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 lagging behind in their work. Because they just can’t seem to keep up, the team’s productivity is suffering. They’re dropping the ball, and people are beginning to be resentful. As it turns out, this coworker has a parent with Alzheimer’s, and they spend their nights and weekends caring for that aging parent. The stress of both being a caretaker and not getting enough rest has come to a head. Now this coworker feels not only that they are helplessly watching their parent slowly slip away but also that they are a bad teammate.

A sympathetic response would be one of pity. You’d feel sorry for them, but you’d still feel slighted by their inability to handle the situation. If they can’t get their work done, why didn’t they tell anyone? Not asking for help is kind of selfish, right? If it were you, you would have handled the situation much better, such that no one else would be affected by what was going on in your personal time. Sound familiar?

Sympathy is one-dimensional: you view that person’s situation from afar, and you judge it. In contrast, an empathetic response is multidimensional. You see what this coworker is going through and you’re reminded of a time in your life when you experienced something similar. You remember how that felt. You internalize the pain, uncertainty, and devastation of experiencing this hardship. Even though you don’t know exactly what your coworker needs at this moment, you know they need help. So, you offer to assist that coworker any way you can.

And that’s the biggest difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is passive. It’s a fleeting feeling that involves zero action. The result of sympathy, then, is one of embarrassment and hurt, possibly even anger. Empathy, on the other hand, is action oriented. It sees that there is a problem, and it searches for a solution.

What We Do That Makes Empathy Difficult

Even if we have the best intentions, sometimes we fall short of being empathetic. Often, this happens when we don’t even realize what we’re doing. We get into a routine and we plug away until we move on to the next routine. These are the times when we need to take special care of how our actions—such as being mindless and using negative messaging—are erecting barriers to the empathy we seek to foster.

Being Mindless and Thoughtless

Mindfulness and thoughtfulness are vital to maintaining an empathetic culture. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world that encourages either of those traits. We are constantly bombarded with content: social media feeds, texts, emails, calls, and alerts all do their best to steal our attention. That doesn’t even include the really important things in our lives that demand attention, like our spouses and children, parents, friends, and our actual work.

Mindfulness isn’t valued. It’s something wellness gurus suggest we do in order to “be present,” but we rarely take that advice. We’ve got too much on our plate, and are way too busy to take a moment to breathe. To be fair, being mindless at work is quite easy. Some tasks we have to do every day are mundane; they’re so boring or so simple that we truly don’t even think while we’re doing them. Sometimes, even when we complete a boring task, that mindlessness lingers and we approach the next task—or person—from that same space.

Of course, when we approach people mindlessly, things can go terribly wrong. When we are mindless, we don’t invest any energy into considering others’ feelings. We offend even if we don’t mean to. We miss out on the little cues people give us when they’re trying to convey a message. We sometimes say things that we don’t mean. This last one especially also happens when we are thoughtless. A lack of consideration for others’ feelings is clearly not empathy. Sometimes, however, it’s easy to slip up and not consider the consequences or actions. Being mindful eliminates those things. When everyone in the building engages others mindfully and thoughtfully, empathy flourishes.

Negative Messaging

The language we use each day directly affects the empathy levels in the office. One of the biggest culprits is the “us versus them” culture and the language accompanying it. Speaking disparagingly about other teams or individuals—“Our work would never be that lax, it must be theirs,” or “He slows us down so we shouldn’t include him on this”—is divisive, and it kills both collaboration and creativity. Another big offender is not taking ownership. Statements like “I could have finished this on time if sales had responded to my emails,” and “We know you wanted more research on this, but marketing didn’t give us the right information” are prime examples of playing the victim, and that kind of language (and behavior) destroys trust.

Combatting Failures of Empathy

It’s not difficult to avoid empathy pitfalls, but it requires dedication. All of us can of course be more mindful of the things we say, consider others’ feelings, and make the effort not to engage in negative messaging. However, there are more specific things workers at various levels—from leadership to management to the general workforce—should be focusing their energy on in order to combat failures of empathy at every level.

Leadership

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

William Arthur Ward

What happens at the highest levels of a structure will eventually make its way through the organization to every department, team, and individual. If members of the executive team interrupt one another during meetings, say one thing and do another, or avoid confrontation at all costs, those behaviors will permeate the entire organization.

