Understanding Empathy through trial, error, and good hygiene!

"Why Empathy?"  ...Seems like a great opening writing prompt for a collective that wants to talk about how to manage with Empathy: write a piece on why you think Empathy in the workplace is important (and introduce a little information about yourself as well). Well, that turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought! Jump ahead if you want to get to the point, but for those of you with time to kill, read on!

Showers and Empathy?

This essay sounds easy, I thought.  I like to imagine myself as an empathic person, and I firmly believe that empathy is a fundamental aspect of life we all need.   So, I opened my word processor of choice to explain why I think it is so important to manage with empathy one afternoon.

My first draft promptly took two weeks to complete.

When I cracked it open the next day for a full read-through, I confirmed what I knew already. Something was wrong.  The other editors in our collective were kind, but that draft was definitely bad.  Basically, it was just a word vomit about ‘Empathy Things’, and should have been split out into several articles.  Not all of it was terrible mind you, but as a whole it was...

Objectively, I could see that it didn't work because it was disjointed.  It covered a zillion topics, including a number of random thoughts about why Empathy is important in general, how it contrasts and even enhances ‘standard’ management techniques, and I even dove into how cycles and continuums provide some basis for it.  I ended with a theme about how Empathy at work, and in the world, is inevitable.  That draft covered so much ground but didn’t get within ten feet of the actual question as to ‘Why’.  And that made me pause.

Was my belief in the power of Empathy just a bunch of little ideas without a connection?  Why DO I think Empathy matters?   I needed to dig deeper to really understand this connection before I could hope to explain it.

Now, normally, when I encounter something that I don’t quite understand, I put it on the backburner of my brain to simmer a bit.  Over the years, I’ve come to trust that connections like this will come to me given enough time.  Sure enough, one morning in the shower*, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Instantly, I could see how much impact this one point has had over the course of my life and why Empathy in general is such a critical topic to me. I knew I needed to address that before I could even start on the specifics around managing with it, so lets start there.

So Cut to the Chase Already!

What did I discover that connected all these random thoughts about Empathy and explained to me why Empathy is so important? The answer was simple:

It sounds wonky, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me; an idea that has always been lurking beneath the surface, but never part of my formal thinking.  I’ve always known that connections matter in all sorts of areas, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to realize something basic: connection may be the most important consideration in our lives.  It certainly is more of a driver in my life than I’d really considered before.  It’s so important that I would suggest that life itself may owe everything to connection.  

Ok, that may sound a smidge crazy; let me try to explain.

Connecting Connections!

Continuing with my moment of clarity around connections, I started to look harder at where connections matter.

Given my thinking started with life, my first stop was Biology.  Evidence suggests that evolution started with proteins connecting to proteins.  Single cells then connected to other single cells, then groups of cells connected to form organs for more complex life, and so on.  Again, not a mind-bender, but connection is literally baked into our DNA.  Life encourages connection.  On some level, all lifeforms we know of are biological machines developed solely to discover and create connections.  I think it’s completely fair to suggest that we are all, in a very real sense, Connection Machines!

More examples? Ok!  Basic life seeks connections between movement and food (there’s more to eat if I wiggle over here).  Plants connect the sun and the soil. Animals have hormones that drive a compulsion to connect with other life in order to propagate.  Ecosystems?  Biospheres?  Systems of Connections. Connection is a likely driver of the need for intelligence at all; making connections between a stimulus and response makes it more likely for life to survive.  Humans make more connections than dogs, who make more than snakes, who make more than spiders.  As we start to broach AI, we see it’s value is in making and creating connections.  In effect, it’s not unfair to suggest that we EXIST because of (and indeed perhaps to make) connections.

Ok, how about Psychology and Social Science... Freud, Skinner, Pavlov? All about (sometimes too much?) connection!  Maslow’s Hierarchy? Right there, after food and shelter.  Why are our friends our friends? Because we connected over Baseball or Barbie or whatever.  You like the Lord of the Rings? Me too!  Remember that time... in 3rd Grade English; in early morning Freshman Computer Lab; when we went out after the show?  You have shared experiences, shared beliefs, shared friends? Viola – you're connected.  Why did you join that cooking/knitting/gym class? To make a connection with people that enjoy food/clothes/sweating, like you do.  

