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Posts tagged with #Empathy

The art of communication part 2: Know your audience

My sons,

I have had the unnatural privilege of working closely with several great orators of my time. Powerhouse communicators who could not only take complex concepts and ideas and distill them down to their essence but inspire you to run hard after them. Leaders who could not only move organizations but could shape the industry simply by speaking. Being in the presence of leaders like Anders Hjelsberg, Elissa Murphy, and Blake Irving has given me the distinct experience not only of being inspired by the best, but of being able to witness the life changing power of great communication.

We’ve discussed the need to understand yourself first and foremost as a primary participant in communication. We’ll now move on to the second party in any communication: your audience.

Early on in my career I was lucky enough to be on a team that allowed me the opportunity to speak and present to our customers. As a part of the deal, I got to spend a bit of time with a speaking coach that helped me refine my presentation skills, and something she said to me very early on has stuck with me. She informed me that whenever you are communicating anything,

your audience will have a predetermined set of thoughts, questions, concerns, and worries that will prevent them from truly hearing you until addressed.

Whether we’re talking about a presentation to my execs, trying to convince my partner of a particular vacation spot, or advocating for my children to try something new, each of them will have a set of concerns that need to be addressed before they can hear me. So how do I figure out what those are, and by doing so address them and give myself the best chance of being truly heard?

The art of seeing people

I’ve been on a journey to build better relationships. With my children, with my partner, with my aging parents, with my brother and his wonderful family, with close friends, and with my team, I’ve been on a mission to figure out how to build deeper and stronger connections across the gamut of these relationships. I read a wonderful book last fall by David Brooks called How to know a person that discussed in depth not only how to know people well, but various character traits that prevent us from knowing others and from achieving that level of vulnerability and trust that breathe life into relationships.

So before we get into how to see people and understand them, I thought it would be fun to take a quick antagonist view at how not to see people well, and for us to honestly evaluate how many of these traps we fall into. So without further ado, the list!

1. Egotism. This is the trait that makes us simply not interested in other people. We are self-absorbed, self-interested, dare I say self-obsessed. Instagram culture (or TikTok or whatever the latest craze of the day happens to be) further exacerbates this problem, but make no mistake: this is a huge problem with our world!
2. Anxiety. Have you ever taken time to listen to what’s going on inside your head? There are many studies that show that there is so much noise going on in our own heads that we are unable to even think about other people with all that racket going on! There’s a really great book I read recently called The Anxious Generation that talks about the increase in anxiety if you’re curious to learn more.
3. Naive realism. This is the quality that believes that our own point of view is the objective truth. Youthful zeal often falls into this trap, but the reality is that we all interpret the world with our filters; we do not see the world as it is.
4. Lesser minds problem. This is a funny one. This is simply the act of thinking everyone else is dumber than we are. Sadly, this happens much more often than we’d like to admit.
5. Objectivism. Instead of seeing others as people, we see them in the groups that they belong to and detach emotion from the situation altogether. We do this at work a lot - instead of saying “so and so’s team is failing”, we say “team x is failing”, removing the human element from the interaction.
6. Essentialism. This is effectively stereotyping, boiling people down to their essential common traits instead of seeing them as complex beings with much depth and unique experience.
7. Static mindset. Also known as a fixed mindset, this is the belief that people don’t change. Once we’ve made up our minds about someone, we hold onto that frame and do not give any consideration to the changes that they undergo.

Ever fall into any of those traps? I certainly have, and it has undoubtedly prevented me from understanding others, from developing better bonds, and from being more effective in my communication with them.

The good news is that these are not insurmountable. With a little bit of awareness and a lot of hard work, we can indeed change these traits and begin to see people as they are, not as we imagine them to be, and in doing so understand how to better communicate with them.

So how do we learn to see people, to understand what makes them tick, and to figure out how to be most effective in our relationships and communications with them?

1. Be aware of your attention

We live in an attention economy. Companies and products no longer vie for our money as a primary; no, they vie for our attention. Attention is money. Monthly active users. Daily active users. Hours spent per session. All of these are metrics that any company worth their salt tracks and tries to maximize.

