Stepping into their world

THEIR WORLD In the first of a three-part series, SARAH HINCHLIFFE considers Roman Krznaric’s thoughts on empathy

SARAH HINCHLIFFE is a director of i4 Sales Performance,* a business focusing on helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve sales and bid excellence. i4 is a Shipley Business Partner. See i4salesperformance.co.uk or email sarah@i4salesperformance.co.uk *i4 Sales Performance is the brand name of the services supplied by i4 Consultancy and Design. F ollowing my feature in the last edition, looking at how Aristotle’s three persuasive appeals – ethos, pathos and logos – can be used to create winning proposals, I decided to dive deeper into pathos. This led me to Roman Krznaric’s fascinating book on the subject, Empathy. The two key features of the book are the “Six habits of highly empathic people”, and the plethora of examples of empathic people. In this article, I skim the surface of Krznaric’s six habits and pick my favourite characters or scenarios to illustrate each of them.

EMPATHY DEFINED Empathy is defined as, “The art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that to guide your actions.”

So, empathy is all about discovering, understanding and accepting different tastes and views. We learn that there are two types of empathy: “affective empathy”, which is a shared emotional response, and “cognitive empathy”, which is about perspective taking. It is important to develop both. And there is a distinction between empathy, which can relate to positive or negative situations, and sympathy (or compassion), which typically “Do not judge your only has a negative connotation relating to pity or mercy in a bad situation. neighbour until you walk two moons in idea that humans are naturally selfish and aggressive – we must

A whistlestop tour of empathy his moccasins” compete to survive. through the ages confirms that it Cheyenne saying In modern times, who hasn’t isn’t a new fad. We find empathy- heard the phrases “looking after related words and sayings from number one” and “what’s in it for different languages around the world that stem me?” (WIIFM). Instant gratification, happiness from centuries ago. through therapy, and craving to be slim,

We are all wired for empathy, but it’s been beautiful and fashionable are hallmarks of swamped for centuries by a growing focus on today’s society. All this is fuelled by marketing “self”. Over four centuries, eminent scholars such and social media. Yet many people are still as Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Charles dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Tuning back into our Darwin and Sigmund Freud have reinforced the empathic brains could be the answer.

Having set the scene, Krznaric introduces us to the six habits. Let’s run through them. And remember, this time around we are just getting familiar with the theory – next time we will apply it in our world. But just for fun, I’ll set some little challenges along the way, which you can ponder with personal or professional examples. HABIT 1: SWITCH ON YOUR EMPATHIC BRAIN “Shifting our mental frameworks to recognise that empathy is at the core of human

CHALLENGE 1

Think about times when you have mirrored a feeling or understood another person’s perspective nature, and that it can be expanded throughout our lives.”

Habit 1 is really all about tuning into and recognising empathy. To convince us that it’s really there in all of us, Krznaric describes three groundbreaking advances in understanding empathy, as follows: l First, neuroscientists have identified an empathy circuit responsible for cognitive and affective empathy – it includes mirror neurons, which allow us to feel what other people feel or do what others are doing in a form of imitation or mimicry. Examples include yawning when you see someone else yawn, or flinching when someone is hurt l Second, evolutionary biology has proven we are naturally cooperative and empathic, like primates (and other animals). Research into apes shows how they groom, protect and comfort each other l Third, child psychology shows that even small children can see things from others’ perspectives. My favourite example is a child who learnt to give her brother his favourite toy when he cried rather than her favourite toy, which had been her first inclination.

The good news is that we can all learn to be more empathic early or late in life. Training doctors to have a better bedside manner has produced benefits for doctors as well as patients – doctors feel more fulfilled and patients feel more satisfied with the care they’re getting. HABIT 2: MAKE THE IMAGINATIVE LEAP “Making a conscious CHALLENGE 2 effort to step into other Have you jumped to a people’s shoes – conclusion about including those of our ‘enemies’ – and to acknowledge their someone, and later revised your opinion? What changed? humanity, individuality and perspectives.”

Habit 2 takes us to the next stage – really tuning in to other people. But we meet four barriers that tend to prevent us.

