The Empathy Crisis

What is 'the empathy crisis' and how can we make progress toward solving it?

These are some of the questions Gerard addresses with San Francisco-based CEO, author and Empathy Activist, Rob Volpe.  Rob shines a light on the crisis, explains what being an empathy activist involves and shares some practical advice on how leaders can apply empathy in their everyday lives to cultivate better engagement, connection and results.

About Rob Volpe
Rob is an astute observer of life and a master storyteller who brings empathy and compassion to the human experience. As CEO of Ignite 360, he leads a team of insights, strategy, and creative professionals serving the world’s leading brands across a range of industries. He is also the author of Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. 

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Transcript

Xtraordinary Leaders – The Podcast
Episode 16: The Empathy Crisis, with guest Rob Volpe
FULL TRANSCRIPT 

00:00:00:29 - 00:00:05:03

It's not about the ordinary, we've got enough of that. It's about 

00:00:07:10 - 00:00:08:17

the extraordinary, 

00:00:08:22 - 00:00:10:06

and we need more. 

00:00:12:26 - 00:00:23:11

Hi there, I'm Gerard Penna. And welcome to the Xtraordinary Leaders podcast, where we spend time with recognised leaders and global experts exploring the art and science of remarkable leadership. 

00:00:27:11 - 00:01:11:14

Welcome back to another episode of the Xtraordinary Leaders podcast. I'm not sure about you, but the last few weeks have seen quite a number of firsts or novel experiences in my work and practice of leadership. The first milestone was that I actually got on a plane after two years of not flying anywhere because of constant lockdowns and border closures. And most of our programs moving to virtual delivery format. I caught a plane to another state and I ran a residential workshop, which was another first to have 20 leaders, all in a room together for several days working on our leadership - genuinely connecting, interacting, learning and engaging for a few days was an absolute privilege and joy. 

00:01:11:27 - 00:01:42:04

Another brand new experience was scheduling our first ever public Xtraordinary Leaders program and receiving an overwhelming response, with many people having booked in the first couple of days. I can tell you more about that at the end of this episode. And yet another novel experience for me, I had my first podcast episode with a guest from the West Coast of the United States from San Francisco to be exact, a place that I've been to a number of times that I've enjoyed immensely. 

00:01:42:17 - 00:02:12:04

And I find to be full of interesting, progressive and innovative organisations, as well as interesting, progressive and innovative individuals. And this episode of the Xtraordinary Leaders podcast involves a conversation with one such person someone who is as passionate and interested in a particular aspect of leadership as I am. And the topic empathy and our guest author, CEO and empathy activist Rob Volpe. 

00:02:15:25 - 00:02:47:09

I've come to the conclusion that I just quite simply, couldn't do my job well without empathy. Whether one-on-one coaching with an executive or working with a group, a leadership team or larger numbers of leaders in workshops, my ability to connect to other people and understand their perspective is absolutely essential. If I'm to engage with them, build trust and understand where they're coming from because I can't lead them from where I am. 

00:02:47:11 - 00:03:03:00

My work is to connect to people where they are and energise and mobilise and influence them to move towards where they need to get to. And you just simply can't do that if you don't understand their point of view or if you don't understand how they feel. 

00:03:04:18 - 00:03:40:07

It's one of the reasons why I recently wrote about empathy, a four-part series, and published it via LinkedIn and Medium about the role of empathy in leadership. And one of the things I point out very early on in that series is just how critical it is for leadership. The Center for Creative Leadership, which is a highly regarded organisation that looks into leadership and what it takes to be effective as a leader. They did some research on this and they fundamentally asked the question is empathy needed to be successful in their leader's job? Now, to answer this question, they analysed leaders empathy based on their reported behaviour. 

00:03:40:21 - 00:04:10:23

So they used a sample of over 6000 leaders from more than 38 countries, and they asked for each of those leaders. They asked three direct reports or three team members for each of those leaders to rate the leaders on their empathy. More precisely, they asked them to make observations about the quality of the leader's behaviour in terms of empathetic expression. At the same time, they asked the manager or boss of each of those targeted leaders to rate that individual on their job performance. 

00:04:10:25 - 00:04:45:01

So with three objective measures of job performance, and this was intended to allow the researchers to establish if there was a clear link between a leader's empathy and the job performance. Now, the results of the study showed that those two things are absolutely positively related. That empathy is related to job performance. So empathy, as rated by the leaders team members, actually positively predicted job performance ratings from the leader's boss. In other words, leaders who show more empathy towards direct reports were also rated as better performers in their job by their bosses. 

00:04:45:19 - 00:05:25:04

And what's more, the findings were culturally universal, with empathy being important across all 38 countries in the study. So given that the research tells us that empathy is critical for leadership success and my own experience of using empathy in my leadership work, telling me that it's critical for my own success. No wonder my ears pricked up when I heard about this fellow in San Francisco by the name of Rob Volpe. Rob self declares that he is an empathy activist, and at first when I heard that term, I was immediately my mind went to this impression or stereotype of a left leaning, liberal do-gooder  who works in some full purpose organisation or charity. 

