Empathy for Change: How to Create a More Understanding World

By Amy J. Wilson

Leading change is not about breaking things - it's about using empathy to enrich the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781641376419

Amy J. Wilson

Amy J. Wilson is a change leader, community builder, movement maker, and an empathy advocate. Her journey to sparking change started in AmeriCorps, leading a project to rebuild 50 homes in four months in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. She was a chief architect of Booz Allen Hamilton's Building a Culture of Innovation movement, which transformed the 100-year old firm. Amy later served for three years as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, where she created a shared language and led a movement for innovation and change in government. In her debut book, Empathy for Change, she hopes to inspire others to embrace kindness to enrich the world. In her free time, she enjoys baking pies, traveling internationally, and telling stories.

Book preview

cover.jpg

Empathy for Change

Empathy for Change

How to Create a More Understanding World

Amy J. Wilson

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Amy J. Wilson

All rights reserved.

Empathy for Change

How to Create a More Understanding World

ISBN

978-1-64137-906-9 Paperback

978-1-64137-639-6 Kindle Ebook

978-1-64137-641-9 Ebook

Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Part 1

Our Empathy Deficit

Chapter 1

We Are Here: Where We’re Wrong

Chapter 2

Empathy and Its Role in Change

Chapter 3

Empathy: Nature versus Nurture

Chapter 4

Dysfunction in Our Workplaces

Chapter 5

Empathizing with Others: Seek First to Understand

Part 2

Learning Empathy for Change

Chapter 6

Traits of Empathetic Change Leaders and Their Ripple Impact

Chapter 7

Change 2.0: Current Frameworks

Chapter 8

Mindfulness and Meditation for Empathy

Chapter 9

Belonging to Ourselves and in Community

Chapter 10

Creating Cultures of Empathy

Chapter 11

The Art of Systems Change

Chapter 12

Power at Play: Shaping and Shifting Power

Part 3

Empathy in Action

Chapter 13

The Evolution of Design

Chapter 14

The Heart, the Head, and the Hand Framework

Chapter 15

Empathy at Work: Building Humanity in Your Career

Chapter 16

Change in Times of Crisis: Coronavirus

Conclusion

Works Cited

Acknowledgements

Prologue

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.¹

When I first heard this quote, it was coming off the lips of my mentor Kim Powell in 2006. I was accepted as a team leader in AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) to lead the recovery and rebuilding of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast in a few months. I was deciding on whether I should stay in the comfort of home or brave the unknown and lead at the tender age of twenty-four. This quote was the catalyst for me to accept the position and has followed me throughout my life, and it also speaks to what this book is about: empathy + action.

For us to live with a finer spirit of hope and achievement, we must first sense what the world needs and what we can do to that end, and act upon it. This quote shows we need to have an awareness that we aren’t the center of our universe, and that by helping and being in community with other people we can lift others up in the process. And lastly, we’re not meant to sit idly by and let things happen to us. We must actively participate in our own way to shape the world to be greater, and in the end we’ll be better off ourselves.

---

1 Woodrow Wilson, Address of President Wilson at Swarthmore College, (speech, Swarthmore, Pa., October 25, 1913), Internet Archive.

Introduction

Two years before Barack Obama became president, he gave a powerful commencement address to the students of Northwestern University:

The world doesn’t just revolve around you. There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit—the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us—the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.²

We now see the fruits of that empathy deficit: we are fractured as a country (and globally); we focus more on what divides us than what connects us. The national gun control debate rages on while we become accustomed to the news of mass shootings in America. The rise of nationalism and white supremacy is reaching alarming levels and putting our democracy at risk. Police violence is killing Black and Brown neighbors across this country. The advancement of technology has us trusting our smartphones more than each other. We feel disconnected to the work we do and float through life without purpose or a sense of joy. At the heart of this issue is a divide in values: those of us who value empathy and those who seemingly do not.