First, prejudice, for example in the form of stereotyping, tends to cause us to pre-judge people and jump to conclusions, often negative ones. This can prevent us appreciating good qualities. Then, authority often gets in the way of people’s empathy – poor behaviour is often blamed on simply “following orders”. And then there are the barriers of distance and denial. We have less empathy with people if they are distanced from us through their location, community or social position – we care more about those who are close – and it’s easy to turn a blind eye, especially when they are a long

way away or we feel disconnected from them.

Highly empathic people tend to be more open-minded and prepared to defy authority.

They treat everyone they deal with as individuals and humans, even those they dislike or fear. HABIT 3: SEEK EXPERIENTIAL

CHALLENGE 3 ADVENTURES Think of examples of experiential adventures “Exploring lives and cultures that contrast that you have with our own through participated in or direct immersion, heard about empathic journeying and social cooperation.” Habit 3 is about taking a bigger step towards understanding and really stepping into someone else’s shoes. Krznaric tells of people who have travelled and lived, often in disguise, to experience first-hand the lives of others. Sharing these adventures often contributed to major social reform – take Gunter Wallraff, a German who posed as a Turkish immigrant, cleaning toilets. His book, Lowest of the Low, charting his abuse by employers, citizens and authority, sold 2m copies and led to changes in protection of foreign labour. Other empathic journey-folk changed corporate attitudes. A 1970s designer,

Patricia Moore, changed the face of design after taking on the persona of an 85 year-old woman over three years to understand age-related issues and inform the design process. HABIT 4: PRACTISE THE ART OF

CHALLENGE 4 CONVERSATION

Think when you “Fostering curiosity dashed off an email or about strangers and text, then wished you’d radical listening, phoned or spoken face-to-face and taking off our emotional masks.” If habits 1, 2 and 3 are about tuning in, refining the frequency and observing from behind a mask, habit 4 is about really engaging.

It’s about being a genuine, interested enquirer.

It’s about asking questions, caring about the answers and showing some vulnerability.

In the age of email, text and social media, picking up the telephone is hard enough, let alone actually making eye contact and starting a conversation with a stranger. But that is what we need to do to re-engage with society and each other in a truly empathic way. Anything less and we risk being remote and superficial. Contrast the inspired idea of the lady called Sarah, who was brave enough to invite all the other Sarahs in her office block to meet for a chat, with the impersonal concept of Chatroulette, where you take pot luck with an online conversation and just drop it for another if you get bored.

HABIT 5: TRAVEL IN YOUR ARMCHAIR “Transporting ourselves into other people’s minds with the

CHALLENGE 5 help of art, literature, film When were you last and online.” moved to action by Although habit 5 risks being something you saw, second-hand experience, heard or read? “armchair empathy” has history and merit. Theatre, films, photos, books and songs have aroused emotion and inspired action throughout the ages. Well-targeted and used carefully, our senses can be developed and refined by different media. When fired up, empathy can help to modify views and change attitudes. Who hasn’t been moved by books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncle Tom’s Cabin? In their day, they brought injustice into sharp relief. We must just be mindful that our emotions can be dulled by too much emotional fatigue and we can drift into sympathy rather than empathy, or even back to distance and denial. We need to tune into our media sensitively. HABIT 6: INSPIRE A REVOLUTION “Generating empathy on a mass

CHALLENGE 6 scale to create social change, and extending our empathy

Is there something you would like to radically change? skills to embrace the natural world.” What could you do to Habit 6 is somewhat ambitious raise awareness? and I’m not about to suggest we all revolt. However, Krznaric takes us into the final furlong with examples of major national and global change that were fuelled by mass empathy. The abolition of slavery and civil rights reforms would never have happened if people hadn’t started to really understand the experiences of others. In more recent times, global charities and environmental movements have helped protect people and places – think Live Aid and Greenpeace. NEXT UP, EMPATHIC SELLING Krznaric’s book runs to 244 pages, not including the notes and acknowledgements. I doubt I have done it justice in this short article. But it did inspire me. Next time, I’ll share my thoughts about how the habits map onto selling.