BBC Best Bits | Ep 2 | Empathy Isn't Soft

Everyone says that empathy matters, but nobody actually teaches it. So today we're going back to hear from 2 experts on why that needs to change. In this episode of BBC Best Bits, we'll be digging into episodes 84 and 92 to hear about empathy as a leadership tool from Rob Volpe and the emotional aftermath of the pandemic from Niamh Fitzpatrick. I want to get into a bit of the detail of the book in a while, because I know you've got these 5 steps to empathy that are outlined in the book and in your training. I'd like to get to those in a while. I want to just kind of just dig into empathy a little bit more first, because I think that we often hear it described as that idea of walking in somebody else's shoes. How would you define it? It seems to me that's quite a high-level definition. How would you define empathy?

Yeah, that's the colloquial definition of it, and it is true. I often, when I'm giving talks on empathy, I'll ask the audience to give me some definitions of empathy, and I typically hear 3 different things. One is walking in someone else's shoes, but I also hear something around feeling the feelings of somebody else or emotionally connecting with somebody and understanding what they're feeling. And then I also hear being able to see the point of view of somebody else.

And the Yeah.

The thing about empathy and part of what's created the misunderstandings that so many people have today with empathy is that all of those are correct. There's different types of empathy and we need to know when and how to leverage that. So the way I define empathy is connecting with someone else in order to understand their perspective or their feelings and reflect that back to them, walk in their shoes as them. And that's the important thing of You know, taking your own shoes off, as they say, before you put on somebody else's.

Yeah, I love that. Take off your own shoes before stepping into theirs. You're literally leaving behind your feelings, your perspectives, in order to get a fuller understanding of theirs.

Yeah, yeah. Steve Case— I saw that attributed to Steve Case, CEO of Intuit, at one point, and I was like, oh, duh, of course, that's what you need to do. And, and for us, and we'll get into the 5 steps in a bit, but so much of that taking off your own shoes is about, you know, Dismantling your judgment and being present and having the self-awareness of what you're doing and how you're engaging in the conversation. So our shoes are more like heavy Doc Marten boots rather than— or construction boots rather than a nice little slip-on comfy pair of slippers.

I'm laughing and nodding my head vigorously, listeners, because probably there is barely an episode of this podcast that goes by where I don't get to get on my self-awareness high horse because I think that's something that's really sorely lacking, particularly in organizations, the ability of people to stop and say, was that the best way to do that? Could I have done that differently? I wonder how the other person felt. Maybe I should ask them. That's, I mean, I don't know about you, but that's something that I found sorely lacking in organizations.

Oh, it's, and it's been growing, I think, and becoming even more challenging over time. And I think with this transition to remote work and so many Zoom calls, team calls, what have you, choose your platform, You know, you don't have that breathing time in between calls anymore. And so you're just going from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next, and you don't have time to, to reflect and to step back. And so you're having to find those micro moments between stimulus and response to choose to dive in, have some self-awareness of, wait, how am I showing up? How do I want to behave? How do I want to respond? And do that. And we have to— It's kind of sad, but we need to prioritize that and prioritize doing it in the moment, as well as having a more general sort of reflection over a coffee or a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Let's get back to empathy for a second, because I want to just ask you, why do you believe that empathy plays such an important role in the workplace of today?

Empathy is this secret ingredient. If you want to be successful at work, regardless of the role, if you want to be successful in life, your personal life, your professional life, but we're talking about work. So if you want to be successful at work, you need to be a great communicator. You've got to make good decisions. You've got to problem solve, ideate. You've got to build trust with people. Empathy plays a critical role in It's the secret ingredient to all of these skills that we use.

Yeah. And what do you think, what are the benefits do you believe that has for employees? And then if you extend that out further, perhaps on organizational performance?