Those Who Empathize, and Those Who Don’t

Empathy is quickly becoming one of the most coveted leadership traits of our generation. Professors and students from academic institutions like Harvard and Stanford regularly study and write about this being an important quality in the twenty-first century. Companies are grappling with how to rebrand themselves to appeal to a workforce that is requiring more purposeful work and empathetic work environments.

But on the whole, empathy is not baked into our workplaces, and worse yet: we’ve designed spaces and norms in modern America that do not embrace empathy. Obama also acknowledged this in his 2006 commencement speech. We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.³

Those in power think of empathy as a soft skill, non-technical skills that relate to how you work like how you solve problems, manage your work, and engage with colleagues. These leaders don’t choose the path of empathy as they go about their day. Bottom line: something has to change. When empathy is not part of the process of how things are designed or created, it removes the humanity and closeness we have to each other. Furthermore, as we move into a digital age, the imperative to design products, programs, and services that meet the needs of people becomes even stronger. Empathy is at the heart of that.

Although we’re wired as humans to connect, we haven’t been socialized or trained to cultivate empathy. For a long time, it has been generally accepted that some of us are inherently more empathetic than others, but new scientific and neurological research argues we can train our brains to be more empathetic.⁴ Others observe empathy is also a choice.⁵ But one thing is for certain: whether empathy is a skill to be acquired or a choice to be made, our future depends on our ability to harness it within ourselves and change for the better.

Why I’m Qualified and Called to Write This

If I were to summarize my life thus far in one word, it would be: empathy. When I was younger, I was a highly sensitive child, moved (and also overwhelmed) by the beauty of the people and places around me. Being highly sensitive, to me, was like having all your senses on high alert while all your emotions are magnified. Sadness is a deep sorrow, and joy is pure ecstasy. I have a rich and vivid inner world; I care about people openly and empathize without limits. I’m permanently linked with everything around me.

I grew up to be an empathetic adult that put value in relationship building and connecting with others. As an adult, I learned our workplaces, culture, and systems are not empathetic and dysfunctional. I’ve struggled with being an empath in a non-empathetic world, and I’ve emerged as a leader whose mission is to change these structures.

This is the book I wish I had years ago when I was just starting out. The wisdom I’ve gained took me on a journey of self-discovery and finally coming out on the other end with tools to carry me through my next adventure. I also went outside of myself to find people who are pushing the boundaries of what it means to put empathy and action together.

Prior Experiences

About eight years ago, I took the Clifton Strengthsfinder assessment, a nearly 200-question test that measures recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The results identify areas where you have the greatest potential for building strength.⁶

Upon getting my results I found my biggest strength was indeed Empathy. At that moment, the wind was knocked out of me. It was like reading a horoscope that was written exactly for me and spoke to my inner needs and desires. I felt seen and heard and everything in between. Four of my top five strengths all revolved around relationship building.

As I looked around the room and my teammates shared each other’s strengths, I learned first-hand that my team, and the world, was not built like me. From that point on, I could tell my strength was not fully valued—and even worse, was taken advantage of in the workplace, where teams were competing against each other to win the next project and would stab you in the back to do so.

From that point on, I learned how to harness and channel my strength. I was a sought-after leader at the intersection of communications, change management, innovation, and technology, and was known for my customer service mindset.

And, in 2015, I had the chance of a lifetime: I was chosen to serve under President Obama in the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows, which was started only a few years earlier to bring in entrepreneurs-in-residence to create positive change in government. It was a time filled with hope for the future in our country and the globe. Obama came into office intending to change how the government works—and he made significant changes in his administration. He stood for an open, collaborative, participatory, and transparent government the likes of which we had never seen before in the American presidency. I, too, wanted to be part of the change that was sweeping the government.

Two years later, a new administration took over that didn’t believe in the same ideals of the previous one. Undeterred, I continued to have hope and co-create a movement that inspired public servants to create programs, products, and services that were human-centered, flexible, and participatory. By the end of 2018, the new administration discovered their strategy, which didn’t align with our vision. I was let go and what we built was dismantled in stunning fashion.