It is that technological and social environment that we find ourselves in, and it therefore behooves us to understand why our attention matters, and what forces we fight against when we try to control that attention.

First of all, know that there are two types of attention: spotlight and starlight. Spotlight attention is our ability to focus actively on a single task or conversation intently and intentionally, whereas starlight attention is our ability to have a longer term sustained focus on goals and objectives.

In order to really see a person, we must be able to start by applying our spotlight focus to them in our interactions, which in turn allows us to eventually apply our starlight focus. We’ve got to take a few intentional steps:

1. Be present. This is becoming so hard for people that every training or offsite I’ve attended in the last 5 years has started with a strong reminder to be present.
2. Remove distractions. In other words, don’t take out your phone. Not only does it not allow you to focus your spotlight attention on someone, it also makes them feel less important and not seen.
3. Treat attention as all or nothing. Sit up, lean forward/lean in, ask questions, and show positive signs of understanding. This may mean nodding when appropriate, or adding +1s or whatever is culturally accepted for you to do.

Our attention matters. A lot. It conveys respect, care, and consideration. It tells the other person we want to know them.

2. Be an active listener

Most of us believe that we’re decent listeners - 96% of us according to a recent HBR study, but 34% of adults in America feel misunderstood “often” or “very often”. What gives?

First, we need to understand that there are different levels of listening:

1. Self-focused listening. This is where the listener is really thinking about how they will respond more than they are listening.
2. Person-focused listening. This is where the listener is solely focused on what the speaker is saying.
3. Environment-aware listening. This is where the listener is not only focused on what the speaker is saying but on what the context, environment, other people in the room etc are doing as well.

That same HBR study showed that the vast majority of us are self-focused when we listen. We are thinking about how to respond. We need to graduate beyond that! The more we are able to actively engage in listening, the more we are able to draw the other party/parties of our communication into an active partnership of give and take, of dialogue, and of common understanding.

Knowing your audience

Regardless of whether we’re chatting 1-1 with someone, hanging out in a group of friends, in a meeting at work, or speaking in front of thousands, it is on us as the speaker to understand the receiver so that we frame our words in a way that the other person can hear.

A face to face interaction requires focused attention with good back and forth. The more we actively listen to them, the more they will feel heard and will be willing to connect and further the conversation.

A group conversation requires environment awareness and perceptiveness as to each person’s state. The more we understand each member of the group’s feelings, inclinations, and worries, the more we can ensure they are engaged.

A large presentation requires understanding where your audience is coming from, what their cares and concerns are. The more we do our research and learn about the cares and perspectives of those sitting in the audience, the more relatable we can be to them.

The most effective communicators are able to understand their audience, are in tune with their cares and worries, and are able to adjust not only what they say, but how they say it to give their listeners the greatest chance of hearing deeply what the speaker is trying to communicate.

That's interesting... tell me more!

My sons,

We live in a world filled with noise. Everywhere we go we are bombarded by the constant steady stream of noise that never really seems to shut itself off. So much so that many people feel the need to take retreats to get away from it all.

Each time I’ve done this the first thing I notice, always, is how quiet it is. When I finally force myself to turn off my devices, to disconnect, and to be fully present in my surroundings, the first thing I experience is a quiet that has become all too foreign in our lives. The quiet that allows you to hear your own thoughts, that allows you to really see what’s going on around you, and that allows you to direct your musings and contemplations.

This is unfortunately an uncomfortable exercise for many of us. We have grown so accustomed to the constant pace and buzz of our world, to the little gadget in our pockets that keeps us constantly connected, and to the distractions, direction, and influence that our strongly connected world has on us that quiet contemplation about topics of our own choosing is foreign at best and can be uncomfortable and down right scary.

We are so uncomfortable with this quiet that we in fact default to generating our own noise to combat this. We post, tweet, text, and perform a myriad other noise-generating activities to help fill the silence. We identify the like-worthy and retweetable sound bytes of our lives and spew them out. We comment on others’ sound bytes and create a world filled with much conversation but little communication.

