Empathy at Work

Chapter 4. The Barriers to Empathy at Work

We’ve all heard the stories. The coworker who makes jokes based on racial stereotypes. The director who can’t get through a meeting without making a negative example at the expense of someone’s work. Or the manager whose gaze lingers just a little too long on his female direct reports. It’s not always the big, obvious things that make an environment untenable. It’s the small things that slowly chip away at empathy, until one day you realize that an entire culture is toxic.

There are many ways people destroy empathy at work. It’s much more difficult for empathy to flourish in any environment if there are even a few “live wires,” because unpredictable behavior puts everyone on edge. It truly takes only one person to damage a great culture that you’ve worked so hard to cultivate. That’s why determining the barriers to empathy is so important. To do so, you must first determine what empathy is not, and then know how to break down barriers to achieving empathy.

Sympathy Versus Empathy

Empathy can be tricky for people to figure out. When they think they’re being empathetic to someone, they might actually be being sympathetic. Sympathy is feeling pity or sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person. The difference is subtle but significant, and it has serious implications in the way people feel about their interactions with you.

Suppose that you have a coworker who is consistently ...