Empathy

Empathy

Let’s be clear, even though Wiseman studied empathy, she also made it clear that, “expressing empathy or being empathetic is not easy.” When done well, it is incredibly rewarding. Medical researcher, Helen Reiss, says empathy:

“plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes prosocial behavior. This capacity requires an exquisite interplay of neural networks and enables us to perceive the emotions of others, resonate with them emotionally and cognitively, to take in the perspective of others, and to distinguish between our own and other’s emotions.”

It’s not surprising that relationships and connection are based on trust, which is a natural byproduct of empathy. Those effective in sales, marketing, teamwork and leadership excel because they are willing to listen and understand the other’s feelings and communicate that understanding effectively. If you are willing to master the art of empathy, you can expect longer client retention, employee longevity, loyalty, reduction in office drama and a more innovative culture. Because innovation comes directly out of being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes – to feel into what it is that they want or need, sometimes even before they do.

Companies like Nordstrom’s and Amazon have carved their way to success because of empathy. There are stories about the early days of Nordstrom’s when customers would come into the small California store looking for a particular item, and if Nordstrom’s didn’t have it, they’d call other stores attempting to find it elsewhere They understood that it wasn’t about that ‘sale,’ but it was about having a loyal customer for life. That is exactly what occurred – just like in the beautiful holiday movie, “Miracle on 34^th Street.”

More recently, Amazon has become a behemoth, because they listened to their customers. They could relate to their pains and cared about the ‘little’ inconveniences. What resulted is now an empire delivering that smiley face to almost every doorstep – vitamins, televisions, groceries – everything. And if you’re at my house during the holidays, Santa clearly resides in the warehouses of Amazon. If we take it a little further, the entire Me Too movement could have been prevented through empathy. With empathy, sexual harassment in the workplace wouldn’t have existed. The off-color jokes, uncomfortable innuendos and “locker-room” talk is quickly discarded if you are feeling what it would be like to be a woman hearing it. Career advancement in exchange for sexual favors would be, and is, unseemly, if a man thought about and understood what it would be like to only be advanced if he gave sexual favors. And someone with empathy would never want to have sex without the consent, full involvement and excitement of the other person.

In 1895, Mary T. Lathrap wrote the poem “Judge Softly” where she encourages the reader to “Take the time to walk a mile in his moccasins.” Empathy. This quote significantly impacted me when I was a kid growing up in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin on an Ojibwe reservation. Since my father traveled for a living, working with companies across America, he’d get on airplanes weekly no matter where he had home base. He chose Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin since it was a little slice of heaven nestled in the Northwoods, with lakes and rivers traversing the landscape. That also meant that my three brothers, three sisters and I attended the elementary school and were in the minority. Sometimes that meant threats of being ‘beat up’ or a knife flashed by someone who was failed a few times and now controlled the hallways.

I lived in the big house and early on I remember friends asking, ‘How many bathrooms do you have?  How many telephones do you have?’ I clued in pretty quickly that I had things that many didn’t. I watched and listened and began to learn that many Ojibwe friends had things that I didn’t. And when someone wanted to ‘beat me up,’ I made it clear that I would never fight. I’d talk and, more importantly, listen, and I would never fight back – even if I was shoved or hit. Why? Because I understood…a world where their ancestors were confined to a small area, and ‘given’ that land, as if it was our government’s land to ‘give.’ I understood that my dad would jet out weekly for his H.R. job and that there certainly weren’t those opportunities on the reservation. I understood that when I came to school wearing some matching outfit my stepmom picked up in Wausau, it probably felt like I was flaunting it. And I understood that the deck wasn’t always fairly dealt. So, nope, I didn’t want to fight back because I understood the fight and could empathize with my friends. It isn’t an accident that every one of my brothers and sisters and I wrote our college entrance essays on what it was to grow up as a white person in the minority in1970’s America. It defined us and is one of the things I am most grateful for in my life.

Oprah Winfrey has made a successful life of her words, “Leadership is about empathy.” She learned as a journalist to pay attention and listen to the story, then perfected it to understanding others when she reigned on network television. She cared enough to pay attention to people, and that had hundreds of millions of people feel like she understood them.

Consumers are also becoming wise to empathy, and Harvard Business Review’s Most and Least Empathetic companies show where companies are putting their money where their mouths are. Customers are beginning to discern where they want to spend their money based on what the company invests in. And younger workers are saying that the culture of the company matters more than what they are making financially. They want to be gotten.

What is your next level in creating a culture of empathy in your company? How do you teach people to care and really understand each other? How does empathy translate into understanding your customers and serving needs they have not yet articulated? It means investing in training from experts who are not ‘training’ or relaying information that can be copied from a PowerPoint. It means getting outside of the comfort zone of the culture, as well as each individual. And it means there needs to be a visionary CEO, who understands that depth of empathy will be the defining difference that has employees and customers remain loyal for years to come.