Is Empathy Hard?
I saw this brief post on empathy by Karim Harbott the other day. Here’s the entire post—
OK. I’m going to say it… I find #empathy hard. I know many people who do too.
It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just hard to really feel it. I’m OK (ish) with cognitive empathy, but emotional empathy is tough. My brain doesn’t appear to be wired in that way.
I get that empathy is incredibly useful (empathy with customers, with colleagues etc.), but how does someone who struggles with this mitigate that? Telling people, they need to be better isn’t helpful. There needs to be more practical help for people who find this difficult.
#Neurodivergence is a factor here too, and we need to be a little careful. The world appears to be designed for neurotypical extroverts.
What do you think? Has anyone managed to improve their empathy levels? What did you do?
It inspired a thought in me that I wanted to share. But first, I want to emphasize that I’m not weighing in on the differences between neurotypicals and neurodivergence here. He rightly points out that this may be a part of the challenge.
I want to explore what I believe might be two sides to empathy.
Two Sides
As I noodled on Karim’s post, I thought of empathy from two perspectives—
One is the empathy I expect from others; I’ll refer to that as their empathy. The other is the empathy we extend to others; I’ll refer to that as my empathy.
And I’ll generally react to his statement that “Empathy is hard.”
Karim is talking about my empathy being hard for him or his extending empathy to others. But I’m curious. I wonder if he also allows for it to be hard for others. That is, understanding empathy towards him might be limited, and allowing it to be complicated. Or does he expect it (it’s easy) and have a challenge giving it (it’s hard)?
I’ll use myself as an example to clarify more…
I’m constantly working on my empathy. I agree it’s challenging, so I work hard on it. I consider it part of my EQ and Self-Mastery as an Agile Coach.
What are some of the things I do to increase my empathy—
Continuously develop my deep and active listening skills.
Continuously develop my reflective skills.
Actively observe folks in their contexts—walking in their shoes if you like.
Practice shifting my lens from me to them so that I can visualize their perspective.
Find common metaphors that help them and me to understand each other.
I coach others where I’ve had the same or similar jobs when I can.
I remind myself that I am a service to the other.
One of my motivations is that I expect people to be highly empathetic to me. I expect it to be easy for them. If not, I expect them to be self-aware of the gap and work on making it better or easier. I want them to easily walk in my shoes and look at things from my lens.
An aside here is that my ORSC coach training primarily provided a system coaching tool set to increase empathy. For example, Lands Work is a wonderful empathy-building exercise, at least in my mind.
Wrapping Up
I would say that wanting and expecting empathy is easy.
I would say that extending or giving or having empathy is hard.
I wonder whether there is a relationship between the two and whether expectations or activity in one can help the other.
That said, continuously improving your empathy in both directions is a worthy goal.
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.