There are many unfortunate realities of this situation, but the one I want to focus on today is this: with all the talking we’re doing to fill our own silences, we’re unable to truly listen to others.

We listen in order to speak

Maybe you can relate to this: you’re in a group conversation with two or more people, and one person is speaking. And honestly, they’re speaking a little more than you’d like, and you feel that they’re somewhat long winded. You know that they’ll eventually take a breath, and you need to make sure you capitalize on that, so you’re running through what you want to say, making sure you’ve got the right counterpoints to what they’re proposing.

You’re listening, but are you internalizing what they’re saying? Are you giving what they’re saying its due regard? Or are you trying to formulate your response, your rebuttal, or your clever anecdote in retort?

Let’s face it, we’ve all done that. We’ve all laid out logically our counter argument, and have even had the pleasure of everyone else in the group nodding their heads as we counter the original argument point by point. Feels great right?

Sure. But in those conversations, while we may be speaking, and while we may even be speaking eloquently, we’re not communicating. And chances are, the person(s) we’re conversing with are doing the same, which means that none of us are really listening to one another.

While you may develop a reputation for being a wonderful orator, you won’t be receiving any accolades for being effective.

Are you actually interested?

Perhaps the first and foremost problem is that most of the time we’re not actually interested in the other person’s views or opinions.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not talking about the blatant, flagrant, and offensive “dude I don’t care about what you think” type of thing that usually comes along with a “and in fact I don’t really care about you” approach to the relationship. No, this is a much more refined, polite, and often unexpressed and only faintly detected lack of care and concern about what the other is saying despite genuinely having care for the relationship and for the other person.

If we’re truly honest with ourselves, we’ll discover that for most of us, we converse with others more because we want to be heard rather than because we want to hear.

The benefits of listening

There are a lot of really great reasons we ought to listen to others. And since we live in a capitalist, self-centered world, I’ll only focus on the benefits to ourselves that we get from truly listening to others.

1. We become more empathetic. In a world full of strongly held opinions that are weakly founded and strongly adversarial, empathy is a quality that is increasingly rare but also increasingly coveted. When we truly are able to listen to others and care more about what they’re saying than what we want to say in return, we begin to tune into their needs, their wants, their desires; a process which makes us more empathetic.
2. We move in to a posture of humility and learning. By listening to others and focusing our attention simply on what they’re saying, we more readily move ourselves into a position where we can learn something. This humility, this curiosity, this willingness to accept that we in fact don’t know it all is perhaps one of the most important realizations one can make in one’s lifetime,.
3. We may learn something new. Remember that learning doesn’t always mean new knowledge. In fact, it’s probably arguable that the majority of learning we need has to do more with perspective and mindset than it does new information we were unaware of.
4. We can build deeper connection. When we take the time to really listen to people, we may in fact discover that we have more in common than we might have originally thought. These commonalities light a path towards greater connection, greater understanding, and greater shared experience.

Practice paying attention

Attention is the beginning of connection and devotion. We can’t love something, be devoted to it, desire it, and move it forward if we can’t focus your attention on it. We can’t have a deep connection with something, be it a person, cause, idea, or effort if we are constantly distracted, constantly thinking about ourselves and our situation. As such we need to have mastery over our focus and our distractability - if we are too easily distracted, we will discover presently that the things we profess to love, we love in name only.

So how do we do this? How do we move our focus from self to other? How do we get better both at the desire to understand others as well as the practice of conversing in a way that allows for that understanding?

A great friend of mine has a wonderful technique that I’ve stolen and am starting to implement in my own life. It’s a simple phrase, and when asked with the right motivation yields great results.

That’s interesting… tell me more!