Leadership can combat empathy failures by putting the emphasis on listening, being observant, and setting a good example. People might try to put on a good face when you’re around, but keen leaders can always tell what’s really happening within their organization. How? They listen to what their direct reports share about the problems—big or small, work-related, or otherwise—that arise. They know when to speak up and take control, but, more importantly, they know when to step back and not micromanage. They are genuinely invested in what the mood and feel of their office is, so they constantly observe their staff and look for the “tells” of a bad work environment: people taking lots of sick days, bad posture, no laughter, and a general sense of dread.

Maybe most significant, empathetic leaders lead by example. They know that what they do will set the tone for the office. So, they encourage positive and productive interactions by approaching meetings, one-on-ones, and even casual conversations with empathy in mind.

Middle Management

Managers are essentially doing two jobs: their skilled position and leading a team of people. They must check off tasks they complete as individuals while also making sure their direct reports are doing the same. And that’s all while defining clear goals for their teams, maintaining good relationships with their peers, keeping their superiors happy, and preserving morale. It’s understandable, then, that managers aren’t always thinking about soft skills. Communication can be short and icy. When morale wanes, they might have a “deal with it” attitude. And if productivity begins to lag, their first course of action might be pitting people against one another to light the fire.

For managers, the best way to combat these failures of empathy is transparency. Take, for instance, a team that just isn’t getting along. If there are serious interpersonal relationship problems in the group, the first point of contact shouldn’t be HR; it should be the manager. That manager knows each of these individuals intimately: strengths, weaknesses, gifts, personality traits, struggles, personal problems, and many issues in between. It’s the manager’s responsibility to get everyone together and figure out why the problems are happening. The manager should encourage team transparency as a means to solve problems.

Transparency should also be the priority when the manager is struggling. If there are rumors of layoffs, the manager should address them (within reason) as honestly as possible. If a reorganization is on the horizon and people are worried about how they’ll fit, the manager should walk through what that process will look like for everyone on their team. By being open and honest about what’s going on in the organization, managers can avoid failures of empathy.

General Workforce

The foundation of every organization is the general workforce. They might be at the bottom of the pyramid, but they do the lion’s share of day-to-day work that keeps companies successful. Empathy at this level, then, is incredibly important. Many in the workforce, however, might feel that what they do doesn’t matter. They are “worker bees,” small parts in a big machine; their actions don’t affect anything. The company would go on just as easily if they were in a great mood or a terrible one. But although they might feel insignificant, their actions are just as impactful as those of people that are higher up.

To combat failures of empathy in the general workforce, their focus should be on finding and maintaining perspective. When was the last time you heard a piece of gossip in the office? How about a rumor? Or maybe you overheard a coworker speaking badly about someone else? These might seem like little things—when you’re dealing with that many people, gossip is unavoidable, right? Nonetheless, they slowly but surely chip away at culture, for a few reasons. First, speaking maliciously about another person is rarely mature and never necessary. Second, gossip and rumors are often incredibly hurtful to those involved.

Third, and most important, when we engage in this kind of behavior, we are completely eliminating perspective. We see only a small snapshot of coworker’s lives, and often this picture is one that they’ve curated to perfection. It’s their highlight reel. We don’t know what’s happening beneath the surface. For the general workforce, focusing on perspective all but eliminates bad behavior. The result is a happier team and a group of people that truly trust one another.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

When did failure become such a bad word? Of course, there are times when failing is horrible, financially devastating, even lethal. Most of the time, however, it’s just annoying. It’s a setback. Does it feel awful? Of course. Is our confidence shaken? Maybe. But there’s another side of failure that we don’t often acknowledge, and that is that failure is a result of trying. And trying something is always better than choosing to sit on the sidelines.

If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at what happens when you try. You learn something new. You show people not only that you care about this new thing, but also that you’re invested in improving some part of yourself. You also get a few repetitions. Maybe one was successful; if so, you have something to work with and then try again.

Empathy isn’t easy. Evolutionarily, our number one goal is self-preservation. The thought, then, of putting ourselves in another person’s shoes or deeply identifying with someone’s pain goes against our nature. Why would we want to experience pain? We don’t; we want to avoid it at every possible turn. Something I say in every one of my talks is that you will fail at empathy; in fact, in the beginning, you’ll probably fail more than you succeed. But that’s not a bad thing. Here’s why.

Failure and neglect do not live in the same house. When you neglect something, you don’t even try to care for it. You let it atrophy because you have zero investment in its success or failure. When you are trying to engage in empathy, that alone is meaningful, and people will take notice. Remember, you are in control. So, if you fail at empathy, don’t give up. You can always try again.