Like many other buzzwords, the word ‘empathy’ has been thrown around so much that it has begun to mean something entirely different. When we hear the word empathy, we often think it to be something that is entirely positive and helpful, but what if this is not the case?

In reading Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy, I’ve found that much of the assumption around empathy can be misplaced and misunderstood. 

Empathy has its place. And, of course, it has value – when put in the appropriate context. But ultimately, what many executives I speak with are finding (paired with very interesting research), a misinterpretation of empathy is forcing us to lose sight of a bigger picture. We are so focused on an individual that we can make irrational decisions that aren’t beneficial to a larger initiative or organization. 

From actually promoting biases (we are empathic with our own type of people) to innumeracy (this one person is more important than the 100 or 1000 others) to increasing our stress levels (increased empathy has shown higher suffering later in the week), our perspective can be skewed with too much empathy. And with organizations going full-tilt in training and learning initiatives towards promoting empathy, businesses can be hurt and negatively impacted due to this misunderstanding. 

Empathy is good from a moral and humanity perspective, but it must be paired with logic, reasoning and compassion. Our learning and development initiatives need to provide empathy training within context, and teach the additional skill sets with it. 

As the world changes so quickly, and the very important recognition of the human beings that we work with, we have an obligation, from a business focus, to differentiate logic and emotion, and use these inputs to inform effective decisions to help businesses survive. Those that don’t will surely be left behind. 

More is on the podcast, and it’s a fun exercise to think, ourselves, about our own ability to feel, to give weight and compassion to others. Rather than blindly follow a basic learning agenda, we all know that context is vital as we build our own philosophy on interpersonal activity and relationships. I’ll leave that as your thought of the week!

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Hey folks, welcome to Bellwether episode 119. Today we’re talking about empathy and the case against it. , if  you know  me, pause for a second. Did he say that right? Did he say what? I think he’s gonna say, no empathy. No empathy.

0:18

If  you know  me,  you know  me well, um, you know,  my feelings on buzzwords and how generally when something is everywhere, it’s often misinterpreted and taught in the wrong kind of way. And we, we think about things and we overdo it. We completely overdo these things. And I read an interesting book recently by Paul Bloom, uh,  I think it’s called Against Empathy.

0:40

Um,  and it makes a really compelling case. And I, I instantly went to the workplace and, and the things going on in the workplace about how, um,  we’re, we’re, we’re teaching and pushing too much empathy, that it’s affecting the way our businesses can move forward. And, um,  and so like all the buzzwords, humility, vulnerability, um,  resiliency, all of these have been, have been just thrown around so much that they’ve lost their meaning and they start to mean something entirely different. Um,  and, and we often think of it as,  you know,  naturally positive and helpful, but as the meaning changes, we don’t really mesh those two things together.

1:19

And so, um,  empathy has its place. I have to start off, empathy has its place, but when it comes to being a good person, when it comes to making good decisions, we need to think of something. We need to use something different besides empathy. And one of the, I mean, the biggest challenge I have with empathy is a lot of it becomes down to the word should. I think the word should be eliminated from the, the English language.

1:42

It’s so judgmental. And, and,  you know,  to say that you should do something, it should be something, uh, you know,  I hate that and, and, um,  can’t stand it. So I, I don’t like to use that, but a lot of empathy. Um,  but a lot of, a lot of these buzzwords should, isn’t a buzzword, but humility, resiliency, empathy, vulnerability, all of these, I mean, those are kind of like the main four.

2:06

I’m sure there are others. Um,  and they just get blasted. People say, oh,  this is a buzzword, and let me do a, a, a training on it and a coaching on it. And it’s just the surface level.

2:15

I, I read psychology today and I’m gonna put it out. And, um,  there’s no full understanding of what these words really mean, and it leads to negative results. And that’s what I think is happening to empathy. And it’s beyond the workplace. It’s,  you know,  it’s in society and everything else. Um,  so let’s talk about, let’s, I guess I should kick it off by telling you that empathy is good, but there are many meanings of empathy.

2:39

And empathy is good when it’s contained within its compartment, I guess we’ll call it, we’ll call it a compartment. Um,  some people would say it means kindness and goodness in a broad sense, and I might agree with that. Um,  some believe it involves understanding people. And, and there’s a morality point of it. Um,  the way Paul Bloom defined it in his book against Empathy, um,  he said it was feeling the feelings of other people.

3:16

And I have a quote here. It says, by empathy, I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you’re in pain and I feel your pain, I am feeling empathy toward you. If you’re being anxious, I pick up your anxiety.

3:27

If you’re sad, I pick up your sadness. I’m being empathic. And that’s different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it, I care about you, but I don’t necessarily pick up your feelings.

3:38

And this is an important distinction. Um,  when we think about the workplace, and we think about beyond the workplace, actually, we’re all human beings. We’re all interact with community. I don’t know why I always say it’s for the workplace, but it’s, um,  when you give someone someone’s concerns weight, and you show value, and you show respect, that’s compassion.

3:58

We don’t need to take this work on ourselves, and we need to compartmentalize it within the bigger picture. And I’m gonna give a few examples of how empathy can be negative, um,  and misinterpreted and, and do that. But  you know,  initially, right, we pick up someone’s anxiety, we pick up someone’s negativity, we pick up someone’s sadness, we try to do all of these types of things. And, um,  first of all, you can’t.

4:26

You can’t, right? All you could do, one of my favorite sayings is we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. So we can’t really fully pick up the feelings of anyone else.

4:35

1

All we’re doing is punishing ourselves when we see someone else have a tragedy or a problem or a challenge or something like that. Um,  so when we take a look at the studies, one, it increases stress on you, the empathic individual. And I, I am an empathic individual. I know what you are thinking.  You know,  there’s a thing called cognitive empathy, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. It’s like,  I can kind of guess what you’re thinking. We’re the onl...