Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.
- Barbara Kingsolver
Episode Summary
Empathy is frequently cited as one of the most important qualities in hiring, management, and corporate culture in general. Empathy peaked in 2020 as communities and companies rallied to withstand the pandemic, but time has a way of wearing away all things.
Are we finally succumbing to ‘empathy fatigue?’
In this week’s Dial P audio podcast, Kelly Barner gathers data and anecdotes – plus a little custom research – to assess how effective our current empathy practices are:
• What empathy really means on individual and leadership levels
• The costs associated with practicing empathy
• Why empathy is not happiness and can’t be mandated
• How we can all get better together
Episode Transcript
Intro/Outro (00:01):
Welcome to dial P for procurement, a show focused on today’s biggest spin supplier and contract management related business opportunities. Dial P investigates, the nuanced and constantly evolving boundary of the procurement supply chain divide with a broadcast of engaged executives, providers, and thought leaders give us an hour and we’ll provide you with a new perspective on supply chain value. And now it’s time to dial P for procurement
Kelly Barner (00:31):
As the late. Great Joan Rivers would say, can we talk? Listen, the last couple of years have been hard on parents. Spouses, families, all lives disrupted, thrown into homes together, trying to figure out new ways to make it all work. Now, finally, it seems like most of the world is getting back to some level of normal and yet supply chains and procurement organizations are still pegged. Now over the last few weeks, dial P has been getting great feedback for being objective independent and empowering people by giving them the information to make up their own minds. And I think it’s important to cover some of the news stories and industry topics that so many of us deal with on a regular basis, but all content has to have a balance. And I like to think of myself as being very plugged into our community. We’ve covered a lot of hard hitting topics, intellectual property, law oil, industry, profitability, federal government subsidies for semi-conductor manufacturing.
Kelly Barner (01:43):
These are important, but intense things. I’ve asked a lot of you as a listening community and you’ve rewarded that handsomely, but I’m also very aware that for each of us and for all of us together, our work is so much more than that. We’re all people just human and truthfully it is personal. I spend a lot of time talking to people all day. It seems like sometimes recorded and sometimes not. And I do understand that many of us are still in survival mode. Now the truth of that now withstanding we can’t realistically stay in survival mode indefinitely and also be empathetic coworkers or managers, people seem stressed out short, even unhappy. You would think given the fact that people’s vacations are starting back up, would’ve helped, but I have a feeling it’s actually stressed people out more. And then add to that, the news about the second quarter GDP.
Kelly Barner (02:51):
And we’re all just sitting around, waiting for the second recessionary shoe to drop. It’s really what we needed, frankly. I’m a little worried about all of us. I think we’re gonna be okay. But I do think a pause is in order in this week’s episode of dial P I’m going to focus on empathy. What does it really mean to be empathetic? What do we have to do on an individual level? And then as managers, in order to practice empathy regularly at work, you know, I’m in procurement. So I’ll tell you everything has a cost including empathy. So we’re gonna look into some of that. And we’re also gonna talk about why empathy is not the same thing as happiness and why you truthfully can’t mandate it. But as you would expect, I have some suggestions. So we’re gonna end on a positive note. Now, before I go any further, if you happen to be new to dial P let me introduce myself.
Kelly Barner (03:52):
I’m Kelly Barner, I’m the co-founder and managing director of buyers meeting point. I’m a partner at art of procurement, and I am your regular host here for dial P on supply chain. Now I’m constantly scanning the news for complex articles that I think are worth our time to understand and discuss. But I also stay on the lookout for things that I think maybe have escaped. People’s notice because they’ve fallen from favor and that’s what we’re gonna do this week. We’re going to talk about the thing that’s not being talked about. My goal is never to lead you to a simple answer, but instead to provide you with the background and context, you need to form your own opinion. Now D P releases a new podcast every Thursday. So beyond the lookout for future episodes, and please go back and check out some of my past content and conversations as well.
Kelly Barner (04:47):
If you see value in what you hear today, I’d love to ask you to follow us, give us some stars or a review on iTunes on LinkedIn, share this conversation with someone in your network that you think needs to hear it. We’re grateful for your interest and attention. And we constantly strive to deserve both. All right. So before we start this conversation, I would like us as a community to X hail. Empathy’s not a new idea. Even the word it comes from a late 19th century German word for feeling into or I’m full, which is a more expansive notion than sympathy. Sympathy gives you the poor. You I’m really sorry. That thing happened to you, or I’m sorry that you’re going through this situation right now. Whereas empathy walks a mile in someone else’s shoes. It thinks and feels as they do. And it experiences all of the relevant emotions.
Kelly Barner (05:51):
Along with them. As we grow up, empathy becomes less of an obvious focus. You can watch almost any children’s TV show or movie, and there’s some character that is overtly rewarded for their empathy. And each of us has varying levels of natural empathy as part of who we are. Some activities and traits associated with empathy are easier for some of us than others. So what exactly does it entail? There? Wiseman is a nursing scholar and she noted four attributes of empathy. They are perspective taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing others’ emotions and communication. Now all four of those things are very hard to do, especially consistently. So I decided to run a poll on LinkedIn and ask the people in my community, which of those four attributes they think is the hardest to practice regularly at work. As I record, there’s a few more hours left on the poll, but generally speaking, I think the results are in.