00:05:25:25 - 00:06:07:24

And I was really surprised when I then found that Rob didn't. He is the CEO of a firm called Ignite 360. They provide market insights, so they do a lot of work on behalf of their clients. Often consumer goods companies or companies that provide services to consumers, and they use their expertise to help those clients get a much better understanding about their clients, about their current customers or the people that they'd like to have as customers. So Rob comes from a very commercial background, and yet he speaks of empathy and the importance of connectedness and compassion as if it were some essential skill for not only for the work of commerce, but the work of humanity. 

00:06:08:21 - 00:06:40:07

So naturally, I reached out to Rob and we had a terrific conversation off the bat about his work as an empathy activist and his new book on empathy, which had just been released. I got so much out of that conversation that it was a slam dunk easy decision for me to invite Rob to be a guest on the Xtraordinary Leaders podcast, on the topic of The Role of Empathy and Effective Leadership. The empathy crisis that Rob sees showing up in the world today and what we can all do about it to create a more empathetic and connected world. 

00:06:41:08 - 00:06:43:24

I hope you enjoy this episode. It's going to be a good one. 

00:06:48:09 - 00:06:53:02

Well, hello, Rob, and welcome to the Xtraordinary Leaders podcast. It's a pleasure to have you join us. 

00:06:54:04 - 00:06:57:13

Thank you, Gerard, it's great to be here, thank you so much for having me. 

00:06:57:29 - 00:07:07:14

Yeah, well, for the benefit of our listeners, can you set the scene and help us get to know you a bit? Where are you right now as we speak? Where do you live and what do you do for a living? 

00:07:08:26 - 00:07:39:23

Sure. Well, I'm coming to you joining you from San Francisco, California, where it is a beautiful, sunny day, and I am the CEO and founder of Ignite 360, which is a consumer insights and strategy firm. So we work with people to help understand. We work with our clients to help understand human behaviour, how people think and feel, and allow our clients to empathetically connect with their consumer so that they can build better products and services. 

00:07:40:08 - 00:08:08:07

And I am a newly minted published author of a book called Tell Me More about that: Solving the empathy crisis one conversation at a time, which is a natural extension of the work that we do. And I brought my own stories to life in helping people better understand empathy and trying to demystify some of it. But in an engaging way that would inspire people to be more empathetic themselves. 

00:08:08:18 - 00:08:14:09

Yeah. And you've actually described yourself as an empathy activist, in fact. So what do those words mean for you? 

00:08:17:24 - 00:08:22:24

I love those two words, I love these two words in combination together with each other. 

00:08:24:17 - 00:08:57:10

And it's really the tension that those two words have together because you don't think empathy has so much misconception as being such a soft skill and, you know, potentially being weak if you're too empathetic. And then you've got an activist and that's about going out and taking charge and changing the world. And actually, those two things are what we need together. And I love those two words together. Somebody else actually first used them. That's somebody I connected with on LinkedIn, like six or seven years ago, and it was like, I love this. 

00:08:57:12 - 00:09:28:17

Do you mind if I use it? I don't remember who it was, though, but she said, "Yeah, absolutely.". And so I took it on and I now extend that and pay that forward to anybody that wants to be an empathy activist. There shouldn't just be one. There should be many. And so for me, you know, activism itself isn't even about showing up and marching in the streets. It's about the things that you can do in your own life to espouse a way of being. 

00:09:28:19 - 00:09:56:25

And that can just be, you know, being you and walking in your own truth to actually, yeah, writing a book, speaking out, you know, going on to the streets and demonstrating whatever the situation might be. So there's all sorts of different ways for us to be activists and what I happen to be a big activist for at this point in my life is around empathy and the fact that we need to be more empathetic. We've lost touch with that skill.

00:09:57:29 - 00:10:40:12

There's a lot of resonance for me in the idea of these two words there being tension between them, you know, one being about our connection to others and the other one being about action and agency. And they are the central tenets in fact, to what I write about in my book Xtraordinary: The Art and Science of Remarkable Leadership, these two things that when you can bring them together, it creates something extraordinary. And you said one of the risks of just the word alone empathy is that it can be seen potentially as being weak and therefore might be tempting for someone who doesn't know you to hear those words empathy activist and focus particularly  on the word empathy and then pigeonhole you simply as a left leaning, charitable do-gooder . 

00:10:40:23 - 00:10:51:19

Yet at your firm Ignite 360, you work with some pretty big names and brands in commerce and business, helping them develop richer insights into their customers in their markets. How does empathy connect into that work? 

00:10:55:01 - 00:11:59:12

Yeah, well, you know, there's a quote from Henry Ford that he said about 100 years ago, that was that he said that he believed that the secret to success lies in the ability to see somebody else's angle and be able to adapt that point of view as your own. He said that 100 hundred years ago, and he was pretty successful in business back then. I don't think anyone would argue with that. And so that that has, I think, gotten forgotten in some cases but it really is true to successful businesses. People typically are the ones that have some intuitive understanding, some empathetic connection perspective-taking. They understand what the needs are of whoever it is they're serving, whether that's their consumer, a client, a customer, whether you're making a product, whether you're offering this service, even as a leader within an organisation, as you write about it, like you need to be empathetic, you need to be able to have that understanding. 

00:11:59:22 - 00:12:36:01

And so what we do in research and insights as we're gathering data and, you know, Brene Brown says, you know, data has a soul. It's the stories that have a soul. And we believe in that and that people, the people we're talking to, they have a right to be heard and our clients need to connect and understand who their consumer is, particularly because in larger organisations, as companies advance and evolve, you're bringing in people that are different from who the actual consumer is. 