Yeah, I mean, the studies that are out there are finding that, you know, A, there's more loyalty to an organization if they feel, if the employees feel they have empathetic leadership or that the organization is empathetic to the point where 90% of Gen Z in a recent— so there's an organization called Business Solver, and they have a State of Workplace Empathy study every year, and I love this study. But some of their data finds that 90% of Gen Z are more likely to stay at an empathetic employer organization. They've also found that 2/3 of employees are indicate they're more likely to be innovative if they have an empathetic manager or leader versus maybe 13%, I think it is, that feel they can be innovative at work. So do you want your employees to solve problems, be innovative, come up with new solutions, help drive the business forward? There's evidence of an increase in a feeling of belonging and inclusivity if you have a more empathetic organization. And the challenge of that In that same study, 75% of employees recognize that there is empathy in their organization, but only 25% identify that empathy as sufficient. So there's a major gap there. And to drive your behavior. But there's this real problem because CEOs, leaders have been trained, oh, you're not— we have these very old masculine stereotypes of what leaders are supposed to be. And it's this whole sort of Mad Men. sort of thing. Emotions have no place. Well, it's not— no, it's not that. It's about seeing the point of view, hearing how other people are thinking. And Henry Ford back in 1918, there is a quote I found from Henry Ford in 1918, and he said, the secret of success lies in being able to see the other person's point of view as well as your own, and then effectively using that. And it's like, all right, over 100 years ago, And he was, you know, successful in the workplace and everything and leading a business. He brought that idea forward. So empathy has been around for a long time, but it's not taught, it's not championed. So we kind of squash it out. And it's time now to really bring it back.

Listen, one of the things that we spoke about, let's just kick off here. One of the things we spoke about when you and I did our little pre-brief was this idea You talked about having a sense of tribe. What did you mean by that? And why do you think that's so important?

Belonging. For me, tribe is about finding your belonging, finding your crew, finding where you're in that space where you get them and they get you. Sometimes there's a common goal, sometimes there's not. So for instance, I would think of, I have a tribe In my family, my family completely are my tribe. And we get one another, we have one another's backs, we're very tight. We've been through some tough things in life the last few years as a family, and we've cleaved together in that. So it's very much a tribe. In my workspace, I have colleagues who, for instance, are in the mental health space, and I have colleagues in the performance psychology space. And we are each other's tribes. We know one another, we support one another, we encourage one another.

Wow.

we call one another out, as in the family situation, we need to. But I also think then there are tribes around, you know, in life, finding your people. So for me, the people who are my tribe are people who turn towards their feelings, who express their feelings, who acknowledge their feelings, who allow their feelings. And they— those type of people, I gravitate towards those. I like that. People who aren't my tribe are people who just look for something to moan about, who are— who want to take offense that day, and they will find something to take offense about. They're just not my tribe. So I think it's about understanding who you are, what you value, what you stand for, what you believe in, and then really seeing in life, in your different areas, can you find people Do you find yourself around people who are your tribe in that way?

It's really interesting. And I think that we've all had that sense of kind of peace or calm or acceptance or something because we found people, as you say, that we are like, that we want to hang out with. And I think what's really interesting about what you just described there was that I think that lots of people would see tribe as the people I work with or my family or my group of friends. And it's a very distinct group of people. Whereas actually, from the way you described it there, which is actually an angle I'd never thought about before, it's actually much more about just there being lots and lots of people all around the place and your tribe is just very dispersed and you're just finding them as you go through life. And I think that's a lovely way to put it.

Yeah. And probably that bit maybe has come to me around, say, when I think of the social media piece. So I'm not really on social media except for Twitter, and I tend to be one of those people, I either do something or I don't. So I love Twitter, and I engage quite well in it, and I have a lovely space on there. I've found actually a tribe there in the grieving community on Twitter. If I post something about how I find my experience of loss and grief, the comments from other people who follow me or don't follow me towards one another within the replies are immense. And that feels like a tribe. There's people I've never even met, but this understanding that we all have this pain of loss and we're trying to learn and we are learning to live with that pain of loss, and sometimes we just need to express it. So there are people we haven't even met And if you wanted to take it a step further on tribe, I've felt a sense of tribe if I've been in with a sports team. So especially a hurling team or a football team. I nearly get shivers down my spine now when I think of that because that's really tribal.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that you're wearing the same uniform, you're in the same colors, you're, you know, you're working within the same county border. It really is my tribe against the next county's tribe, you know? So I think that sense of tribe can be wider than we might initially imagine.

Yeah, I love that. And I think probably one of the tribes that we see, because the vast majority of us, because we haven't won the Euromillions yet, still go to work. So we have our workplace and we have our tribe of people in work. And I think that back to a point I made earlier on—

For starters, I think why it took a global pandemic For the mental health piece to come into that conversation. One of the reasons is that when the pandemic came along and our lives changed overnight, we went from 60 or 80 or 100 or whatever speed we were going to zero, and everything changed. Our whole world's changed. The way we live, the way we work, the way we interacted with one another, the way we— Buried our dead, the way we mourned our— everything, the way we schooled our children, everything changed. So what that meant was within that, the elements of life that help us with our mental health ongoing were taken away.

Thanks for listening. If you want to hear these interviews in full, you'll find links to each one in the show notes. And for more on Inspiring Change and the work we do, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie.