In a world of us and them, empathy is a way to bridge the great divide. But, these days, it seems to be in short supply. A 2021 Pew Research Report ranked the U.S. among the most fractured, wary, and distrustful countries in the world. Ninety percent of Americans feel our differences tear us apart.
As this plays out at work, it paralyzes teams. How can you possibly work together, innovate, or take risks if you don’t trust or even know each other. Empathy can help because it allows us to step into each other’s shoes and perspectives. But here’s the problem. Humans are hard wired to extend empathy only to people we already know or who look and feel like us. We often subconsciously withhold empathy from people of different races, ages, or genders. This keeps us entrenched in opposing corners. It sabotages well-intentioned diversity and inclusion programs.
The good news is, we can change this. “Over time, we can fine-tune our emotional capacities…we can free our empathy from its evolutionary bonds,” says Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University.
Empathy is a skill, and it takes practice. It’s one of the five skills of collective Intelligence that Reflection Point helps teams develop. It can expand inclusion,
boost collaboration and innovation and even increase profits. That’s the power and potential of empathy at work.
“Reflection Point is a window into the pure humanness that exists in the workplace. It’s a chance to defuse egos and flatten hierarchies.”
—Reflection Point Participant
“Think about the power of empathy, the ability to collaborate, the ability to understand each other, to consider different viewpoints. All of those are relevant to problem solving, to innovation, to teamwork. With Reflection Point we’re practicing those skills of listening, collaboration, empathy, and those things translate to our work.”
—Reflection Point Participant
We may think we know what empathy is, but the science and biology of empathy are incredibly nuanced. The bottom line: empathy is a critically important tool that humans use to make sense of the world and guide virtually all our social interactions
Five Exercises to Build Empathy
Empathy is not a fixed trait, but a skill that can be developed. Stanford psychology
professor Jamil Zaki has identified five ways to develop empathy:
1. Show yourself more empathy.
Think about a problem you’re struggling with and how it makes you feel and then imagine how you’d respond to a friend with the same issue.
2. Spend kindness on others.
When you feel like you don’t have anything left to give, spend time, money or energy on someone on your life.
3. Disagree without debating.
Talk with someone you disagree with and don’t debate. Instead share the story of how you formed your opinion and then listen to how they formed theirs.
4. Use technology to connect.
Use your digital interactions as a chance to better connect with others. Instead of just leaving an emoji on a friend’s post, why not text or call them?
5. Praise empathy in others.
Make it a habit to shout out empathic behavior when you see it.
Reflection Point’s approach works because it’s grounded in science and the latest research on organizational learning.
Empathy is one of the greatest barriers to inclusion.
Scores of lab tests have proven again and again that empathy is inherently biased. Humans are wired to be instinctively empathetic to people who are familiar and similar. We struggle to give the same level of empathy to people who are not like us: different races, different ages, different genders. Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University explains why: “Our instincts evolved in a world where most of our encounters were, in every sense, familiar. Friends and neighbors looked like us…The hormones that encourage parents to nurture children also made us suspicious of outsiders - potential rivals, cheaters, and enemies - and along with the ability to understand each other, humans developed a knack for separating ourselves in “us” and “them.” In other words, humans are programmed to exclude, rather than include.
Empathy can be learned.
Primatologist Frans de Waal and his colleagues studied empathy in bonobos and his experiments proved that empathy can be fostered. In a research center in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, orphan bonobos were often sold in local markets, and researchers brought back as many as they could to the center. These juveniles reconciled with other bonobos half as much as ones reared by their mother. However, researchers found these bonobos could learn empathy and the orphans were observed slowly catching up to their counterparts. Researcher Jamil Zaki concurs, “Even if we have evolved to care only in certain ways, we can transcend those limits. In any given moment, we can turn empathy up or down like the volume knob on a stereo: learning to listen to a difficult colleague, or staying strong for a suffering relative.”
Empathetic companies make more money and grow faster.
Research shows there is a direct link between empathy and commercial success. A London consultancy called Lady Geek created a Global Empathy Index using a combination of publicly available information and proprietary data drawn from surveys and social and financial feeds — including textual analysis of over half a million social media interactions. The research, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that businesses are more profitable and productive when they act ethically, treat their staff well, and communicate better with their customers. The top 10 companies increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10 and generated 50% more earnings.
In nearly a half-decade working with Reflection Point at MAGNET, our nonprofit manufacturing consulting firm in Northeast Ohio, I’ve seen up close how Reflection Point’s innovative approach has helped bring our team closer together and instill a more vibrant, productive, and inclusive culture.
Reflection Point’s group discussions centering around short stories take conversations among colleagues outside the crush of the day-to-day and to a place where the barriers usually present between teammates tend to come tumbling down. By using professional facilitators to stir up worthwhile issues, these dialogues allow people to shed the dynamics of the workplace and come as who they truly are.
Manufacturing companies by nature are heavily hierarchical places, but during Reflection Point sessions, every person from the c-suite executive to the warehouse worker is on the same level, just human beings bringing their own varied backgrounds and life experiences to the discussion.
Employees feel more comfortable speaking up while the entire team ends up with a greater sense of belonging.
That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about the Reflection Point approach. It’s a way to go a step beyond the summer barbecue or quarterly happy hour and foster relationships that truly matter. Get people in a room and, through shared story, allow us all to see the humanity in who we work next to, to show ourselves more fully, and through those connections feel more valued for who we are.
And the best part? It works (and not just in manufacturing – across industries). Survey data from before and after our program show improvements in social connection, psychological safety, and belonging, moving the needle significantly in areas such as, “I feel safe to take a risk in this organization” or “I can speak up even though I know that others disagree.”
In my work, I see a lot of manufacturers struggling with “where to start” when it comes to culture building, diversity, and inclusion. The reality is, there is no “one right way” to make change happen. It takes a lot of different approaches and a lot of hard work. The best advice I can give is just start. Start somewhere, keep going, and be open minded. I never imagined that discussing stories would help my team work better together – but that’s exactly what happened. First published in Forbes.com.
Reflection Point uses hundreds of different stories, so we can choose the ones that unearth the right themes and discussions for your organization. A few examples:
“You Are Now Entering the Human Heart” by Janet Frame
In a museum in Philadelphia, the narrator watches an attendant trying to explain the harmlessness of snakes to a class by draping a live snake around the teacher’s neck. In the chasm of experience between the experienced snake handler and the trepidatious “city” teacher, an uncomfortable tableau of shame and fear plays out in front of an audience of impressionable school children. The story tees up conversations about empathy, psychological safety and whether we truly “see” each other at work.
“Sunita” by Chibundu Onuzo
A young Nigerian woman wants to go into banking and is instructed by a mentor, an older black woman, to change her hair, her name, and the way she dresses to succeed in business. The story is about the young woman’s own internal wrestling with how to preserve her authenticity in the face of being instructed to change so many of the things that make her who she is. Dolapo and Sunita come alive in Onuzo’s short but arresting story, creating a platform for powerful discussions about race in the workplace, mentorship and allyship and what leaders can do to make all workers feel welcome.
When we bring colleagues together to share perspectives and reflect on powerful stories like these, we start conversations we wouldn’t otherwise have. We melt hierarchies and level the playing field. We kickstart connection, relationships, and, ultimately, collective intelligence.
Have you ever worked with a bully? I recently had an unpleasant meeting with a difficult executive. It started with a misunderstanding, but he quickly got threatening and defensive, provocative and prickly. I got out of the conversation intact, but it took a lot of patience.
Afterwards, I started to think about empathy. In the moment, I was so focused on defusing the confrontation, my brain had no bandwidth left to step into his shoes or engage with his point of view.
Science tells us that empathy is biased: we tend to extend it toward people we like and who are like us. We have a tougher time with people of different races, genders, or cultures. But what about difficult people? Does empathy reach its limits when we engage with someone we actively dislike or who antagonizes us?
This dilemma was on my mind when I co-facilitated a team discussing Charles Johnson’s Kwoon. In this story, David, a young teacher with a studio on the south side of Chicago, uses martial arts to impart discipline and belonging in his students. He follows his dream to build a community grounded in respect and mutual hard work.
Ed Morgan, a merchant marine as “thick as a tree,” comes to the studio and, in his first class, invites David to spar. Ed’s style is dirty and brutal. David is left bruised and bloodied. After a smug Ed leaves, David questions himself and the loyalty of his students, most of whom are dazzled by Ed’s killer instinct and speed.
As we discussed the story, the team was resoundingly repulsed by Ed’s violence and the cruelty of his decision to humiliate the young man with a noble mission. People were much more comfortable examining David’s motivations than Ed’s. It was easier to wrap their heads around the victim than the perpetrator. They averted their gaze from Ed because they had far more empathy for David. Ed was dismissed as a bully.
But still, everyone was intrigued by Ed’s character. As the story unfolded, it became clear that he was a wounded soul. He was searching for a community (a “kwoon”) where he could be respected for his skills. All he wanted was a teacher he could respect.
At the end of the story, David becomes that teacher. With pure grace, David swallows his pride and self-doubt and invites Ed back to the studio. He offers some advice, compliments Ed’s skills and asks him to teach the class. Ed begins to see that David has built a community bigger than himself, the kind of community Ed yearns to be part of.
“Ed’s character is very instructive – not only for reading the layers of the story but as an avatar for every bully. He is truly dislikeable at the beginning. But his complexity emerges in the face of David’s vulnerability. At the end of our discussion, the team didn’t like him a lot more, but they were more understanding and more compassionate. They realized how many wounded souls they had personally encountered, wearing the armor of a bully to mask their pain.”
Scholar Jamil Zaki explains empathy as an umbrella term for three intertwined ideas: thinking, caring and sharing. “Thinking” is cognitive: seeking to understand someone else’s perspective. “Caring” is affective: inviting an emotional reaction to another’s pain. And “sharing” is visceral: we literally feel what someone else is feeling.
Wrestling with Ed’s character helped the team to trigger this empathic cycle. Thinking about him helped them recognize his feelings and invited their compassion for his needs. It helped them practice empathy for the difficult people in their own lives.
It was a powerful moment for me too. The team’s discussion inspired me to reflect on my own “bully.” Thinking about the executive’s point of view invited me to see him in a more generous light. I still don’t agree with him, but I care enough about his feelings to learn from our encounter.
No workplace is immune to friction. We often cross paths with people we don’t like. Empathy is a skill that we can learn, starting with something as simple as a story. It’s a critical foundation of collective intelligence – that special connection and understanding that fuels extraordinary teams. With practice, we can see people in a different light, extend our empathy and give them the benefit of the doubt. Even if they are bullies.