Simple right? Such a simple phrase, such a simple concept. Asking someone for more. But I assure you, it’s a magical concept. A few reasons:

1. It shows a genuine interest in the other person(s). This simple phrase expresses to the other that you are interested in them, that you find something in them and in their story desirable, and who doesn’t want that? Who among us doesn’t take joy in the feeling of someone else desiring to know more about us?
2. It allows others to shine. By expressing our desire for the other person to expand on their thoughts, we allow them to have their moment, to feel like they are expressing mastery over something. We are all built with an innate desire for mastery, for attaining mastery and for being recognized for it. What a great gift it is when someone allows us the opportunity to demonstrate that!
3. It breaks barriers to connection. When we show interest in someone else, it allows them to let down their defenses and show interest in us, thereby creating a much deeper connection than we would have had otherwise! We walk around this earth constantly on the defensive. We are constantly bombarded with messages about how unsafe the world is, how much we need to protect ourselves. What a breath of fresh air it is to be able to break down those barriers by showing genuine interest in someone else! These broken down barriers eventually lead to a reciprocal interest, which as we know is the basis for connection!

And so my sons, my hope for you is that you too can incorporate this simple technique into your relationships, that you too can ask someone to tell you more about themselves, about their journey, and about their story. Ultimately life is about connection, about relationships, about fulfillment in the time, endeavors, and relations that we have, and above all things I want you both to have a rich and full life. I love you boys!

Honoring what you have

My sons,

I read a statement today that was simple yet profound. It got me thinking about my upbringing, my context, my biases, and my perspective. I was raised very fortunate, very lucky. I was raised in a loving home with parents who did absolutely everything in their power to give me and your uncle everything we wanted. We were treated with dignity and respect, and were taught to honor others and to treat others well. We were raised believing we could do whatever we set our minds to, that we could be instruments of change, that we could be leaders of the future.

Not everyone is raised this way.

I now realize how lucky I was, how precious it is to have that be my story. The statement I read today inspired me to redouble my efforts. It said simply:

“When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost.”

We are currently in a time where many have lost. Loved ones, homes, jobs, families, safety, security - all of these are among the things that have been stripped incredibly unfairly from such a large number of people. So many homeless, without safety, without security, without the knowledge of where their next meal will come, or if it will come at all.

To be fair, there are many that are rising to the occasion. The heroes of today don’t don spandex and nylon capes, no. They put on their nurse’s scrubs, their surgeon’s gloves, their firefighter suits, their signs of protest and defense. God bless those heroes.

But beyond supporting them, beyond giving our resources and time to listen, to learn, to stand up for, and to protect, we can do more still. We can live each day honoring the things that we have, so that we honor those who have not. We can live each day taking every opportunity that fortune blesses us with, and do so remembering those who are less fortunate.

We are fortunate to live in America, to live in a nation founded on the belief that all people were created equal, to live free of oppression and free to pursue happiness and association however we desire. Many are not that lucky. Many living even in this nation are not that lucky.

Something we’ve done since you were young is to share things that we’re thankful for at the end of each day. I pray that this letter finds you still with that spirit of thankfulness, of gratitude, of humility. You are both blessed beyond measure; don’t take that for granted. Honor those who have less than you do.

Effective relationships pt 2: trust

My sons,

We’ve been talking about how to build effective relationships lately, and have spoken at length about being consistent in our relationships. Today I want to talk about trust, why it’s one of the most important elements in any relationship, and why without it every relationship will begin to corrode and fall apart.

We’ve all been there. Things are humming along smoothly and we’ve got satisfying and fulfilling relationships and experiences, when all of a sudden - WHAM. Something comes way out of left field that we never expected, and from someone whom we once believed was a trusted companion, a faithful ally, a friend of many years.

What happened?

The most likely culprit is that we weren’t discerning about those on whom we placed our trust. This is common when we’re young - we tend to trust those we simply spend time with. However, as we get older we ought to be learning discernment and ought to know that those who we’ve been with the longest may not in fact be the most trustworthy. And so we’re disappointed. We hurt. We cry silently and in the recesses of our own space. We begin to become callous to others, and have a much harder time trusting others. For if we were burned so painfully once, surely it could happen again with some other trusted companion right?

