Practicing Empathy in a Complex World

“Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.”

-??????Barbara Kingsolver

?The idea of empathetic leadership is not a new one. And while talk of practicing empathy preceded the pandemic and spiked during the height of it, I’ve noticed some things that make me wonder where we are today.

I spend a lot of time talking to people… on the record and otherwise. Procurement and supply chain are still (understandably) in survival mode, but we can’t realistically maintain that forever. People seem stressed out, short, unhappy. With the news about the Q2 GDP, we’re waiting for the other economic shoe to drop at any moment.

In this week’s episode of Dial P [listen here], I dug deeper into the practice and challenges of empathy – in business and beyond.

Empathy is a ‘soft’ skill, albeit an important one, but we still need to approach it from a data-driven standpoint.

First the good news:

• “Data from LinkedIn shows that the number of member posts on the site that included terms like empathy, empathetic, compassion and caring doubled from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2021.” (WSJ)
• In 2021, 90 percent of US workers believed empathetic leadership led to higher job satisfaction and 79 percent agreed it decreased employee turnover. (EY Consulting)
• Empathy is one of the most important skills to have in the workplace, because it helps people perform better on interviews, securing new contracts, and build internal influence outside of traditional reporting structures. (Indeed)
• 83 percent of Gen Z employees prefer an empathetic workplace compared to 75 percent of the general workforce. (getimpactly.com)

But then reality sets in:

• In February of 2022, Gallup ran a poll of 15,000 U.S. workers. About a quarter of them said they ‘strongly agreed’ their employer cared about their wellbeing, while half said the same thing in the spring of 2020.
• CEOs aren’t exempt: The 2022 State of Workplace Empathy found 68 percent of CEOs admitted they fear they will be less respected if they show empathy in the workplace—a 31-point increase over 2020. (Businesssolver)

Not to be outdone, I ran my own poll to see if I could zero in on why we struggle to practice empathy at work.

Theresa Wiseman, a nursing scholar, noted four attributes of empathy: perspective taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotions, communication.

As shown in this chart, I found that most of us equally good at understanding the emotions and perspectives of others and communicating that. Where we struggle is in refraining from passing judgement.

Perhaps what we are missing is a deeper understanding of WHY people feel the way they do or hold a certain point of view. This is what separates empathy from sympathy.

While sympathy says, “I’m so sorry for what has happened to you,” empathy gets right into someone’s shoes and walks around in them. Empathy feels others’ feelings firsthand. Empathy lives vicariously through others, without distance.

In short, empathy is exhausting, and it is resistant to scale.

?‘Empathy fatigue’ is real. A phenomenon that in that past would have been concentrated in hospitals and Hospice staff, empathy fatigue has rolled out into the general population – corporate workers, managers, and leadership teams included.

Which means that we all need empathy today more than ever before.

I did pick up a few techniques while researching this episode of Dial P, and don’t worry: they’re not all ‘huggy fuzzy’ tactics.

• Ask questions and make eye contact until the person is done answering
• Be flexible whenever possible because non-work challenges are important too
• Fight the temptation to pass judgement on others… at all costs.

Listen to Dial P for Procurement episode 37: Sustained Empathetic Leadership in Turbulent Times

Other Content Released This Week

?? This Week in Business History for August 16th: Julia Child- "Only a Businesswoman"

? Interview Recap: Who Do Patents – and Contracts – Protect?

?? The Sourcing Hero podcast Episode 78: Empowering Procurement to Create Broader Value with Brian Chaplin