Five Reasons We All Need to Think Like Professional Empaths
by Brittany Chaffee
A few years ago, I was sitting at a local bar having a sandwich with my boss. Now rewriting this years later, I realize having a review at a dive bar is weird, but he wanted to “take me out” to go over my yearly review. He drove me there in his Tesla. I didn’t know how to open the passenger door. I ordered a Rueben with soup. He chose the nastiest, juiciest cheeseburger I’d ever seen. He didn’t ask me to give my feedback about the company or my position. He said a few things about his business goals, and finished with something like:
“One bit of feedback I have for you is…” [dramatic pause to take a massive bite of burger]... “you need to be a more aggressive leader.”
I wrote about this review in a previous Babes Who Hustle article. I talk about the experience a lot. Something about that feedback tipped me off the tracks and sent me down a mad-woman search to find all the reasons he was very, very wrong.
In any profession, empathy is king. It’s king when we work with humans, numbers, and products. Affinity is not a soft skill. It’s open and encouraging. It allows us to self-identify, learn more about each other, and seek innovation. We need emotion, and the tolerance for remorse, in our work.
Workplace affinity isn’t a new idea. If you google “why we need to be empathetic at work,” a dozen articles will pop up preaching the practice of empathy as a superpower. One of empathy’s counterparts in the thesaurus is “insight.” Despite its importance and impact, empathy gets lost day by day, while the constant push for assertiveness, and the lack of openness, quickly closes doors. It’s that simple.
We need empathy in our work.
So, how can we find effective, compassionate ways to constantly encourage emotion in the workplace? How do we humanize the numbers? The brand? Having empathy doesn’t mean you’re walking around the office openly weeping. It means you’re taking the time to be vulnerable, reflect and open up at a dozen opportunities.
Here are five reasons we need to be empathetic in our work, no matter what we do:
1. We need to ask questions.
A few days ago, my boss shared this Harvard Business Review article: How to Ask Great Questions. And it hit home for me. I spend a majority of my work time asking questions. Early on in my career, I saw it as a form of weakness. I decided to shift my career when I turned 33 from writing and marketing to full throttle data analytics. To be honest, I couldn’t find a minute I wasn’t asking a question. I was like a little kid, grasping into the depths of the unknown and crying in between.
For some context, I work on the “employee engagement” side of our analytics team. I spend a lot of time desperately trying to organize mounds of data, categorize batches into little cute groups and graphs, and find the human story behind the numbers. The work is complicated and requires a lot of questioning.
So, why am I embarrassed to ask questions, anyway? The majority of executives are asking others for information; few executives consider questioning a honed expert. The article reads, “That’s a missed opportunity. Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members.”
So, is questioning vulnerable? Certainly. Opening ourselves to trust another person’s opinion or advice lets our guard down. When we honestly inquire to learn what we don’t know, listening becomes powerful. Natural curiosity is beautiful.
2. If you treat your audience—the people that make up your business—how you want to be treated, we will understand each other better.
We need to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. According to studies, our brains are hardwired to mirror others’ experiences. When thinking of the mind of the customer, client, or employee, empathy should be a core part of that process. Empathy in numbers, baby!
Because empathy allows us to mirror each other, compassion also allows us to understand each other better. Our sense of self is defined by the people we hang out with the most, especially people in the workplace. When we feel like we belong, we’ll work harder and become more open to other ideas.
I’ll put it this way, driving to a dive bar in a Tesla to talk about yourself isn’t the thing.
3. Cooperation is at empathy’s core.
In one study, when empathy was introduced to decision-making, cooperation increased. Here’s a simple math equation: Empathy + empathy = more empathy. Does anyone want to put this on a T-shirt for me?
4. There is empathy in numbers.
I have this quote saved on a “warm fuzzies” desktop folder: Stories are data with a soul.
I love this phrase because it helps me connect emotions to numbers. I need this process to do my job well. I interpret this quote as proof that data showcases what we love and where we find meaning. Organizing the numbers with feelings is my attempt to measure what sometimes feels too big to quantify.
5. Vulnerability, being empathetic, allows us to innovate, and influence one another.
Putting yourself in other shoes and expanding your horizons makes space for extended and open thinking. Empathy requires effort. For me, that kind of assertiveness is what I want to put into my everyday work: sharing my feelings, understanding different struggles, healthy debate, and appreciating other points of view. The effort comes from sharing our feelings with another person (emotional empathy) and being open to understanding someone else’s perspective (cognitive empathy).
Innovation unfolds because of cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. If you appreciate others’ ideas, innovation can go off like a firecracker. Identifying struggles and barriers and offering help and openness for those things leads to action. And that’s the beauty of being a professional empath.
Maya Angelou once said, “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” And she’s right. Empathy is brave.
Soft skill? No way.
Brittany Chaffee is a writer and author living in St. Paul, Minnesota. On the daily, you can find her working in marketing. On the nightly, she enjoys reading, concerts, going on long walks and horseback riding. Her writing has been seen in the Star Tribune, Artful Living, Girlboss, City Pages, Wit & Delight and Make Minnesota. Her two books, “Wild Morning” and “Borderline” are available via her website. Follow her on Instagram @BrittanyChaffee.