Sadly, many of us fall into this path, with the majority of our newfound adult relationships never achieving the same level of trust, the same type of deep connection, or the same vulnerability of shared experience as those from our childhood.

It does not have to be this way.

What is trust?

First, let’s start with a definition. What is trust?

Trust is many things to many people, but I think when we boil it all down, trust is simply having a firm belief that another person has strong character and has your best interests at heart.

The first half of that statement is something that we tend to have blindspots for in our adult lives. We tend to give the benefit of the doubt too much. Especially for those with whom we have had many shared experiences, we tend to fall into the mistake of not verifying that the other party is worthy of our trust. We overlook youthful indiscretions as simply that; youthful indiscretions and not an indicator of underlying character.

That last bit is important too. The other person must have your best interests at heart! This means that there’s an investment there, there’s a care and connection there. It’s not enough to know that someone has high moral character (although that is incredibly refreshing in our world today), but we need to know that they have our back, that they’re for us, that they are invested in us.

Discerned trust vs foolish faith

In my younger years, a preacher once shared an anecdote about faith that has stood with me over the years. He said that no matter how strong your faith is, if it’s in the wrong thing, it doesn’t matter. Similarly, no matter how weak your faith is, if it’s in the right thing, it makes a world of difference. For example, you could have an unwavering faith that a thin piece of ice will hold up your body weight. Or you could have a small amount of faith that a 30 foot sheet of ice will hold up that same weight. In these examples the object of your faith is of paramount importance.

So it is with trust; the object of our trust is incredibly important.

And yet many of us fail to do our due diligence when it comes to those upon whom we place our trust. We will inadvertently place our mental wellbeing, our day-to-day happiness, even our financial stability into the hands of people for whom we have not vetted their trustworthiness.

That is the definition of foolish faith.

The unfortunate reality is that we’ve all fallen into that trap. We’ve all foolishly given our trust to someone undeserving, and many of us have been burned by it. It therefore behooves us to ask the question of why. Why do we find ourselves in these situations when we surely ought to know better?

I’ll posit that it is because we are wired for relationship - deep, meaningful, strong connection. Deep down, we crave the benefits of trusted relationships so much that we take short cuts. We’re impatient. We skip our diligence. We ignore red flags. We tune out wise council. Each of us longs to belong, to have someone we can turn to where we know that they are for us. And that is a beautiful thing.

But we must apply discernment and critical thinking. We must keep our wits about us and determine objectively whether a person is truly trustworthy, is truly someone desiring high moral character, and is truly for us.

Becoming a trustworthy person

Somewhat counterintuitively, one of the best things we can do to find trustworthy people is to become a trustworthy person. This is because the more focus we put on traits of trustworthiness in ourselves, the more we’re able to see those traits in others. The more sensitive we get towards things like honesty, empathy, and integrity, the more we will develop a second nature that warns us when those traits are missing.

Being a trustworthy person means to desire the best for others, sometimes in spite of themselves. It means challenging those you care about, but with love. It means caring about their well-being above all else. Remember that it’s not about whether or not they like you; it’s about whether or not you are doing your best for them, and are doing it in a way that isn’t cruel but instead is thoughtful and kind while being honest and truthful. You are challenging them because you want the best for them, not because you want them to like you.

Being trustworthy also requires gentleness. It requires us to remember that when we are trusted, we have a strong ability to impact our relation’s emotional state, and indirectly their confidence in themselves. Especially when it comes to romantic relationships, we often under estimate the ability we have to build up or tear down others. We forget that we mean a lot to them, and that our words have great impact on them.

It is critically important for us to be gentle in our words to others. Challenge with love. Correct with care. Rebuke in private, with tenderness.

It is also important for us to reaffirm those we love in front of others. This allows them to feel special, and allows them to experience us being proud of them. Whether we’re talking about our children, our partners, our siblings, or simply our friends, we go a long way in earning their trust when we genuinely affirm them in the company of others.