00:12:36:03 - 00:13:10:03

It's just kind of the nature of scaling an organisation. And so you might have people with advanced degrees making six-figure salaries, making products that are used by people that look very different from them from an income perspective, from education, ethnicity, all the different things. And how are you possibly going to understand what their needs are if you're not using empathy to understand it, you know, and to connect and to see the point of view of those other people. 

00:13:10:05 - 00:13:43:28

And then as secretary, Ford said, take that on as your own perspective and let that guide your decisions that are related and based around the consumer. So that's what we strive to do, whether it's, you know, projects with Microsoft helping them develop new things, whether we're working with General Mills or Kraft Heinz on new food products or we're working with medical device and health care manufacturers or financial services, everybody is, you know, in a capitalist society you are working for and building products for consumers. 

00:13:44:09 - 00:13:52:00

Ultimately, someone is consuming the product, so you need to understand what makes them tick and how you can better serve them. Yeah. 

00:13:52:11 - 00:14:15:16

So understanding other people their point of view and being able to connect to that, as you have described, is incredibly important. And you've written a book and congratulations on the book. And the title of it, though, is interesting. ‘Tell me more: Solving the empathy crisis one conversation at a time’. Why do you believe there is an empathy crisis? 

00:14:20:16 - 00:15:01:21

I mean, aside from looking at the polarisation and politics and the ways that we're, you know, in the United States and I think in other countries too, we are just at each other's throats these days and the world has changed. The idea of community has shifted from being my immediate next door neighbours, the people that live in my village or my town to this sort of ideological bubble that has been curated for us through our social media, unbeknownst to us and a lot of cases and also through our choices in what news programs are watching, where we're sourcing our information. 

00:15:02:15 - 00:15:08:08

And as a result of that, it's easier now to live in a bubble as they talk about. 

00:15:09:24 - 00:15:40:00

Rather than interact with people that are other different from you, and so we've lost that ability, that sort of natural intuitive response mechanism. And then there are studies that are actually proving that or showing that that case. There's a study of studies that the University of Michigan did back in 2000. They released it in 2010, and they did a meta analysis from 1979 to 2009. They looked at 76 different universities at their campus life surveys. 

00:15:40:14 - 00:16:12:20

And just looking at the answers to the question, can you see the point of view of your classmates? They found a 40 percent decline in empathy skills starting in 2001, compared back to the previous 20 some years. And that never ticked back up a lot of people here. Twenty one, they go well, nine 11 cause that all the things that were happening in the world then and now, it didn't. It didn't bounce. You would have expected, like with other world events, you see these dips and peaks and valleys. It declined and it stayed at the suppressed level. 

00:16:13:06 - 00:16:43:10

Now my own firm, we've done some research surveying American adults and in a survey that we feel that in January, we asked a thousand adults 18+. Are you able to easily see the point of view? Do you agree with the statement? I can easily see the point of view of other people. And that's just it's a bad research question. It's so obvious that like, of course, I need to answer yes and tick the box with the yes. I can agree with that statement. 

00:16:43:21 - 00:17:17:26

But one third of American adults were not able to do that. And because that's self-reported information, you know, that number is even higher. Like, it's not just one third, it might be a half hour or more. There's a real problem out there. And so that's, you know, that you see then what's happening in society. It's like, there's a real problem. We're not getting along the way. We need to effectively function and it plays out at work as well as in our personal lives. 

00:17:18:23 - 00:17:30:22

So that is what and hearing that study from the University of Michigan is really what got me going with. We have to do something about this and really has led me on this journey in the last 12 years. 

00:17:31:12 - 00:17:42:20

What do you and what do you think? I mean, as best you can sort of peer into the crystal ball, but what do you think's at stake if we don't respond to this empathy crisis? 

00:17:47:08 - 00:18:39:05

Well, I think the path that we've been on is just going to continue to get worse where we're not listening to each other, and if you're not, if you're not having empathy, if you think about all the things that empathy actually fuels. And I think this is one of the things I try to demystify in my work and in the book Empathy. It's like the glucose. I mean, it's like the joint lubricant in so many other things, and we've got multiple joints in our body. And so empathy is involved in allowing you to communicate effectively and involves you being able to collaborate to have critical thinking skills, to make better decisions, to build trust, to reach forgiveness, to have compassion. 

00:18:39:23 - 00:19:25:12

Empathy is key in all of those things. So it's not just like, well, what happens if we don't have empathy and, oh, we don't have empathy? Well, no, actually, it's all of these other things that are happening that are also getting diminished and our skills aren't as strong, which then impacts how we play out as a leader, as a manager, as a team member or a contributor, as a partner, parent, child, all the different things in our lives. So, yeah, I don't want to say that without empathy, we're going to go right off the cliff, but we're definitely, definitely in danger of just society functioning in a more harmonious, sort of nurturing, supportive way. 

00:19:25:21 - 00:19:32:13

Yeah, it's interesting what you mention the use. The word leaders of this podcast is 

00:19:33:28 - 00:20:06:02

focused on the topic of leadership because it's such play such an important role in our world, in my mind, leadership. Its principal function is to help us create a tomorrow, which is at worst a tomorrow that is no more worse than today, ideally creating a tomorrow that is better than today. And that's the function of leadership, solving the problems for which we don't have the answers or energizing and mobilizing us to strive for those aspirations and dreams that we have. 