Kelly Barner (07:01):
And they’re very interesting. So the number one response was not passing judgment over a third of the people that took the poll said that that’s the hardest thing to do on a regular basis. And the other interesting thing is that the other three options were relatively close to each other, recognizing others’ emotions and communicating understanding are tied at 23%. And understanding others’ point of view is at 20%. So by a pretty close margin, we’re equally able to understand what others are going through. We can recognize or appreciate their point of view. And we can communicate back to them in different ways that we understand what they’re going through, where we struggle is in resisting the urge to pass judgment on others. Now, as you might expect, there are also some generational differences in terms of how we experience and practice empathy. According to the site, get impact lead.com, 83% of gen Z employees prefer an empathetic workplace compared with 75% of the general workforce population.
Kelly Barner (08:10):
So empathy is increasing in importance with younger generations, just like we see similar trends around work, life, balance, diversity and inclusion, all of those kinds of things. This is following a similar path. And of course, that brings us to the main point today, the role of empathy in the workplace, which I would make the case is more important now than ever. According to the job search site, indeed empathy is one of the most important skills to have in the workplace. Empathetic people perform better in interviews. They’re more effective at securing new contracts. There’s an important one for procurement professionals, and they’re better at building internal influence outside of traditional reporting structures. There’s also evidence that empathy increases the performance of teams, and it improves regard from managers and bosses, a 2021 EY consulting survey found that 90% of us workers believe empathetic leadership leads to higher job satisfaction and 79% of them agree that it decreases employee turnover.
Kelly Barner (09:21):
That’s something every company wants to do today. Empathy, especially as relates to leadership has been a huge trend in sources like Harvard business review and the wall street journal and Forbes. But we have to wonder, is it starting to fall off? According to an article in the wall street journal data from LinkedIn shows that the number of member posts on the site that included terms like empathy, empathetic, compassion, and caring doubled from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2021 end quote. And yet in February of 2022, Gallup ran a poll of 15,000 us workers about a quarter of them said that they strongly agreed their employer cared about their wellbeing. And that’s about half of the number that said the same thing in the spring of 2020. Now none of this is being helped by zoom since months. Most of us only see the other people in our meetings from the shoulders up, we’re losing important body cues, body, language, posturing, leaning in, and it’s getting harder to focus our attention on the people that we’re meeting and working with.
Kelly Barner (10:37):
Now, if this is hard with coworkers, it’s certainly not any easier for managers and leaders. How are you supposed to convey caring when you don’t regularly see your team in person, especially since business goes on, you still have to be able to have conversations about performance and expectations. And even though it’s well, intentioned empathy can be a potential mind field with different managers and employees having varying levels of comfort with getting more personal. In fact, trying too hard to be empathetic can create risk. Some employees are turned off by what they perceive as a gap between talk about empathy and company practices. So I found an example of a, of a company while I was researching, where they were constantly messaging about empathy, but at the same time, when it was the cycle for them to renew their healthcare policy, everything was slimed down. And a lot of the more value added benefits like health and wellness were scaled down.
Kelly Barner (11:43):
And that seemed to be inconsistent with the messaging and caused employees to distrust the company. Now, in reality, corporate profit and growth don’t necessarily reward empathy and people do continue to have legitimate concerns about how communicating honestly may affect their career prospects, even when they do work for organizations, that regularly message about the importance of health and wellbeing. And don’t think that CEOs are getting off lightly. The 2022 state of workplace empathy from business solver found that 68% of CEOs admitted fearing. They will be less respected if they show empathy in the workplace, that’s a 31 point increase over 2020. Now the longer these unusual times continue the harder it gets to maintain empathetic practices on top of all of our additional work responsibilities and continued uncertainty. And that I think brings us back to the difference between sympathy and empathy. There’s an exhaustion factor.
Kelly Barner (12:52):
It takes so much more energy to walk around in someone else’s shoes than it does to be sorry. They’re having a hard day empathy or compassion. Fatigue is something that has previously been observed mainly in healthcare workers and hospice nurses. And it’s now showing up more regularly in the general population professor mark step. Nicki is a professor at east Carolina university and he has studied and documented empathy fatigue in many communities. He’s found that it’s more likely to be considered sort of an entry level characteristic in communities that have wellbeing as an overt part of what’s in the job certainly far more than you would typically find in a corporate management track. Now, the additional challenge is that it’s not really enough to be nice or even just happy empathy goes further than that. Two cities in the Philippines recently mandated that municipal employees must smile at all times, or they risk fines, suspension, and even potentially the loss of their jobs.
