“We don’t care for people because we love them,
we love people because we care for them.”
Empathy means the ability to accurately perceive and understand emotions in other people. Understanding how to use empathy can help us clear up misunderstandings, build great relationships, and even negotiate more effectively. Most of us think we are above average in our empathetic skills. Of course, we can’t all be above average. We tend to overestimate our capabilities in social settings (it’s called illusory superiority and it’s one thing we are all good at). Here’s the good news. Like other aspects of emotional intelligence, empathy is a skill we can improve with relatively simple interventions.
What is empathy?
Empathy has three basic forms: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate. They are all important and each gives us a different capability.
Cognitive empathy looks like perspective-taking. People with this skill can understand why other people act in different ways. A person politically on the far right or left might say, “Yes, I understand why people on the other end of the spectrum think and act that way, I just don’t agree with their point of view.” You do not need to agree with people to have empathy for them, and cognitive empathy is critical to integrating with other people. For example, Chris Voss uses it as a core skill in successful negotiation (learn how here). Melody Wilding also makes a great case that having cognitive empathy for your boss can help you manage up effectively.
Be cautious about perspective-taking though. Studies of married couples show that even when we think we know each other very well, we struggle to identify another person’s mood and desires accurately. With this in mind, it is often better to ask – a concept known as perspective getting. Your intuition coupled with quality questions will undoubtedly provide a more accurate picture of the other person’s experience.
Emotional Empathy
When we have emotional empathy, we will find ourselves crying with the other person when they are sad and jumping for joy with them when they succeed. Using it can help us understand other people and create more meaningful relationships. A major downside of emotional empathy is that it becomes exhausting. Other people’s anxiety, sadness, and anger all cause our bodies to react with the same harmful hormones and it can become overwhelming quickly. This is a primary driver of burnout in the medical profession.
Mirror neurons help us link feelings with anyone we see. This is why you might cry at the end of Braveheart or feel excited when your boss comes to work fired up. Scientists discovered these neurons while watching a monkey watch another monkey. The same areas of the brain are activated when watching an action and when doing it. This helps us learn faster. We can start creating neural networks just by watching other people do something like swing at a baseball. These neurons also work with emotions. Leaders have the most influence on emotional contagion, maybe because more people watch the leader. When the boss is in a bad mood, the whole team will inevitably sour over time.
Compassionate Empathy
Compassionate empathy might include one or both of the others but ultimately causes action. When we feel compassionate empathy, we are inspired to care. I recently heard someone say “take care” as they parted ways. In essence, this means “pay attention.” Caring means we pay attention to other people’s lives and do things to help them or celebrate them because we know what’s going on. Caring is not wishing things were better for someone, it’s making things better for them.
In Atlas of the Heart, Dr Brown explains this difference as feeling sorry for someone who is stuck in a pit (cognitive or emotional) versus getting into the pit to help them out (compassionate). When we practice compassion, we get better at the skill of caring about other people.
“Caring is not a personality, it’s the discipline to pay attention and demonstrate care”
What kills empathy?
If empathy is our ability to understand other people, two primary factors diminish it – fatigue and power. Studies show that people with more power tend to have less empathy. In some ways, this makes sense, particularly for emotional empathy. It would be hard to fire a lot of people if you had to literally feel all of their hurt and sadness, even if you had to do it to allow the organization to survive. This is one reason leaders must cultivate psychological safety to encourage others to speak up when the leader goes off track. While emotional empathy might be overwhelming, maintaining cognitive empathy allows leaders to make good decisions.
Fatigue also diminishes empathy. When we get tired, it becomes hard to regulate our emotions let alone care about other people’s emotions. As always, taking care of ourselves is a key responsibility for leaders. We are letting our people down when we skimp on fitness, sleep, and nutrition.
Ways to increase your empathy
Practice critical thinking.
(Learn more about critical thinking skills.)