00:20:07:10 - 00:20:39:01

And leadership is dependent upon empathy. You can't lead people from where you are. You can only lead them from where they are. That means you have to be able to connect to people where they're at and see the world from their point of view. You have to, as a leader, understand what it is that will draw people forward and what it is that holds them back. Mm-Hmm. And then engage with them to help them move to where towards where we and they need to be. 

00:20:39:18 - 00:20:53:08

So I'm curious about how leaders are implicated in this empathy crisis based upon your own observations. How would you rate the quantity and quality of empathy that's exercised by leaders in our workplaces and communities? 

00:20:58:14 - 00:20:59:00

Well, 

00:21:00:22 - 00:21:36:06

I would point to the current great resignation that's been going on here in the States for the last eight months, where merely like record numbers of people are quitting their jobs and there's a few different reasons why they're leaving their jobs. But one of the reasons is because they weren't feeling like they had empathetic support from their leadership or their organization or their manager. You know, and that's the thing leader. You know, I think people often get a leader and they think CEO or president and say, No, no, no leader, everybody. 

00:21:36:08 - 00:22:08:00

There's so many leaders within organisations. If you're the fire safety monitor in your and you have that responsibility in your building, you're a leader. That's an important job. But there is a leadership failure with the pandemic. And, you know, I'm not going to go, shame on you. There was never seen before in our life and hopefully will be a little while before we see it again. But people weren't feeling supported. Leaders were not doing what they needed to. 

00:22:08:02 - 00:22:41:11

I mean, I remember the stories two years ago when all this was getting going with the companies offering services where you could monitor your employees at home work productivity by just installing this app or this camera, and you could see whether they were at their desk or what they were doing. It was like, Seriously, you know, and you've got your kid doing cartwheels behind you and you're trying to have a meeting like you've got to have some empathy with your people and understand like, that's where they are. So you need to and don't try to move them to you. 

00:22:41:13 - 00:22:55:26

You need to move to them or at least see what see them so that they do feel secure and safe and supported and don't deliver for you. But leaders didn't do that. 

00:22:57:12 - 00:23:00:21

There's some data that came out last year, a few different studies. 

00:23:03:07 - 00:23:40:11

One of the studies found that 90 percent of Gen Z, so those are adults 18 to 25 who some people may refer to as kids today. But adults 18 to 25 90 percent of them indicated they were more likely to stay at a company that had empathetic leadership than if it did not. Another study found that only one out of four employees found that the level of empathy in their organization was sufficient. So again, tension point like people are looking for empathy, they're looking for that engagement, but they're not finding that in their current companies. 

00:23:40:13 - 00:23:48:14

And so now that's the scramble that's happened where leaders trying to go, Oh, I need to get some empathy. What do I do? How do I do this? 

00:23:51:14 - 00:24:15:15

You're in you would have discovered yourself apart from observing other leaders. You have your own firm, you have your own clients and you'll be constantly engaging in the work of leadership. Any time that we seek to energise, influence and mobilize other people, we're exercising leadership. What have you discovered in your own practice about the role of empathy when leading what's important? How do you do it? 

00:24:20:19 - 00:24:56:28

Great question. I mean, listening, showing up for people is really number one, I try to practice the five steps, which is what we've developed and wrote about in the book. And, you know, fortunately, I don't have a lot of it. The first step is dismantling judgment. Well, fortunately, I don't have a lot of judgment towards the people in my organization. They probably, you know, it would be difficult if I did or held on to it. So you're overcoming your judgment, you know, and it's you have to make a judgment like empathy is one of those words where there's multiple meanings. 

00:24:57:18 - 00:25:43:05

And I liked how you took the time in your book to break out like, Hey, there's all these different types of empathy, and I do the same thing. And with judgment, it's like, don't confuse making a judgment, making a judgment decision with being judgmental, being judgmental. That's what we don't want. That's the casting aspersion of somebody. That's the bullet element that goes on. So you want to get over that. And then the next thing is to ask good questions. We really often want to like just get to the point, and instead you need to ask some broad open exploratory questions and don't say, Why were you late with this report? Ask what was going on when you were working on this report, and maybe not with that little tone that I had, which might indicate how I did something wrong. 

00:25:43:19 - 00:26:20:26

But you're at least trying to understand who you're asking the question in a way that you don't know what's going on. So be open rather than putting somebody on the defensive right away. Let them come to you with this is what's happening with me. And then you're actively listening, so you're paying attention. And, you know, I don't know if you're someone's immediate responses or are they just trying to dodge out of this? Some are just getting excuses, but you're looking for some of the nonverbal tells that might show up and you're sensing kind of are the kids doing cartwheels in the background? So yeah, obviously they are quite distracted. 

00:26:20:28 - 00:27:01:09

They've got a lot of stuff going on. And then that helps you to hear all of that. You're then at step four, which is integrated into understanding, you're trying to make sense of that. I don't have kids, so I'm trying to understand what might that be like if I had a four year old doing cartwheels behind me all the time while I'm on a call and I can't say I can use my solution imagination, which is the last step because I have cats and I've got three of them. And at any point, they're going to wake up and they're going to want attention and they're going to either want love or food, and they're going to come in because they can hear my voice and they're going to like, meow at me and touch me and try to get up on my lap and be in my space so I can understand. 

