than ever before.

More empathy and understanding of themselves.

More empathy for those around them.

More empathy for the lives their decisions will impact.

More empathy, please.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate you

Daniel Murray

[email protected]