Start practicing using the reverse lens, a concept from this article on energy management. We get so caught up in our own stories, that simply thinking about another person’s point of view can be wildly illuminating. You can just read the news. Find an article you think is ludicrous and give it a try. Why would a person act like this? What could happen in your life to make you act in a similar way? If you are struggling, ask your favorite AI to impersonate someone with a different perspective and have a conversation. Better yet, go ask them IRL *in real life.
Improve your emotional fluency.
(Read this to understand emotions better and manage emotions more effectively.)
Read the above article for tips on how to perceive and understand your emotions more effectively. If you’re stuck here, you will have a hard time dealing with other people’s emotions too!
Practice caring.
(Read this on building better connections.)
I bet you have an unlikely best friend (or family pet). Life circumstances forced you to care for them for a time and a true relationship bloomed from those moments of care. You don’t have to wait for life to force you to care. Make a meal for some new parents or acquaintances who just lost a loved one. Send more thank you notes. Bring an extra cup of coffee to work for a new connection. Go out of your way to tell people when they inspire you in little ways or simply do a good job. Caring is simple and enriches everyone’s life.
The dark side of empathy
Paul Bloom wrote a whole book (Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion) about the downside of empathy. We can absolutely use empathy to manipulate people. That’s what Chris Voss does with terrorists in negotiations. It’s also exhausting. Unchecked emotional empathy exponentially increases the negative emotions we have to manage. All those extra emotions take a lot of your energy. Empathy can cloud our judgment as well. Bloom argues that when one suffering person is in front of us, we might care for them too much because of empathy. For example, we are more likely to give someone on the street corner $20 than to donate $20 to a local organization that helps get people off the streets.
Use empathy to connect and enrich
Despite all of this, developing and using your empathy will make you a much better leader and will likely improve the relationships that matter to you. An empathetic approach requires a selfless attitude, and we could all do with more of that. Empathy provides a tool to understand other people’s perspectives, but perhaps more importantly to build deep connections. When we understand other people’s perspectives, laugh and cry with them, and care for them, we forge rich connections instead of LinkedIn networks. Life means more.
At the end of the day, empathy makes us human – so get better at it!
Want more resources? Here’s a list of some of my favorites that influenced this article. Want to develop these skills with your team? Get outside with us!
Books, Articles, and Podcasts
Equanimity and Emotional Regulation More information on the concept of equanimity.
The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence A counter-argument to all of this.
The Three Kinds of Empathy: Emotional, Cognitive, and Compassionate Another description of types of empathy.
A Short History of Empathy Article on empathy.
How Perspective Swaps Can Unlock Organizational Change Article discusses how a company implemented perspective swapping.
The Good and Bad of Empathy Pros and cons.
Interview on why Empathy is bad with Paul Bloom Primer on Bloom’s book about the downsides of empathy.
The Limits of Perspective-Taking Article discussing overconfidence in perspective taking and how to get better data.
The Extended Mind Book about introception and thinking broadly.
Atlas of the Heart Book to help understand and label emotions. A few pages on each of the 87 common emotions we experience!
Primal Leadership Book about emotional contagion and using emotions as a leader.
EQ 2.0 Book with tips on improving in all four domains of EI.
Permission to Feel Book that details the RULER method for understanding and regulation emotions.
How Emotions are Made Book about the social influences on our emotional experience.
Permission to Feel Podcast with key points from Permission to Feel book.
Why You Should Not Trust Your Feelings Article arguing against completely trusting your feelings – a counterpoint.
Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On? Article arguing for a more comprehensive understanding of EI than “being nice.”
Emotional Intelligence is a Trainable Superpower Podcast episode discussing ways to develop EI.
1990 EI Article from Salovey and Mayer The first academic article on EI, and a different way to understand the concept from the way GOleman popularized it.
Emotion Wheel on Medium Wheel of emotions useful to label with granularity.
Mood Vs Emotion Quad chart using energy and quality to help identify particular moods.
The Science of Emotions UWA Great primer on emotions, what they are, and where they come from.
Positive Psychology 5 Ways to Regulate Emotions Blog full of info and tips on emotional regulation.
