This is Five Minute Friday. Episode number 146. Empathy and Compassion. A couple of weeks ago, I was on an Emirates flight. This was a flight … a quite long flight, I think. Well, one of the long flights as going from Europe back to Australia. On Emirates, they have links and learning as part of their videos. You can go into like movies or you can go into shows. I think in shows, they have education and they have link to learning there.
I had a look at a couple … Actually, I looked at two. One wasn’t as exciting, but the one I really liked was a tutorial by Jeff Weiner, who is the founder of LinkedIn. His tutorial was quite short, so if you’re ever on an Emirates flight, I recommend checking it out. It’s about like 20 minutes long or something. The title is around using compassion in leadership or compassion in business and entrepreneurship. Something along those lines.
But what I wanted to share today was an important takeaway that I got from that tutorial that I really enjoyed and I appreciated. I think you will appreciate it as well. There, Jeff Weiner was talking about the difference between empathy and compassion.
We all know that empathy is a trait that humans have where we actually can feel what another person feels. The word, I just looked it up just now. The word empathy was first introduced back in 1909. It comes from a German translation of the word, which means to feel into. It’s quite a recent word. It’s only a hundred and something years old.
The theory is that it invokes mirroring neurons in humans. If somebody slams, I don’t know, like drops something on their foot and you see it, even though you didn’t drop anything on your foot, you might still feel that pain. You actually physically feel that pain because your mirroring neurons are firing off in your brain. That’s what empathy is all about. It’s about feeling what the other person feels.
What Jeff Weiner was talking about in his video tutorial was about being a leader in your organization, units, team or maybe it can be even family. It could be in relationship. Being a leader and the importance of being a compassionate leader.
What is compassion? That’s the main question that we need to figure out. What is compassion and how is it different to empathy? Well, here is where Jeff uses a … or gives a very good example. Actually this example comes from the Delhi Lama. So imagine you are walking through the mountains and you come across a person who has a boulder strapped to their chest.
In the case of empathy, what will happen is you will feel their pain. You will feel how heavy it is. You will feel how difficult it is, even though you don’t have a boulder but by seeing them with that boulder strapped to the chest, you will feel that same exact feeling of heaviness, tiredness, and how hard it is to even stand. That feeling will render you useless. You won’t be able to help them. You will just be feeling exactly the same thing. You’ll understand how they feel, but you’ll be incapable of doing anything about their problem.
On the other hand, if in the same situation you are rather than being empathetic, you’re compassionate, then what will happen is you will see the world through their lens. You will see, understand what it’s like to have that pain, but at the same you will maintain a distance so you can do something to alleviate their suffering. That’s the key here.
The difference is that in the case of empathy, you feel exactly the same and therefore, you are caught up in that feeling. You are not able to actually help the person. Whereas, in the case of compassion, you see the world through their lens. You understand that feeling you get. How you kind of like you can associate with that feeling, but at the same time you keep a distance in order to allow yourself to actually help that other person.
Personally, I really like that example. I think it explains the concept really well. It shows that empathy is actually a building of compassion. You cannot be compassionate unless you already have empathy. At the same time, just having empathy is not enough to be compassionate. You need to be able to maintain that distance and not actually fall for having that same exact feeling. Therefore, not being able to do something about the situation.
Also, that shows why being compassionate is very important for leader because you might see certain problems in a situation or a person having sort of problems. Unless you’re truly compassionate, you will not be able to help them because even though you might see the problem, you might not understand how it feels for them.
On the other hand, if you’re simply going to empathize with the person, then you again you won’t be able to help them because you won’t be able to maintain the distance. It’s a bit of both. On one hand, feeling what the person feel. On the other hand being able to still stay at a distance to help them.
The final, kind of like the pinnacle of all this, is true and conditional compassion. That’s the hardest part because you need to non discriminate against the person’s character, against the person’s personality, or anything else that might bias your opinion. You need to put all of that aside and actually truly understand the person or like feel what they’re feeling and be compassionate regardless of the circumstance. Regardless of who it is that you are trying to help. That is the ultimate goal, to be truly unconditionally compassionate in this as Jeff Weiner puts it. That’s a skill requires almost superhuman strength.
There we go. That’s what compassionate is. Probably an interesting question is what’s the difference between all of these things, empathy, compassion, and sympathy. So, sympathy is a bit different. Sympathy is when you don’t actually feel a person’s pain but you can understand it, like through your cognitive apparatus through like just analytical thinking. You can understand what that pain is all about. Sympathy is kind of like a bit of a different aspect of these things. Here we talk about empathy and compassion.
Yeah, so that’s compassion. What I’ll like to encourage you to do when you have some time this weekend, or maybe right after this podcast, just to have a ponder about where are you compassionate in your life or where could you be compassionate in your life. Maybe it’s in a work situation. Maybe something happened in the past week, where you could be more compassionate or maybe it’s in a personal situation. Maybe with your significant other where you might’ve been empathetic but it would’ve been better to be compassionate. Or maybe you just didn’t even recognize that situation and it would’ve been just nice to be compassionate. Maybe it’s something at home. Might be in your hobbies with your friends or try to recognize situations as they come up this weekend and see where you can actually be compassionate.
You probably already are. I think humans are generally good at this, but just recognizing that that is compassion and then trying to be truly unconditionally compassionate. I think it’s an important skill. Not to just be good at it automatically. Just to have it come naturally, but to be able to consciously invoke compassion so that when in the future you ever come across a situation where somebody needs help, you will know how to be compassionate with them.
There we go. Hope you enjoyed today’s little ex course into compassion and empathy. I hope you found these concepts quite interesting. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, happy unwinding.