00:27:01:11 - 00:27:30:05

I can put myself into their shoes because I have something that I've been able to connect to and understand. And so for leaders, as you're working with your teams, you've got to meet them where they are. You've got to ask the questions and listen and think about what does that actually mean? What would that be like if I were them? And then from that perspective, you say, How can I help? How can I help them so that you can then overcome whatever the situation might be? 

00:27:32:13 - 00:27:34:12

In your words, something that I've often. 

00:27:35:28 - 00:27:55:14

Go ahead. I was going to say in. And your work, you train people in this or you run development programs with people, you're obviously constantly trying to encourage your clients to adopt this position. If they're going to understand their customers or their potential customers, they have to be constantly engaging in this process. 

00:27:57:29 - 00:28:06:08

When you think about those five steps in those different actions or different mental processes that need to go on. Where have you noticed that people struggle? 

00:28:11:27 - 00:28:42:19

Well, all over the place, to be honest, everybody has their own sorts of things, but I would say dismay at what I see with corporate clients is that dismantling their judgment is the hardest step because there is some training that goes on either when you're in the workforce and you're coming up through your career or you're getting your MBA or your advanced degree, that there's this idea of you are right and you need to, you know, it's very absolute. 

00:28:43:17 - 00:29:17:27

And so it's hard for people to let go because by letting go of their opinion, by saying, I don't know, can be conceived instead of strength, it's weakness. Even though saying I don't know can actually be a strength, you know, and having that humility to admit, like, I don't have all the answers and I'm curious to find out what the answer is. So judgment is the one that we've seen get in the way when we're doing training because we do trainings on the five steps that we have what we call empathy camp that we offer up to our clients. 

00:29:17:29 - 00:29:51:00

But then we also bring it into all of our research work. So before they're going out to meet their consumers, it's like, Hey, let's take a few minutes and talk about the five steps and the things that are going to come up for you. And inevitably, it's judgment when they'll report back about will be leaving an in-home or whatever interview like, Oh yeah, is really having judgment around. And this thing that they said I couldn't get over the fact that the guy talked about going to the convenience store to bring home a pizza for his family. 

00:29:51:14 - 00:30:24:06

And this is a true story respondent told us about how his brother in law would go to the store to pick up a pizza for his family, but also get another pizza that he would eat in the car on the way back to the house, the 20 minute drive. And the client came back and we were all like, Wow, that's a lot of pizza, but OK. But the client came out of the interview and said he's like, Wow, I was really having trouble getting beyond the second pizza until I realized I was being judgmental about it. And then I was able to put that aside and dismantle my judgment. 

00:30:24:19 - 00:30:45:18

And then I heard all these other like, it was amazing. Like, the convenience store needs to be selling pizza by the slice because maybe the guy doesn't want to be eating the whole pizza on the way home, you know, or whatever the ideation that he was able to get to empathy with that person. And that then fueled new ideas and new inspiration. So, so that's how it shows up for us. 

00:30:45:28 - 00:31:43:09

Hmm. And it happened so easily, doesn't it? I've just noticed it in myself. You describe this client who? Whose mind focused on this thing that the respondent said early in the conversation or early in their response. And then it caught up on that, you know, the fact that he eats this second pizza and he's no longer paying attention to anything that that person is now saying? It's caught up in the past in something this person said. In the past, yeah, and I noticed that as we're talking, I'm taking notes because this many interesting things that you're saying that I want to ask a question to follow up about and I'm as I'm making notes, I've got notes from something you said at the very beginning of what this part of the conversation that I could have hooked into and said, I'm just going to wait until you finish talking and then I'll ask that question rather than listening further to everything that you've got to say in the last thing. 

00:31:43:11 - 00:32:00:11

One of the things that you said with this pizza, for example, is. How do you. How do you hang out with letting go of what someone has said and focusing in the present moment? It seems to me that being aware of what your mind is doing. 

00:32:01:28 - 00:32:11:25

Is an essential element to therefore being empathetic, to stay with that person with what they're saying in a nonjudgmental way in that moment. Have I ever got that right? 

00:32:13:00 - 00:32:46:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a metacognition is how some people describe it, it's that it is that self-awareness of what is going on for me and hopefully you are. You know, and particularly when you're interviewing somebody in that situation, you're not just down in the moment with them, you are kind of because you should be receiving a lot of information and being very aware and thinking about what are the things that are coming up for you. 

00:32:46:25 - 00:32:48:25

What are the barriers that are getting in your way? 

00:32:50:16 - 00:33:20:16

So yeah, it's not easy and it isn't easy and you have to constantly. But I will say the more you do it, the easier it becomes. It's one of those things where the more you become aware of where your judgment is popping up. And like, I find it now, you know, and I'll admit and I write in the book judgment is like the dominant gene in my family. We all come out brown eyed and judge. 

00:33:21:08 - 00:33:52:12

And so I have to constantly check myself. And there are times in over watching reality TV or something, and I'm like watching to say something that's as really judgmental. And I have to I'm like, OK, what am I? Why am I wanting to say that to? I need to say that who's going to hit, you know, OK, it's just my husband and I can be a little bit easier if I wanted to. And empathy maybe isn't necessarily required because I'm watching something for entertainment, and so I'll let something out. 

