Dan Erwin

Empathy: Supportive and Manipulative

The scientists of behavior have a lot to say about empathy and emotional intelligence. But review all that’s written by them about the subjects, they never get to the most fundamental how-to, the basic development processes of empathy and emotional intelligence. I couldn’t take what has surfaced over the years and actually lay out the developmental pragmatics. Until, that is, just the last month.

I’m not beating up on myself. Still, it’s personally frustrating that with all my critical work in the field, and my own expertise with emotional intelligence and the sub-category of empathy, I was completely blind to my own processes. The pragmatics were so habituated and so deeply buried in my past, that someone else had to tell me what the hell I was doing. My experience is a classic case of what’s known in chaos theory as the “butterfly effect,” sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Scientists have discovered that very small differences at the start of a complex process with numerous iterations create significant and unpredictable results. That’s how as a teenager I found the beginnings of empathy uniquely—and unconsciously--as a manipulative tool of self-protection. Affirming my mother, after her seemingly senseless weekly bouts of tears and anger with my father, with her version of the relationship twisting and turning over the years. My unconscious empathic learnings partially protected me so that she wouldn’t turn her uncontrollable rage at me. I decided years later, after her death and long-since distancing myself from her, that she was all about profound narcissistic insecurity, compounded by abandoned child syndrome.

My initial conscious understandings of empathy began early in grad school with work in persuasion and influence, a discipline overlapping empathy to a high degree. There, I learned to define what would become empathy in straight forward fashion: the ability to become aware of, sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another. It’s often broken out into three segments: understanding the situation of the other, feeling the same emotion of the other person, and then taking action in support—or to the disadvantage--of the other person. Compassion is a highly useful aspect of empathy, but not the only aspect. Empathy can also be used for self-protection and plenty of other objectives. There is a dark side to empathy, too. I’m quite certain that if you were to add up all my uses of empathy, the good far outweighs the bad. But on numerous occasions in business, I’ve used empathy as both a sales tool as well as for competitive advantage. No client has ever accused me of naivete.

My grad work during the late ‘seventies led me to understand what eventually became empathy as the ability to co-create a state of identification or alignment with another. In those studies, the focus is not just on the other person or just the message or just the sender. The definition implies that what’s inside the receiver is just as important as the source’s intent or the content of the message. So, in one sense all persuasion is self-persuasion. We are not persuaded unless we participate in the process of identification with the other. Empathy works exactly the same way. It just usually focuses on compassion.

But, identification with the other can be used for their good or solely for the empathic persuader’s good. Hannah Arendt, the famous (or infamous) U Chicago philosopher who wrote about the Nazi Eichmann and the Jews, argues cogently that compassion should not be brought into politics. My own business behaviors have been reflective of Arendt’s conclusion on numerous occasions. I needed her conclusion to manage my internal conflicts around manipulation. But that’s a subject for another blog.

Using empathy in business

I’ve used emotional intelligence and empathy for decades, but never really understood why the model sometimes worked so well for me. Of course, I was aware that some of us were rather successful in persuasion, while many others stumbled around. And if they couldn’t manage the process successfully, they usually left a business requiring persuasion. But I never thought to do a complete compare and contrast analysis between successful and unsuccessful empathy/persuaders.

Politics Is Like Sex

With the national election coming up in just a few days, now is a good time to think briefly about the stuff of politics. Electing someone is one of the basic actions of politics—an activity all of us can get involved in. It’s one of the few times in which anyone over 18 years can “do something” that will eventually impact all of us, one way or another.

So, whenever I get uptight about politics, I think about that little book by Bernard Crick, “In defense of politics,” first published in 1962, but now in its fourth edition. It’s a book on politics, that’s also a lot of fun. Thoughtful--and unforgettable. And it’s more useful this season than many other political seasons of the past. Occasionally, the Brit way of talking gets in the way—especially if you’ve never read a Brit novel, like Pride and Prejudice or Oliver Twist. But it’s still fun right from the first chapter.

Just to get started, Crick emphasizes that politics is not a “set of fixed principles” for the near future, nor even some traditional habits to be preserved. It’s just an activity for a community that’s grown too complicated for its traditions or fixed principles.

Politics, he concludes is just an activity. Simple, eh??

But before he gets to the stuff, he wants you to know that politics is not a thing. Not a granite monument, or a painting—things that could exist if people didn’t have to continue working on them. Instead, he wants you to understand clearly that politics is an activity. A condition in which things are being done. It’s a pursuit—it’s always ongoing. You never get to the end of the journey. And it’s right at this point where the writer draws a brilliant comparison, an unforgettable comparison, a comparison that goes to the heart of the matter of politics.

Politics is like sex.
Both politics and sex are activities in which our personal understandings and experience make “formal principles” unnecessary. The experience is a lot better than the principles or truths you learn from books. Yeah, sex is a more widespread activity than politics.

The New Longevity Fitness

By the time you’re thirty-years-old or more, you’re going to need a well-educated exercise training coach. It would be really helpful in high school, but we’re a long way from that level of enlightenment. Without that expertise, your exercise is liable to be far less impactful over time. At best, you’ll just be doing some maintenance work, not the cutting-edge stuff focused on a healthy longevity.

Why do I say this? I’ve been working out with coaches for about a dozen years. Over that time period, I ‘ve worked with four different people. Three of them had to be instructed, as best I could, into personal needs. And though I’d read through plenty of books and watched others work out, I had no full sense of what an 80 or 90-year-old needed, much less the ability to focus on these needs.

And then I found a grad-school-educated exercise coach.