This isn’t to say that we sit around blowing sunshine up people’s asses - no, our affirmations and praise must be truthful, honest, and well-deserved. People can detect bullshitters, and can detect what Kim Scott calls “manipulative insincerity” - people who pull their punches, who shower undeserved praise, and who ultimately care more about being liked than everything else.

Rather, when we reassure others, we hint that we see vulnerabilities and potential weaknesses, and we tell them that it will be fine, that we see them and believe in them. We tell them that we are in their corner. We assure them that we can separate the action from the person, that our care is for the well being of the person.

And so, my sons, I urge you not only to be discerning about those that you trust, but to also think about how you can be trustworthy to others. Be men of principle, but have grace to others that fall short. Have high standards, but love others through them. And above all else, be for others.

Empathy pt 2

My sons,

I know I’ve written about empathy in the past, but I’ve been doing a bunch of reading and thinking on the topic, and I wanted to share some more thoughts with you both as I learn more about this beautifully difficult character trait.

When I first encountered the concept of empathy, I believed it to mean putting myself in someone else’s shoes, and trying to determine what I would do in their situation. While I still think that much of that statement is true, I need to make a small tweak. I now believe empathy to mean putting myself in someone else’s shoes, and trying to determine what they would do in their situation, and why.

The fundamental difference here is the focus. My first definition has to do with me; what would I do in their situation. This is entierly determined by me, my background, my experiences, and my context. The choices I make in that frame of empathy then, will reflect my preferences, my value system, and ultimately would, without intention, be self-serving.

Now, since our goal when we apply empathy is to understand the other person and to add strength to the relationship, this definition isn’t as useful to us.

Our new definition is more compelling because it gets at the heart of what the other person needs, what they desire, and what motivations factor in to their decisions. It causes us to not just know about the other person, but to know them.

In his book The Lonely man of Faith, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik postis that one of the core needs of man is the need to know and be known. He argues that the need to be known is a universal characteristic across mankind, and that as relational beings, we find much fulfillment and peace in being known.

And so when we want to demonstrate empathy, there is much good that we can do to add to our shared understanding, and to bring fulfillment to the other person.

1. Remember that empathy is an act of understanding, not of judgment. It is primarily an observational activity, observing and learning about the other person’s motivations, context, and values. It is not applying our own judgment to those things!

2. Be patient. In our self-centered and self-focused world, it takes time to develop the muscle to break away from that trend and to focus not on our own agenda and goals but on someone else.

3. Intentionally practice and apply empathy. No change comes without effort. While the desire to have empathy is already a great first step, we need to progress past that and realize that there is real work to be done in order to get us being truly and effectively empathetic.

My hope for you both is that you grow up to be men that are confident in yourselves, and have enough confidence around your own desires and needs that you’re able to set aside yourselves and learn to concern yourselves with the needs of others.

Empathy

My son,

One of the most beautiful things about the world is the vast diversity that's in it. We live among people of varying backgrounds, experiences, world views, beliefs, expectations, and biases - and that's a beautiful thing. It's an incredibly inspiring thing to see when people of different shapes and sizes come together to build something greater than themselves.

The only way that can happen is with empathy.

Empathy isn't about being nice. It's about having the ability to listen and to understand someone else's perspective, and to care about it. It's about setting aside your own biases and experiences and recognizing that there's value in an opinion or a thought that may be different than yours.

It's the thing that allows you to look at someone else and see the best in them, see the intrinsic value in them. It's the thing that let's you look past the veneer and see the common beauty of the human spirit in someone else, and make a connection with that.

And so my charge to you today is to abound in empathy. Life's too short to live alone. I want you to have a full life, one that is filled with mountaintop experiences that challenge you to be better, one that is surrounded by diverse and wonderful people that will push you out of your comfort zone, one that is deeply and richly connected to those around you.

From the time that you were conceived, your mother and I have prayed that you would grow up to be a man that is kind, that is empathetic to those around you, and that encourages and challenges people to be better. May you be empathetic, and may you make those lifelong connections, and in doing so live a rich and full life.