Identifying as empathic is pretty trendy in 2021. But in all likelihood, most of us aren’t natural empaths.
According to a 2007 study on empathy published in Nature Neuroscience, only one to two percent of the population are true empaths. However, a more recent study in the Brain and Behavior journal suggests that up to 20 percent of people display sensory processing sensitivity, a trait highly associated with empathy.
This relative dearth of naturally compassionate people may be distressing for some since the benefits of empathy are widespread and well-known. Empathy makes people better managers, employees, family members and friends.
Thankfully, empathy is not a fixed trait, and people can still integrate it into their lives even if it doesn’t come easily. You can train your empathy muscles, and there are helpful tools for managers to ensure they are leading their teams with both brains and heart.
To learn how managers integrate empathy into their practices, Built In SF connected with Ryan Purtill, a vice president at adtech company Red Ventures, to learn about his favorite tool to heighten empathy toward his direct reports.
What’s one concrete way you’ve increased your empathy for others in the workplace and demonstrated that you understand where the people you lead are coming from?
Keeping a pulse on your team members’ perspectives and emotional states can be difficult, especially if you manage a large team. Reports are often at various levels of comfort discussing their true feelings or difficult life events that might be affecting their performance. This can lead managers down a path where they unknowingly strain relationships through increased asks, messaging that’s perceived as callous or mistimed feedback.
A cornerstone to true empathy is understanding, and to understand your team members you need regular touchpoints where reports can authentically share information up to their comfort level.
To understand your team members you need regular touchpoints where reports can authentically share information up to their comfort level.”
What tools do you use for this?
One concrete tactic that I employ is asking my direct reports to fill out a basic emotional assessment before our weekly one-on-one conversations. We have a shared spreadsheet where employees can quickly mark down how they’re feeling in terms of emotions such as happiness, anger or excitement.
As a manager, this allows me to have a baseline of the emotional framework of my report prior to our conversation. It also allows team members an entry point to broach possibly uncomfortable topics and unlock deeper conversations that may have never come forward without a prompt. I can start the conversation off with a question such as, “I saw on your BEA you marked you are feeling extremely angry today, is there something you’d like to talk about?”