00:33:52:25 - 00:34:19:21

But there are other times when, you know, if we're having a dispute or want to call it a dispute, but a neighbour has, you know, aggravated us about something I have to catch. You know, it's like, OK, wait, where is this coming from? For me, I don't necessarily know what's going on for them. Let me dismantle any judgment that I've got caught up in the things in the past and move forward with a more open mind. Yeah. 

00:34:19:27 - 00:35:04:23

And there are obviously going to be people, though, who are not just like us. They might even have values or worldviews that in some ways we find very difficult to understand, even the opposite of ours. And easily, we can find ourselves in a moment where they've said something. They've shared a point of view or even sitting in in a way that we find reprehensible or we find difficult. It triggers us. It activates us. What advice do you give people for? How do you in those moments, how do you leave your judgment at the door and how do you ready yourself and prepare yourself for those kinds of conversations with people who we know are likely to trigger our judgment at judgment instinct? 

00:35:08:19 - 00:35:13:22

Yeah, great. That's another great question, I think you have to, first of all, not 

00:35:15:13 - 00:35:24:04

not assume malintent like don't assume that they're meaning to harm necessarily that they're actually 

00:35:25:27 - 00:35:29:08

good intentioned, they just maybe don't know any better. 

00:35:30:26 - 00:36:09:10

And so and then approach it with a degree of curiosity, like, so what's going on for that individual? Like why, what? What would prompt them to be this way? What happened in their education, their childhood, their surroundings, the situation that they grew up in that might fuel that particular need? I know you wrote about it in the book the awful gun massacre and in Australia, and that led Prime Minister Howard to get rid of guns in the work that he did. 

00:36:09:16 - 00:36:29:02

I have a chapter in the book called Fear, and it's about the time I got to go to the National Rifle Association show in. I was in St. Louis that year, but I lived in San Francisco. I'm a gay man. I'm pretty far left as those things go. That was not handled the gun I'm not comfortable with. 

00:36:30:22 - 00:37:03:04

So it was really going out of my comfort zone, but I had to approach it with a level of curiosity. I had to have that beginner's mind. OK, so what? What's going on for these individuals that they feel the need to have a gun and you're not about going hunting or for sport, but they want a gun to protect themselves? And we were in particular talking to people that have carry and concealed permits. So we wanted to understand some of those motivations. And it didn't take that long as we started asking questions of the people we met at the show. 

00:37:04:21 - 00:37:39:26

Fear was this underlying motivator. They were afraid of what might happen out in the world, and a lot of times, you know, I would ask, So, you know, tell me about the situation that got you to carry it. And there wasn't. Well, I was, you know, held up at gunpoint or something. They just were afraid because they'd heard the stories and they were afraid something. Or they knew a friend of a friend had a bad thing happen and it could happen to them. Therefore, they felt better having a gun until we went to Philadelphia. 

00:37:39:28 - 00:38:10:22

Following this in our show, we did some focus groups and I had a focus group that had the room was like perfectly divided, and it's fascinating. That's sort of how people clustered together. And you probably see this in your workshops, like where do people choose to sit and whose opposite from them? And we had these guys from inner city Philadelphia, which they were black. It was much more of a rougher neighbourhood. And then we had these guys from the suburbs, two of whom were named Dave. So I started in the book. 

00:38:10:24 - 00:38:41:00

I refer to them as the Dave's and they, you know, so we got into this conversation like, why are you choosing to carry? And the Dave's were saying the things we heard similar to the gun show or, Oh, it's scary world. I don't know what's going to happen. I can't protect, don't feel like I can protect myself. And then the guys from the inner city started telling these stories about, Well, I work at a barbershop and after dark, there's always these guys that come in and they've got their hoods up and they'll be carrying a weapon. 

00:38:41:02 - 00:39:12:16

The one, you know, something bad. So I leave my gun out on my counter and then I have another one at the register because they'll know if they see the gun. Not to mess with me. Or another guy told a story about how he was walking home and knew people that I think he'd been held up at gunpoint, knew people that had had break ins. And then he had this group of guys approach him in a car and they went around the block and one guy got out and started walking by and he had a gun. So he was able to the guy. 

00:39:12:18 - 00:39:42:17

The respondent that we were with was able to flash the gun, just the handle of it to send a signal like, Hey, don't mess with me, I'm armed, and it managed to defuse the situation. So there are people that have really had something or they're living in a world where they need it for protection. And then there's this much, I think, much larger group that's just they're afraid and they're all afraid of what could happen. And so had all those experiences. I come back to San Francisco. 

00:39:42:19 - 00:40:23:11

I'm having brunch following week with some liberal lefty friends, and I bring up like, Oh my god, how did this kind Saturday? It was so fascinating. And my friends start talking about how they're afraid of people with guns because you don't know what they're going to do. And I'm like, Wait a minute, y'all are saying the same thing. This is like, you're all afraid of the same thing that the fear of the. Tangent what could happen to me? Some people have just taken it to the stop buying a gun and others are just afraid of it, and so if we're able to start the conversation from that perspective of understanding, we're not feeling safe in our world. 

00:40:24:23 - 00:40:36:28

How can we then start to work together to bridge and find you use that as our common ground to reach some sort of resolution in this country on gun safety? 

