As we enter into 2015, I thought it would be a perfect time to update my blog. In 2014, there were many times that I planned to write an article about various situations, but never seemed to find the time to translate those situations into words. I was busy “living life”. As the year end came near, I planned my final 2014 get-away to Whistler in December. I broke both my legs on that ski trip. My life quickly changed direction. Trapped in a sedentary lifestyle and dependent on someone else to do even simple things gives you lots of time to ponder; what is really important in life? That future legacy that many of us created on paper as part of a personal journey of self-awareness, suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. Sure some may say I was living life to the fullest…but was I? What if that day were my last day? Did I live a fulfilled life? What legacy would I have really left at this point in time? Hmmm…..
Living a life without regret is part of the journey. However, do we stop to really think about what regrets we are missing if we are “busy” being busy? "Life's harshest punishment is regret." Dharma Master Cheng Yen Are there things we put off doing today thinking we can do it tomorrow? Are you there for the people who matter most in your life? What I have yet again learned from this life experience is that tomorrow may not look the same as today—and it may not be what you expect it to be. What is more important, being loving and caring or being busy? Can we really be both?
Are you able to quiet your internal voice and allow yourself to truly be introspective? Is your internal house in order? Are you prepared for how society is changing?
I was having a great year. Work was going really well, family doing well--kids were “finally” in a place where I felt comfortable that they were going to do okay as young adults, personal life was thriving and I got to travel to some amazing places in the world. Check, check, check and check, the boxes were all checked. I even got to close out the year on a weekend ski trip to Whistler, one of my favorite ski villages. Skiing conditions at the top were perfect! As perfect as that all sounds, my life changed from one minute to the next. It started raining on our way down and the bottom turned to slush. As we were heading off the mountain…sooo close to the hotel, my ski stuck in the slush. I toppled back and snapped both my legs. Everything in that moment changed. I was now keenly aware of every movement in my body. My world was going to exist without the use of my legs for four months and it was going to consist of a bed and wheelchair in my living room. My lens was forcibly changed from a zoom to a macro. Was it possible for anyone else to really understand what I was feeling?
Everyone
called or stopped by the first few days. At the time you most wished they wouldn’t. Then I started to feel better and guess what? Nothing! It was me, the bed and the wheelchair. I began to think…I mean really think. What is life really about? What does it mean to be empathic to others? Are we capable of really caring about others. Does society keep us so busy that there is no time for others to be compassionate; is there only time for being sympathetic, if it is not too inconvenient? “You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it,” wrote Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird…and then what? We are too busy being busy to do anything with that information.
When an elderly person begins to slow down, the adult child is very compassionate to their elderly parent’s needs, at first. Then at some point it switches from compassion to something that feels like “work”. At some point the work starts to interfere with the busyness of their life. And if you are innately an empathic person, how do you reconcile that? There are stories after stories of elderly parents being put into homes and forgotten about except for an occasional visit. Do you think the elderly parent feels like their kids are very compassionate to their situation?
Do you think they feel understood, cared for, or pitied? Now I am not saying that I too am not guilty of living a busy life. My mother who has lots of health issues lives 3,000 miles away and I “visit” when I can. Does she feel like I am compassionate to her ill health? Probably not. Society has changed. We live in a new norm of busyness. Is that our legacy as a society… where our busyness only allows time for a brief feeling of sorrow, leaving a society that lacks compassion and a deeper sense of feeling?
What does sympathy and compassion mean? Sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the distress of another, and compassion is the emotion that one feels in response to someone's situation that motivates a desire to help. In simple terms, sympathy is pity or feeling sorry for another. Empathy takes it one step further; it is a deeper sense of feeling the pain as if it was your own and compassion is acknowledging those feelings and taking action to help the other person. Do you think you are compassionate, sympathetic, or empathetic?
Oddly enough, there is a lot of focus on the need for empathy in leadership? Let’s talk about empathy. The classic definition is “the ability to identify with or understand someone else's situation or feelings”. Can you really do that if you have not walked in the same shoes? However, let’s say you can (there are some people who may innately be empathic). Are you committed to do anything beyond the initial listening?
Why do we focus on empathy at work? How does empathy impact leadership?
E
mpathy is proclaimed to be one of the most important traits for successful leaders today. It is the trait most recognized in emotional intelligence studies that directly correlates to effective leadership. It is that soft skill that attracts others. It’s the listener. But are we listening? Every time you have something powerful to say, can you resist the urge? Can you instead react with something as simple as, “tell me more about your situation.” If you are only half listening, because you are multi-tasking, is it empathy?
Being listened to and understood is very important to feeling respected. Being listened to and understood builds trusting relationships and calms people who are upset in the moment. Being sympathetic in the business place may appear superficial—the average person doesn’t want pity, they want you to understand why they feel the way they feel. We don’t focus on compassion because there is no time to deal with it beyond the empathic moment.
Empathy arguably can be learned. Empathetic people listen attentively to what you’re telling them. They focus on the person and are not easily distracted by external media i.e. what’s on their computer or smart phone. However, given we are a society of multi-taskers, does anyone offer attentive listening for the entire time that is needed before they check out. Even if their appearance has the façade of listening, their mind is probably racing through a list of to do things or such other thoughts inside their head.
Based on these descriptions, today, I believe when most employees speak of wanting empathic leaders at work, they actually mean they want compassionate leaders, because they expect the leader to take action to assist. However the research, led by Sara H. Konrath of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and published online in August 2010 in Personality and Social Psychology Review, found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years.
As we evolve into a workforce made predominately of millennials, will we change the need from empathic leadership to sympathetic leadership, because in the fast pace multi-tasking society, pity may be all they are able to give? Will the Emotional Intelligence assessments begin to measure sympathy instead of empathy? What will it mean to be loving and caring in the future? Will our busyness leave us any regrets in the end?