Some of the stuff I’ve learned about my body over the years was just plain inaccurate. Almost useless. Why? I really didn’t know what I was looking for to stay fully active. Furthermore, I didn’t understand my body enough to make an accurate decision about what’s really useful. In fact, if I’d found out what was useful, I lacked the knowledge of form as well as the diagnostic ability to know when the behavior was on target and when not. Even more seriously, I lacked the knowledge to assess a personal coach’s expertise.

Why Strategic Competency Is Especially Difficult to Build

Thirty years ago, I had one of those seminal experiences that are even more important and relevant today. I had been coaching a director-level research manager at a world renown company that has since been integrated into an even larger, international firm. I was essentially supporting the development of highly complex thinking skills.

My focus, at the request of the EVP of Research, was to assist his subordinate in development of strategic organizational thinking skills. These were not merely planning skills, but complex strategic thinking that might result in drastic changes for research, manufacturing and marketing.

Nine months later, when the coaching was nearly finished, the EVP called me into his office, expressing his deep satisfaction with my work. Then he made an unusual statement: “If you can develop these cognitive skills in others, I can keep you busy the rest of your life.”

I laughed and said no, that wasn’t possible. He was very surprised and wanted an explanation why not. I commented that a huge majority of business people were linear thinkers and couldn’t get out of that box to develop strategy, a non-linear competency.

The widespread lack of strategic organizational competency is still present today. For example, major research at Northwestern University finds that most business people are very poor at analogical thinking, an absolute necessity for macro strategy work. They simply lack the kind of educational background to make that possible. Though a lot of technology managers say they can do strategy, their expertise rarely stands up to serious scrutiny.

A Gorgeous Black Voice

Some experiences have to be shared. And my best, most intimate friend is always ready to respond. After sixty years of friendship, the affection, emotions and intimacy were inevitable for John and me. He's always been a close friend. Here's how it surfaced. 

I was on my phone, holding for a technician to help me resolve a computer problem. Expecting silence, I got the glories of Saint-Saens from Samson and Delilah.The song went on with the rich, emotionally dark sounds of “my heart at the sound of your voice,” with even the harp and a wailing clarinet or oboe in the distance. And then the half-falsetto of the tenor’s response.  Entranced I hoped the technician wouldn’t come on too soon. I wanted to hear the end of the aria.

So, it finished. Then the technician came on, “how may I help you sir?” I was stopped in my tracks by her voice.

We interacted for probably thirty seconds, then I interrupted. “You have an absolutely gorgeous Black voice,” I said. I could hear her smiling over the phone as she said, “Why, thank you sir.” Without waiting, I asked that she send kudos to the choice of music. “I’d never heard Saint-Saens while waiting for a technician.”

Then she went on with her questions and directions. In the middle of it, she stopped and without any context, she asked, “how did you know?” “I used to be a singer,” I said. “And I first heard Leontyne Price in the early 1960’s. I’d never heard such gorgeous sounds. I learned that only Blacks can make that sound. And that it is present in their linguistic placement of sound.” To my surprise and delight, she confessed, “I wanted to do opera, but I wasn’t good enough.” She was oozing with warmth and intelligence. You could recognize it in the vocabulary she chose, the arrangement of her words, the way she framed her questions and answered with unusual clarity, quite capably moving the conversation along to achieve both our objectives. And so, she fixed my computer problems, then taught me how to do it for myself—and wished me the very best.

I leaned back—to a flood of emotions. I remembered sitting with my beloved wife in concert—now gone more than a dozen years. She squeezed my wrist, turned briefly to me with a slight smile and glistening tears, for the first time hearing the inescapability of desire from Delilah.

As is often the case, I needed to share my experiences. So, I called my old friend and classmate, a psychologist, in the early stages of dementia. Well aware that we could talk freely and that just our conversation—any conversation about most anything--would make his day—and mine.

“How did you know?” he asked. “I would never recognize a speaking sound that clearly.” “There was,” I responded, “a rounded, warm, empathic sound, built into her voice--not sharp or edgy. It’s a very distinguishing placement of sound. You can never hear it in another race. And of course, it’s not true of all Black females, but there it was in her voice. Many tenors,” I continued, “often come from Spanish, Italian or Latin background. It’s their bright and shining sound, the linguistics demanded by the original language resulting in a unique timbre. Say, Pavarotti, Domingo or Carreras. If you listen closely to Frank Sinatra, you can also hear it in his records. It really shows up in his falsetto.” So, my dear friend added, “You gave her a gift she will never forget. Perhaps the best gift.”

[For fun, track down “Nessun Dorma” on Youtube, with Jose Carreras (Spaniard) and Jonas Hoffman (German) and the different linguistic placements become clear—even to the untrained ear. Both create gorgeous sound. The Spaniard bright and shining. The German rich and full. [Take your pick.]

And then my friend was off, reminding me of an experience we had had a few days before our seminary graduation in 1962. We had gone out for lunch. A very attractive waitress had taken our order and was walking back to another client with glasses of wine on her tray. He was eyeing her. “You can’t have that,” I said. He broke up in laughter, but I reminded him he was going to be teaching in a church school. A couple more sentences, and he thought that I was referring to the woman, but I was referring to drinking wine in his new church college position. It still brings a laugh to both of us. Today, we both enjoy a good glass of wine or a taste of bourbon together on a rare occasion. And today, I reminded him that we were listening to the Adagietto of the Mahler Fifth on the way to that restaurant. “I would never have remembered that,” he responded. “God, those were wonderful memories.”