00:40:37:29 - 00:41:08:20

So how do you so you've articulated, I think, really well through that story about how a lot of what motivates human behaviour, and it's not the only thing that motivates human behaviour, but often fear, you know, some projection about what might happen in the future if I do or I don't do something and that drives our current behaviour. And often what we're trying to do when we're leading or even marketing is we're trying to influence people to make choices, maybe different choices to the ones that they're making now. 

00:41:09:13 - 00:41:47:12

And so to do that, though, we have to understand what is currently motivating them. What are those fears? But for people to reveal those fears to us, they have to trust us enough to open up about it. So it seems to me that. Using empathy actually requires is a precondition that you're able to build enough trust for people to reveal really what they're feeling, what's going on for them. So in your experience, how do you build that trust? How do you build that in a way which cultivates those conditions where people are willing to reveal what they're really thinking and really feeling? 

00:41:51:23 - 00:42:23:22

Good question. I think there's a few things. One, you know, we have to model the behaviour that we want to see from other people. So if you're looking for your team to be vulnerable and to share and to trust you. You need to be vulnerable and share and trust your team. So there's that reciprocity that has to happen and you have to model the behaviour and don't expect that one. You know, one Zoom call is going to fix it. It's repeated behaviour over and over again. 

00:42:24:27 - 00:42:39:04

Additionally, it's you, you know, really being honest and truthful, which I think goes along with the vulnerability to build the trust. You know, as much as you can, 

00:42:40:27 - 00:43:15:03

easily as much as you can share with people, what's happening, what's going on? It's that honesty and transparency that establishes the trust. And that's true. Whether you're a leader working with your team or you're a manager overseeing, you know, a brand, you know, or a business service. That's the way we've had this meta megatrend of authenticity over the past 20 years, now 15 years. 

00:43:16:01 - 00:43:48:18

And I think it's even evolving into more transparency. And that's all about being honest and being authentic and genuine. And that helps to build that trust because consumers today are too savvy. They can see through the sort of 1950s animated B.S. that used to get served up to us in this sort of happy stereotypes. There's much more understanding of what's real and authentic, and people are looking for that. 

00:43:49:06 - 00:44:00:21

Mean you can still put some nice gloss and polish on an advertising campaign, but it's it still needs to reflect kind of the reality that people can relate to. Yeah. 

00:44:02:12 - 00:44:04:05

So a question I have is about 

00:44:05:24 - 00:44:30:04

the question I was going to ask is what is the simple practical tip that you could give listeners on how to use empathy when leading in their daily lives? But I think you've been doing that all the way through. So my question, I'd like to reframe it as what's the most common bit of advice you find yourself giving to people about how to show up with empathy? What's that kind of number one tip you just keep seem to be repeating over and over and over because you're seeing it not there. 

00:44:34:26 - 00:45:12:17

You have to be courageous to have to demonstrate empathy. Maya Angelou has a beautiful quote where she said, ‘I think we all have the ability to have empathy’. We just don't have the courage to show it or display it. And I think that that's 100 percent true. And we're going through this, this inflection point in our world. And you know, these are in these inflection points aren't quite as slow moving as glacial change and carving mountains and rivers, streams and things, but it's not turning on it the proverbial turn on a dime or a very quick sudden change. 

00:45:12:19 - 00:45:41:06

But over these past few years and years to come, we're going through this inflection where it is more important to be empathetic and to support and connect and care about the people that we're working with. And so that will require all of us to be courageous, to be an empathy activist in our own way, to show up empathetically and to support and not be afraid of it, but to actually, you know, step into it and give it a try. 

00:45:43:13 - 00:45:59:09

This whole conversation for me has been an experience in being reminded of my own values or being in some ways challenged about my living, my values, so the three values that I, I seek to live by curiosity. 

00:46:01:04 - 00:46:32:27

Compassion. And courage. And obviously, you've spoken about the role of curiosity in seeking to understand other people's points of view and asking lots of open questions and really digging in and hanging out with what you hear rather than seeking to judge it. You talked about empathy. I mean, empathy is an act of compassion. It's a connection to other people and understanding how their world view or their experience of the world has been shaped the way it has. And not to judge it, to think about what experiences might they have had which shaped this for them, created this for them. 

00:46:33:29 - 00:46:48:20

And the third one is courage. And you've talked about the courage of being authentic. And that's the work for me at the moment, the work of continuing to allow myself to be vulnerable enough in the moment with people 

00:46:50:11 - 00:47:07:21

so that we can have real connection and I can have real connection, which is which is the piece of work that's really important to me at this moment. What's your work? You know, a lot of people think that once we've written a book or once we've gotten to a certain level of experience or seniority or got grey hairs, both of you have got them in our beds. 

00:47:09:13 - 00:47:16:00

We don't have it all sorted out, we don't have all the answers, we're still doing the work. So what's the work for you at the moment, Rob? What are you working on? 

00:47:19:19 - 00:47:50:12

Well, I will answer that question, and I have that answer ready, but I think part of why I like you so much is because truth and compassion are two things that we have in common as key core values and drive me and certainly empathy and that curiosity and it is empathy to answer your question. Empathy is the thing that I continue to work on and helping not just spread the word and help other people and doing it. 