I kept going.  Civics and History: civilization itself is basically an artifact of connection…. families connect into tribes, tribes connect to form communities, communities connect as countries.  We group together like this because we all seem to have some level of need to connect to others.  At each level of history, we’ve developed tools because of these connections, and those tools have similarly strengthened our connections and helped push us to the next level of evolution.  Hunters connected to weapons, farmers connected to tools, factory workers connected to drive the industrial revolution, information connects all of us via the internet – these are all connections, and these connections drive more connections.

Growing Importance of Connection

So, after putting a connection lens over my eyes, I started to see the value of understanding connections better.  And it seems to be growing even more important every day as we are constantly connected to new ideas (or old ones for the first time).  The internet age has brought more connections to the forefront of our lives very rapidly; but many of us don’t understand why connection matters so much, let alone how to manage it.

Example: talking turned into writing, which turned into books... then radio, then TV, then the internet.  At every level we connected more and more people in more and more ways.  And with each new tool and advancement, the number of connections increased (though we lamented that the strength of those connections lessened).  Today, most people believe they have more connections available than at any other time in history.  At the same time, most people feel those connections are weaker than ever before.  This makes some sense; the more connections you have, the weaker each of those connections likely may be, as we’re limited by time and energy.

Making connections is what drives our value to society in many ways.  Able to connect with others on Insta or Facebook?  You’re an influencer. Able to connect ideas and stories with readers and viewers? You’re a writer, or a director.  Able to connect two software services? You’re a developer.  A team? A Manager.  A company? A CEO.  And the larger the groups/products/services you connect, the more value you likely have in the world.

Think about it: those who are more efficient at managing their connections or who can draw connections between larger and more complex ideas, tend to do better. People with strong positive connections report more feelings of happiness and success.  Those without good connections can feel alone, lost, and even struggle with depression.

So...Why Empathy?

So, getting out of the shower, I realized that I was struggling to make a connection between all those random thoughts on Empathy because I wasn’t making THIS connection:

Most people think of Empathy as ‘having compassion for others’, or, ‘understanding what others are feeling’.  And that is part of the story; but the other part is how having that understanding, in turn, creates, strengthens, and nurtures your connections.  Without understanding something or someone, you cannot really connect to it, but it’s the connection that matters most.  So given the changes and increases in need for connections in our lives, Empathy matters more today than ever before.  As the number of connections we make throughout our lives grows, we need to get better...  Better at being conscious of these connections, better at building strong connections quickly, and better at managing those connections actively.  Empathy is the key.

You want to understand someone’s political viewpoint? You need to have empathy for your fellow citizens' beliefs and connect to their needs.  You want more people on your Tik-Tok? You need to understand your connection to your audience better.  You want a better relationship with your significant other? You need to work on better understanding who they are and how you connect to them (and how they want you to connect).

Ok, so why Manage with Empathy?

Understanding how critical Empathy is in general, is exactly why it's important to use in the workplace.

Empathy and connection are nothing new, but they’ve never been more critical to accomplishing your work goals than now.  It’s why the terms ‘Emotional Intelligence’, ‘Soft Skills’, and ‘Toxicity’ are becoming critical aspects of the workplace; and as technology makes our world more connected, they’re also only going to be more important from here on out.  We’re writing this blog to help connect to those of you out there that may be struggling with some aspects of this sea change in attitude and thinking, and to those of you who may not be sure how to integrate empathy into your operations.  As a collective, we’ve been leading with Empathy for a long time, and hopefully our experiences can help inform you as you navigate this brave new world.  

So that’s ‘Why Empathy’ for me, and why I feel so strongly about applying it to our work.  I believe in connection, and the power it has over so many aspects of our life, and work is one of the largest parts of most of our lives.  It amazes me how little time we spend thinking about and managing our connections with Empathy, and I am hoping to change that in some way.  I believe we all need to care about connection more, and work harder to connect with each other. And I believe that Empathy is the means to do so; in every aspect of our day.

Ok I think that’s a lot to chew on.  I hope this message connects with you, fellow Connection Machine™! - and I look forward to discussing more ways that empathy can help us all build and manage connections in the workplace, and every aspect of our lives!

*End Note: [Shout out to all my slow pondering or cooking friends out there! Side note in the end note – why is it the best thoughts always seem to come out in the shower??]