I had two choices after this experience. I could:

1. Let it eat away at me and get depressed, angry, and sad.

2. Have empathy and compassion and turn this into a learning moment for myself and others.

Gratefully, I chose option two. As I reached deeper than I ever had in my life, I set out to make sense of what had happened—the external and internal forces that were shaping my experience. Leaning into my mental health helped me to see myself in a new light, but more importantly, to see the people around me differently as well. It helped me realize a foundational belief: empathy is the catalyst for change. So, I set off to talk to others who are like me; who are leading with so much empathy and attempting to do good. This book is a collection of all the A-ha! moments and things I’ve learned along the way.

My Theory + Big Idea

The effect of the empathy deficit is coursing through our bodies. When we don’t experience empathy from others, we feel shut off from others and feel shame; when we are given empathy, it leads to a deeper connection to one another. Empathy is not just an ephemeral feeling or emotion. It has a real application and practice that can be learned and improved over time.

In my time building cultures of change, I have created this equation:

Innovation = Positive Change = Empathy + Action

I’m here to convince you that empathy plus action is the catalyst for change. Without it we lack connection, and as humans we’re wired for it. What’s more, empathy is at the heart of innovation and positive change within ourselves, in our world, our organizations, and our workplaces.

To Those Who Want to Change

Empathy for Change is for people who are fed up with the status quo, and hope to create a better future and drive impact, especially for vulnerable populations who may not have a voice or power.

This book will help you bloom into a more team-oriented, understanding, and people-focused style of leadership so that you can help co-create cultures and systems of empathy with others. It will help answer these questions:

• Why should we care about empathy? How do you cultivate it?

• How can we decipher what other people need?

• Why do we need empathy now more than ever?

• How can we maintain empathy when the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction each day?

We’re going to go on a journey centered around empathy—who has it, who is leaning into it, and what happens when empathy is missing. We’ll talk to highly empathic humans who are doing things right. In the end, I’m answering this powerful question: Can we save ourselves by applying empathy?

A Love Letter to You

We are all capable of changing our reality. It took me a long time to embrace the role of change maker, and I waited to have someone give me the power. It wasn’t until I embraced it myself that I was able to fully open up and pursue the path I wanted to take.

I want to equip you to transform our modern day world. In order for us to get on the other side of history, we need to fight the good fight and push the boulder up the hill. I’m handing you a magic wand you never thought you had. My biggest hope is that you take what you read here, find your inner power, and live more amply, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.

---

2 Barack Obama, Northwestern University Commencement Address. (speech, Evanston, Illinois, June 16, 2006. Northwestern University, June 16, 2006), YouTube video, 8:45.

3 Ibid, 9:02

4 Jamil Zaki, Empathy: A Motivated Account, Psychological Bulletin 140 no. 6 (2014): 1608-47; C. Daniel Cameron, et al., Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs, Journal of Experimental Psychology 148, no. 6 (2019).

5 Jamil Zaki, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World (United States: Crown/Archetype, 2019).

6 How Cliftonstrengths Works, Gallup Cliftonstrengths, accessed October 23, 2019.

Part 1

---

Our Empathy Deficit

Chapter 1

We Are Here: Where We’re Wrong

You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.

—Grace Lee Boggs

Out of all living creatures, humans excel more than any other species at interpersonal connection and understanding one another. This is fueled by empathy and has long been considered innate. However, a study by Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing from the University of Michigan published in Personality and Social Psychology Review challenges this belief.⁷ College students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with a steep drop from 2000-2010 (the study was published in 2011). And, given the data the team collected, it’s an alarming trend that’s been happening in our country.