00:47:50:14 - 00:48:21:13

One conversation at a time like this, whether it's individual or through a podcast that will magnify the conversation, but even then within myself and just peeling it back, there's so much work and so much thinking that's being done around empathy and it just seems to continue to grow. And so I'm trying to connect with a lot of people that are courageous enough to put empathy in their job title or in their primary description on LinkedIn. 

00:48:21:15 - 00:48:57:07

It's like, I want to know who these people are, and I want to understand how empathy is showing up for them and the different things that we're doing. And it's it's so rewarding and I'm connecting like, Oh, you've got to meet this person over here because they're doing something similar or have different ways of thinking about it. And I'm getting a lot of joy out of that and then deepening my own personal understanding of empathy and continue to be honest, there was a really great discussion recently on my LinkedIn post I had I posted a photo from an airplane that was on a recent business trip. 

00:48:57:09 - 00:49:30:19

And one of my biggest pet peeves is when people take their socks and shoes off on a plane and they put their barefoot up on the armrest of the person in front of them. And it's like it makes my head explode. And I had two guys behind me have a really loud conversation, and we were flying from Miami to San Francisco, which is six and a half hours in flight. And they talked from the time they got on the plane until they got off the plane. So there was all that padded, you know, sitting on the plane while everyone bought it and oh my God, and I had to work. 

00:49:31:04 - 00:50:01:29

And so I posted it and I was asking the question like, OK, if I'm an empathy activist, why am I having such a difficult moment with us and the conversation that came out and people jumping in with our own perspectives? And they were like, Well, it's not necessarily about you or you're having empathy for yourself or with your other passengers, not necessarily with that passenger, with their shoes off or, you know, their feet exposed. And that's OK. And that's OK, you know, but empathy can also help you understand how to have the conversation with them. 

00:50:02:01 - 00:50:33:04

So back to empathy is local glucosamine in communication. I could empathetically approach them and have the instead of going, Hey Bozo, put your put your socks on, or would you shut up? I can. I could approach it from a more empathetic perspective and try either to see their point of view or help them see my point of view, which I think is the other piece of empathy that it is a two way street and you can use empathetic language to get people to see where you're coming from. 

00:50:35:15 - 00:51:05:16

So empathy doesn't need to leave us feeling powerless. It, in fact, can empower us and allow us to have more powerful and influential conversations with other people, rather than ones in which we may show up instead self-serving, reckless and abusive and only interested in what we want rather than what you know what we need. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Thank you again for joining us all the way from the other side of the world to discuss a global issue that I think should be important to all of us. 

00:51:06:15 - 00:51:24:01

You said that you're trying to connect with people who use empathy openly in the job title or just are interested in empathy. So if any of our listeners who are interested in empathy, if they want to find out more about you or buy your book or connect with you or become an empathy activist themselves, what are some resources that you could direct them to? 

00:51:26:27 - 00:51:57:24

Sure. So, first of all, would be the website around empathy in the book, which is five steps to empathy dot com, which is the number five steps empathy, dot com and the book. Tell me more about that is available around the world in hardcover and an e-book with an audio book coming in May. And then I encourage people to find me on LinkedIn. Rob, if you just search Rob for Rob, an empathy activist, I'll show up, but find me on LinkedIn. Find me on Instagram. Empathy underscore activist. 

00:51:58:16 - 00:52:21:24

You can find me on Facebook as Rob Volpe, empathy activist. You can find me on Twitter. Follow me. You can find me on TikTok as empathy activist. And You can find me on Peloton. I always love a little high five action on the Peloton, and I'm empathy activists on Peloton. If any of your listeners are taking a cycling or one of the other classes. 

00:52:22:09 - 00:52:29:28

That's terrific. I think people should be able to find you in one of those places. Rob, thanks again. Really appreciate the conversation. 

00:52:31:13 - 00:52:35:13

Gerard, thank you, this has been just awesome, I loved it, thank you very much. 

00:52:39:14 - 00:53:10:14

I really like the way that Rob described himself as an empathy activist, partly because I agree we need more of it in the world today and partly because it reflects my own views on what makes for more extraordinary leadership. Empathy is a form of connection. It's an incredibly powerful way to show warmth towards others, and of course, activism is about agency. It's about making things happen, which is all about strength. Warmth and strength together are what creates that more extraordinary pattern of leadership. 

00:53:10:29 - 00:53:44:17

That pattern that's able to achieve better results more sustainably. A way of leading that I describe in my book Extraordinary The Art and science of remarkable leadership, in which we also teach in our programs. Speaking of which, it would be remiss of me to not mention the first energized public program that we've got coming up on the 4th to the 6th of April in Melbourne. This is the first time that we've run this program as a public program open to anyone who wants to come along. Up until now, we've run the program as an in-house workshop for many of our leading clients and organisations. 

00:53:45:00 - 00:54:27:01

We've had a wonderful response to this program over the last several years. And so I am absolutely delighted now to be able to offer it up to people who wouldn't normally get access to the program, the models, the techniques, the methods and the skills that we teach. Of course, one of which is empathy. So if you'd like to come along or even just learn more about the energise program, reach out to us at www.xtraordinaryleaders.com today. That's, of course, xtraordinary without any e. You can also email us and reach out via any of the social media channels that we use, including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 

00:54:28:03 - 00:54:34:23

That's it for now. I look forward to seeing you for the next Xtraordinary Leaders podcast. Take care lead, Ged.