Kelly Barner (14:02):
Now while forced smiling is not the same thing as forced empathy. It does strike me as being the kind of situation that a well meaning leadership team could easily fall into. And this is especially problematic because authenticity is another highly rated quality. If you incentivize people to fake it, you’ll probably end up without empathy or authenticity. And I think in truth, this brings us to a somewhat related topic. My husband actually has this really non-scientific theory about conservation of fun, but typically I think it works in practice. If you go to a party and have an awesome time, chances are somebody else at the party had a lousy time. Now this, this isn’t always the case, but generally speaking, it kind of works out that way. So I would say that with empathy, with work group dynamics, each individual or team’s job is to aim for some type of equilibrium.
Kelly Barner (15:09):
If you get off the phone or you leave a meeting, do a quick check in with yourself, did you just unload on, on some poor unsuspecting supplier or contractor? Were they quietly asking for some kind of help that you could have provided? And I think this is even more important given the great resignation and given the rise of the gig workforce, there are increasing situations where you are in a conversation with someone who doesn’t necessarily have the same expectation of equal treatment. Now I’m not saying this based on gender or race or age or experience, but there is a differential between people that work in a company and are generally subject to HR standards and people dealing with those that they see as external, you are there to help me. You are there to help me achieve. There is a difference in feeling and even if it’s very subtle, it is still there.
Kelly Barner (16:15):
And I think it’s the kind of thing that can really affect our ability to practice empathy. If we’re not being careful and looking out for it, empathy is a two-way street. None of us are gonna get it right all the time. But as long as we’re trying, we’ll each do better. And by extension, all of us will do better together. Now I picked up a few tips on being empathetic while researching this episode. And the good news is they’re not all huggy fuzzy. If that doesn’t happen to be your thing, it doesn’t work for everyone. Ask questions of other people and maintain eye contact until the person is done answering allow for individual schedules to be met whenever possible, indirectly communicating to people that non-work challenges and needs for flexibility, carry weight, as well as traditional job responsibilities. And of course, we go back to the findings of the LinkedIn poll fight, the temptation to judge, we’re actually doing a pretty good job understanding where other people are understanding what they’re going through and indicating through various forms of communication that we do care and understand, but it’s that internal judgment.
Kelly Barner (17:36):
That’s the thing that we have to be careful about sneaking into our thought process because that’s the kind of thing that can be picked up on externally without us even being aware of it. I’m absolutely including myself in this. Please don’t think that I’m preaching. I’m learning about this as much so that I can do a better job practicing it so that I can make it part of the conversation this community is having. If you can avoid being negative, being realistic and being negative, may not always feel different, especially given the challenges that procurement and supply chain is dealing with, but look for the line and try not to cross it. Never put anything of any kind that’s negative in writing that will almost always come back to bite you, even if it’s just because you return to that email or slack channel and see it again, which reinforces it in your thought process, listen to yourself as much as you listen to other people, what is your tone?
Kelly Barner (18:39):
How did you handle that situation? Can you hear the way you sound to other people? And can you see the responses on their faces that indicate to you how well and how openly you’re communicating, and please don’t be a chucker. People are going to dump on you. People have bad days, otherwise, very nice calm people will make mistakes and they will unload, but acknowledge it and find a healthy way to deal with that stress. Instead of shoving it down deep and creating a supply chain of sadness, we don’t need more of that, but still don’t judge as a yoga teacher, I had once I didn’t last very long in yoga, but I did it for a short amount of time, enough to take away this one, learning that I think applies here. We don’t judge. We just notice if you’re having trouble balancing. If you’re not as flexible as you are on a normal day, if your head’s just not in it and you can’t get that tree pose or hold it for long enough, don’t judge yourself.
Kelly Barner (19:44):
But notice, and the same is worth extending to other people. I’m not saying that this is easy, but it is absolutely worthwhile and not easy, but worthwhile sounds like everything else we do in procurement and supply chain. So if anybody can do this, I have faith that it’s our community. Now that’s my point of view. And I know that this is a personal topic. So I’m always grateful for you listening into the episodes of dial P, but I really don’t want you to listen. Maybe more, especially on this topic than any other. Join the conversation on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook and let me know what you think. What grade would you give people in general on their ability to practice empathy right now? Do you think we’re trending down or are we just burning out? And what techniques do you use at work to keep your frustration and exhaustion in check.
Kelly Barner (20:52):
If you’ve got value from this, please share it with someone else and bring them into our community. And the offer offer stands. If you have something you wanna share directly, reach out to me, send me an email or a direct message. I’m always glad to hear from you. I always suggest that we’re going to work together to reach the best solution, but with this, we can’t do it any other way until next time. I’m Kelly Barner, your host here at dial P and part of the supply chain. Now team have a great rest of your day.
Intro/Outro (21:27):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of dial P four procurement and for being an active part of the supply chain now community, please check out all of our shows and events@supplychainnow.com. Make sure you follow dial P four procurement on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to catch all the latest programming details. We’ll see you soon for the next episode of dial P for procurement.
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