Konrath and her team looked at data from 14,000 students with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a tool created in 1979 that measures empathy by asking respondents to self-report various questions like, I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.⁸ After analyzing the data, she found nearly 75 percent of students in 2010 rate themselves as less empathetic than students in 1980.⁹

Additionally and alarmingly, self-reported narcissism among American college students is on the rise. A May 2009 study by Dr. Jean M. Twenge, Professor of Psychology at the San Diego State University and author of The Narcissism Epidemic, and Dr. Josh Foster from the University of South Alabama reported that between 1982 and 2006, American college students’ scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) were 30 percent higher in 2006 as it was in 1982.¹⁰ This is alarming considering that with each new generation, we are becoming more self absorbed and less willing to lend a helping hand, which can be harmful when working together to make decisions and solve societal problems.

Narcissists think highly of themselves, especially with the traits they can control such as power, intelligence, interpersonal relations, but not on shared traits like morality, integrity, and the agreeing with others.¹¹ Although narcissists may like the company of people, they think of others primarily in terms of their own selfish needs rather than what others want.¹² Narcissists also tend to use personal pronouns like I and me more frequently than we and us.

Below is a graph that shows the importance of certain life goals for American high school and college students from 1966-2010. Over this period of time, developing a meaningful philosophy of life sharply declined, while becoming well-off financially and being a leader rose significantly. The goals most connected to narcissism increased, while the goal connected to philosophy on life had declined.

Figure 1: Importance of certain life goals, American high school and college students, 1966–2010. The y axis shows the percent that agrees the goal is important. Note being a leader in my community was correlated with valuing fame and narcissism.¹³

How Did We Get Here?

In the study listed at the top of this chapter, Konrathsuggests some reasons why empathy might be on the decline. The relationship between personality and culture is dynamic, with societal changes affecting empathy and changes in empathy feeding back into societal beliefs and norms, she says.¹⁴ Some of the reasons for this shift in empathy may be because of:

• Shifting attitudes and beliefs, which feed behaviors

• A decreased emphasis on others

• Increases on violence and bullying

• Changes in media and technology

• Changing family and parenting practices

• Changing expectations of success¹⁵

Additionally, Susan Lanzoni, who wrote a deep background on the origins of empathy in her book Empathy: A History stated some attribute this decline to the fact that Americans spend more time alone, that they read fiction less often, and that neoliberal capitalism has significantly eroded our natural tendencies toward empathy. ¹⁶ But although there are many reasons why empathy is on the decline, Lanzoni gives us hope that empathy can be learned. Just as we speculate that certain situations lead empathy to decrease, other situations that can increase people’s empathy. ¹⁷

Empathy and Twenty-First Century Outrospection

Roman Krznaric has studied empathy at the intersection of art, science, and practice. He’s the author of Empathy: Why it Matters and How to Get It, and believes 98 percent of us have the ability to empathise wired into our brains, but we’re living far below our empathic potential, saying our assumptions block us from seeing uniqueness in every person and instead put labels on those we meet.¹⁸ Highly empathetic people listen, look to understand first, and are able to go past labels to focus on the curiosity they have for humanity. Empathetic people create a two-way dialogue that helps us share our lives and become vulnerable.¹⁹

Krznaric observes that empathy seems to be in free fall, even as it is being recognized as a critical skill for the future of work and a predictor of company success.²⁰ His key argument is the twentieth century was characterized by Introspection, which is a focus on ourselves. He says the twenty-first century, on the other hand, is the century of Outrospection, which is the idea of discovering who you are and what to do with your life by stepping outside yourself and discovering the lives of other people. ²¹

Taking what Krznaric says is true, building empathy is the key trait that will not only propel us forward, but also make us more connected. As we continue deeper into the twenty-first century, an outward focus and enhanced sense of empathy is needed, and looking at the data from the above studies, we have a long way to go. It will take a new way of looking at the world—a fundamental way of doing business and structuring our work and systems—that will get us to a place worthy of outrospection and real transformation. One such transformation within Health and Human Services shows just how far we have to go to make changes stick.

