Embracing Empathy in the Workplace | Jamil Zaki

And this is the thing, you know, I've worked with lots of organizations where people report that folks at the top aren't empathic towards them, or that their supervisor is unempathic in the way that they deliver feedback, for instance. Then I talk with those supervisors, and they're super friendly, kind people. And certainly when these folks go home, they're probably empathic towards their families, you know, and friends. I think there's a real problem, which is that sometimes people, especially in corporate settings and other settings, just have misconceptions about what empathy is, and they equate it with some fuzzy, hand-holding sort of weakness. You know, they have this creaky idea from evolution that, you know, animals must fight a war of one against all, and that's our natural state. And you know, what that requires is ruthless self-interest. And so these folks sometimes are probably very empathic at home, and they come to work, and they think, well, I don't want to sort of be weak, so I need to sort of be unemotional, or sort of be out for just myself. And that's really, that's problematic, you know. And I've talked with people in like, you know, in organizational settings where they say, yeah, I really want my company to be more empathic. And I ask them, well, what do you think empathy is? And they say, well, I think it means that you cry when someone else cries. Or that someone will say, well, I don't know if we should be more empathic, because then that means that we can't give people honest feedback about how they're doing, or we need to acquiesce to every demand that a team member makes, no matter how unreasonable. I had someone in a C-suite once tell me, well, if I was empathic towards my customers, I couldn't charge for my product, right? These are misunderstandings that don't help anybody, right? The truth is that empathy is simple to implement once you understand it, but those implementations can have really powerful reverberations through an organization.