Empathy Unearthed: A Journey Towards Understanding Others Part II: Empathy in the Workplace

We tend to separate our personal life from our work life in many ways. Some of those ways are healthy (for example, leaving “work” at work so that when you are at home with your family you are fully engaged in those interactions, or leaving your hobbies at home so that you can focus on work when you are at work). But in some ways, we have gone too far in creating these two separate lives. At work, people are reduced to “employees, bosses, HR, high performers, low performers, janitors, CEO’s, assistants, project managers, developers.” When you are in a conversation with someone at work, you might be looking at them through one of those lenses.

We need to take those lenses off. They rob us of the opportunity to see the people in our workplace for who they really are - beautiful expressions of humanity worthy of our attention, kindness, patience, and every grace we can muster. These people matter. They matter much more than financial gains, project deadlines, or goals. Years later when your project is in the past and long forgotten (and you realize it did not really matter much anyways), your words may linger in someone’s ears, their memories of how you treated them lasting decades. You are not talking to an employee or a coworker, you are talking to a person made of the same stuff as you.

When you see someone as an equal (which they are, whether you see it or not), you can have genuine authentic concern for the person. This cannot be faked. You have to actually value them according to their true worth as a person. When this happens, it improves every interaction you have with your bosses, peers, and employees.

It takes everything in me just to get up each day, but it’s wonderful to see that you’re OK.

“I think a lot about the people who are supposed to not have any problems, who get married and live and die and it’s all been wonderful. I don’t know anybody like that. They always have some problem, even if it’s only that the toilet doesn’t flush.”  - Andy Warhol

In the last few years, I’ve seen these struggles up close in many people’s lives. Joblessness, homelessness, mental health challenges, divorce, depression, hospitalization. I’ve also seen countless other acquaintances face brutal life challenges. Enough to know that people are having a hard time when we don’t even realize it. When I interact with someone, I try to consider if they might be going through some hard stuff or have likely gone through it in the past. I try to be sensitive to the unknown struggles of people around me.  

Imagine this next time you’re talking with a person at work: you were both once helpless babies, each then shaped by completely different experiences, and all the decisions and circumstances and events that happened in the other person’s life, even in their morning this very day, led them to this one moment, sitting across from you, and every decision and circumstance and event in your life led you to this one moment sitting across from them.  How might this impact the way you relate to them now?

What a sight when the light came on

Empathy enables you to try to see things from others' perspective with a genuine sense of wonder, knowing that for some reason they have come to this opinion or that perspective and maybe you’ll be consumed less with pointing out why they’re wrong (or getting your own thoughts out) and more with trying understand them and how their perspective was shaped. Then when you do respond, your responses will be shaped by your understanding of that person, and you will be able to speak in a way that they are uniquely fit to understand.

With empathy in the workplace, conflicts become resolved. Proposed ideas get strengthened by diversity of opinions. Your most complex thoughts get translated into cohesive statements that are received exactly how you wanted them to land with your intended audience.  You can become a great communicator.

Empathy helps every aspect of your work to improve when it is the foundation of all interactions in the workplace - collaboration, crucial conversations, handling disagreements, 1:1’s with subordinates, peers, and those in leadership above you.

Here's a an Empathy Checklist that you can use.  Think through this checklist to enact empathy in any workplace situation with another person or situation. Reflecting on these points will challenge you to shift to an empathic perspective.

1. Every person on earth is equal to you, therefore this person is equally important and deserves respect and attention.
2. How can you show genuine, authentic care for them as a person in this moment?
3. Everybody has problems.  Be sensitive to their unknown struggles.
4. Why does this person hold this particular opinion, what led them to this perspective? (Feel free to ask them if you don’t know!). Reiterate their perspective so they know you understand it and to ensure you do.
5. How does their perspective differ from mine/what underlying truths might we disagree on which led us to these different places on this issue?
6. Could their perspective have merits over yours?  Could you be wrong? Talk through the areas where they might be right and you might be wrong, and vice versa.
7. Explain your opinion in a way that addresses their perspective and its merits or pitfalls.

I hope that my transparency about this journey into empathy has clarified my rationale for pursuing it, and please know that this is something I am continually learning about every day and in no way do I “have this down” or demonstrate this at all times. I could not have drafted this article five years ago. I reserve the right to be more empathic today than I was yesterday. And I resolve to be more empathic tomorrow than I am today.