Change 1.0: The Health and Human Services IDEA Lab

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) comprises the most important agencies in all of the federal government that promote our health and wellbeing: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, among others. Positive change here can result in improvements for millions of lives.

In 2013, Kathleen Sebelius, the HHS Secretary, made a bold move that forever changed HHS: she created HHS IDEA (Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship, and Action) Lab with Bryan Sivak at the helm. The IDEA Lab promotes the use of innovation as a framework for achieving HHS mission of enhancing and protecting the health and well-being of the public.

Three core principles guided the HHS approach:

1. Every individual has the ability to improve the health and well-being of Americans;

2. People are more powerful when working together; and

3. Every problem has a solution.²²

The IDEA Lab created a space to facilitate the freedom to play, ideate, and experiment in pursuit of improving the health of all Americans. This effort really is a culture change, and that’s part of the reason we changed our name to the IDEA Lab, because we’re about ideas and we’re about getting people to act on those ideas, Sivak said.²³ Technology is still important, but we look at it as not the solution to a problem, but as the catalyst to help you get to your solution. Sivak’s main goal was to build up this expertise inside of government so that we can actually change the status quo entirely.²⁴

The IDEA Lab launched several initiatives, all aimed at changing the culture and cutting the red tape of government:

• The Ignite Accelerator: Kickstarts innovative startup programs, products, and services.

• Ventures Fund: Invests in and supports bold ideas to transform Departmental operations.

• Entrepreneurs-in-Residence: Brings top external innovators and entrepreneurs for tours of duty to solve complex problems in health and the delivery of human services.

• Innovators-in-Residence: Brings new ideas and entrepreneurial expertise to tackle a critical problem of shared interest between the Department and not-for-profit organizations.

• Buyers Club: Modernizing information technology acquisition, procurement, and contracting.

• Health Data Initiative: Liberating health and social service data to serve the public.

• Open Innovation: Incentive prize and challenge competitions to source solutions from unexpected places.

• Invent Health Initiative: Empowering makers and creators to invent tools for better living and clinical care.

The IDEA Lab was a bold vision implemented on a grand scale and had far-reaching effects across the entire department. They motivated those on the frontlines while also driving change from the top-down. Like many change efforts, they capitalized on quick wins and created a culture of learning and discovery. This plan worked for a few years yet lacked a long-term strategy to build and scale the Lab and the ideas that came out of it.

Scaling Innovation—or Not?

At the end of the Obama Administration in 2016, the IDEA Lab team had a few years of implementation behind them, and I was leading an effort to codify and scale public sector innovation successes across the government.

By 2017, HHS and the country was under new leadership, and I was invited to present our findings to the IDEA Lab team. I hoped for profound insights and pathways on how to scale their impact beyond HHS to the rest of the government. The Director of the Lab shook his head and raised his hands in exasperation. We don’t know how that is possible—we can’t even scale what we’re doing across HHS, he said. Instead of encouragement, I found frustrated and fed up public servants who were juggling multiple priorities while struggling to keep the Lab afloat between Administrations.

I was surprised to hear such honesty, but not surprised the effort did not result in measurable change in a larger way. The IDEA Lab still exists with a skeleton staff accomplishing a fraction of what it was intended to do. There has been much turnover of directors of the Lab, which has posed a problem for preserving the institutional knowledge. It’s a matter of time before the Lab is almost completely dissolved.

Why Can’t This Type of Change Scale?

Change is incredibly hard, especially change as visionary as the HHS IDEA Lab. The changes the Lab were hoping to create ultimately came crashing down within the span of a few years due to lack of adoption. Here are some (of a multitude of) reasons why I believe they failed to reach their goal:

• Leaders failed to define what change in the public sector is, but rather took the Silicon Valley/entrepreneurial approach with a big launch and forced that approach on HHS.

• The HHS Idea Lab lacked a Theory of Change; there’s too many moving parts at a Department level; focus should be on the Agency level first, and scale up from there.