This podcast explores the benefits of strategic empathy and its value as a leadership tool. Read the issue here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/9/Download the transcript: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/10/2003316776/-1/-1/0/COS-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-ABBE-YORKE-FINAL.PDF
Keywords: strategic empathy, perspective taking, H. R. McMaster, Ralph K. White, Zachary Shore
CONVERSATIONS ON STRATEGY PODCAST – EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Allison Abbe and Dr. Claire Yorke On Strategic Empathy
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Stephanie Crider (Host)
You're listening to Conversations on Strategy (http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/cos). The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.
Today I'm talking with Dr. Allison Abbe and Dr. Claire Yorke.
Abbe is a professor of organizational studies at the US Army War College and author of “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security,” (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/9/) which was published in the summer of 2023 issue of Parameters.
Yorke is an author, academic, researcher, and advisor. Her expertise is in the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, politics, leadership, and society.
Episode Transcript
Download the transcript: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/10/2003316776/-1/-1/0/COS-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-ABBE-YORKE-FINAL.PDF
Welcome to Conversations on Strategy.
What is strategic empathy and what is it not?
Claire Yorke
So, strategic empathy emphasizes the importance of understanding the other side within strategic decision making, and this might be an adversary. And often a lot of the scholarship focuses on adversaries, but it can also be allies. It can be societies. It's a way of having a deeper awareness of how different people view the world and how that will have a bearing on the calculations and decisions that you make on the implications of strategy when it touches ground, when it reaches contact point with the natural situation in a context, and it encourages us to think more about the context that different people come from, their experiences, their histories, their socioeconomic backgrounds, their perspectives of the world, their cultural context, and also the meanings that they give to different ideas to different values, to different elements of a situation.
Allison Abbe
As Claire describes, it's taking the perspective of another party, looking at the situation in their shoes, as they would say, “walking in their shoes.” But it is important to distinguish this from just care and compassion. I think sometimes when people hear the term empathy, they automatically think that it just means compassion for someone else and sympathy for another person. And it's much more than that. It's much more of those cognitive elements of taking their perspective and understanding their context as Claire said.
Yorke
It's that idea of having a broader range of emotions and being aware of them. It's not a weakness to have strategic empathy. It's an essential element of dealing with other human beings.
Abbe
And I think that's really one of the keys is that it's purposeful. It's not just thinking about someone else's point of view for its own sake. It's really using that perspective and using their lenses to understand and better make decisions and to better include them in your calculations and your decision making.
Host
What can strategic empathy add to our strategic thinking?
Yorke
It can add a number of different elements. Firstly, I think it's a critical asset in creating more strategic humility and understanding that there is not just one world view that dominates and that is integrally, right, intrinsically right. Cultivating that around ourself, there are multiple different competing realities right now as people see them. How do we build that into our approach and our sense of self and our identity? And so, it compels self-reflection in how we make decisions, in how we think about the world and understand, as well, how we are experienced by others. How do our words, how do our actions, how our behaviors have implications and often unintended implications? Maybe our actions are intended to be good, but they're operating against a background where they won't be interpreted in that way. And so, it gives that checking point. It gives a sense of reflection and humility and greater consideration to how we interact.
Abbe
And I think that's exactly right. You know, the military perspective, where I'm coming from and teaching strategic leaders as officers that will be working for combat and commands and in other areas, it's critical to military planning that they consider the impact of their actions and how that will be perceived. Those actions are not going taken... as they plan, sometimes there are unexpected and unintended consequences that the other party, whether that's the local population or the adversary, will not necessarily receive those actions the way they might be intended, and there is huge room for miscalculation when you're talking about understanding the adversary’s perspective. You can go awry in many ways when you're trying to understand the adversary perspective, if you're not taking those different lenses into account.
Yorke
It also can contribute an awareness of the need to ask more people to think about who's missing from the table, who's missing from our consideration. Who have we not understood? Who have we not engaged with? And so, especially from that military perspective, how do militaries build in greater engagement with different communities in a respectful, engaged way that doesn't undermine them, that is engaging with them properly in a very considered way to make sure that you have taken in various sources of information, various perspectives, into account? And that should give you a more holistic, a richer picture of the environment you're operating, of the ways in which power may look very different on the ground to how we conceptualize it in theory or in abstract or from remote capitals, and so, fostering greater nuance and complexity within the process.
Host
What limitations does strategic empathy have?
Abbe
One potential limitation is the way that empathy in general has often been discussed. It's in terms of taking on the point of view of someone else. And there is some risk in that if you don't then shift back to your own perspective, your own party’s perspective. That's sometimes talked about as going native. I think that's sort of an extreme example of what we're talking about here with the risk of empathy, but the important thing, and what I've talked about in the paper, is that it's perspective taking rather than the broader empathy concept where you're taking on the perspective of another party but then moving back to your own. And so being able to shift among those perspectives is really critical, and I think empathy can be misapplied when it's just a matter of taking on the perspective of the other party and adopting that as your own, then you're not making those distinctions and being able to shift in and out of the lenses that will be important to decision making.
Yorke
One of the limitations can be that, especially when you're dealing with a military environment where decisions are often having to be made very quickly in very intense situations, you cannot be constantly processing various different perspectives. Someone at some point has to make a call, and it may be that they get that call wrong. But that is why this emphasis on strategic empathy becomes so important because, in theory, you should have all your information—as much information as possible at the outset—when you're designing the approach, when you're thinking about the strategic calculations involved, so that then when you get to the very intense critical moments, you feel equipped and able to then process what you have to do with as much information and insight as possible.
Abbe
Empathy definitely is demanding on your cognitive resources, and you can't always apply it when you're in a time limited or very stressful environment. When those conditions are in place, you really fall back to defaulting to your own perspective. And so there may not be time, unless you've taken those perspectives into account in an earlier planning phase, so that when conditions change, you're ready to apply those perspectives. So, it can be limiting in that you don't always have time to engage in that cognitively demanding process when you need to.
Yorke
And this is a great point, as well, because it emphasizes that one of the limitations of empathy is exactly that it can cause burn out. Having more conversations among practitioners, among policymakers, among military officials, and people involved in the military means that you develop a greater emotional literacy around what it means, what it costs, what it requires. So, then you are more aware of when you reach that overload, when maybe the people who are serving can't keep on trying to understand other perspectives or what are the signs when maybe you've reached that burnout point. And so, being aware of that, that that can be too much. And creating greater...
