Introduction
A former colleague responded to my last post, saying “It’s an interesting perspective… Training doesn’t give us the ‘activating empathy’ bit that we have learned is so important.”
That left me wondering about how we might go about ‘activating empathy’ in a deliberate way on a personal level. As a Disability Inclusion advocate, I could say I am motivated by a sense of justice. I know what it feels like to be excluded because of a disability. But that’s not my activating force. In a way, my ‘life lesson’ is about learning to be more effectively empathic.
People who are responsive to Disability Inclusion efforts are empathic in general and Disability Inclusion only shapes their empathic response in that context.
Empathy is something we all have the potential to express in a strong way, unless we have been traumatised. But its not universal. It is shaped by experience. We may be confident in expressing it, or fear doing so. We may express it gently or roughly, strongly or tepidly.
Where does it come from?
Empathy is built into our biological core. Our brain has mirror neurons that let us ‘mirror’ another person’s behaviour, gesture and posture. We might be so ‘into’ the other person that we don’t notice we are matching/mirroring them. But others will.
Our primate origins have given us instincts to feel belonging with and caring for others who are ‘one of us’ – family, tribe, gang, team, squad, group, community and so on. But, because these are biological instincts, they are not endlessly scalable beyond a certain number of people and the nature of our connection with them. There’s a ‘cut off’ point when instincts give out and ideals take over.
This is when humanistic or humanitarian principles and ideals replace our instinct. We also have instincts to exclude and be unempathic. They came into play when our ancestors found it necessary to compete for resources – either raiding to obtain or defending to retain. Competition is an instinct we need to manage through intentional acts of self-control.
This is the environment we live in. We include and exclude according to our needs and wants. We live within multiple ‘one of us’ associations (in-groups) and in sometimes uncomfortable proximity to multiple ‘not one of us’ (out-groups) relations.
We can be indifferent or hostile toward out-groups or their members. This can be because of direct experience, history, tradition or belief. Such emotions may need managing in diverse workplaces and communities. We may struggle to be empathic. Taking that ‘higher path’ isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do.
Mapping our connections
It can be instructive to create a mental map of one’s in-group/out-group associations. With my former employer I was a member of a small work team within a directorate which was part of a business area which was part of a division which was part of a department. But my strong sense of ‘one of us’ stopped at work team level because of the culture created by senior management. Managers and above have their own sense of ‘one of us’. Many see a management/worker divide and that can be even stronger among executive leaders.
My personal ‘one of us’ connections include family and friends, allies in the Disability Inclusion cause, other people with disabilities, members of my geographic community, people who share my interests and beliefs and so on. This is, with all of us, a large group with senses of connection from deep and immediate to superficial and general.
When you think about these connections for any time you will see that your capacity for empathy is highly selective and variable in its intensity. It is something we can be aware of and make choices about. We can choose to be more empathic.
Being ‘one of us’ can be about powerlessness
Being ‘one of us’ can be about looks, beliefs, interests, origins, gender, sexuality or status. Or it can be about shared experience, including disability. Or it can be because we are also all human beings.
All this matters because efforts at stimulating Disability Inclusion may have to compete with in-group/out-group reflexes. Hence, in appealing to a natural sense of empathy the motivation might be about activating a sense of ‘one of us’ in a work context or appealing to an abstract ideal of inclusion. The ideal might be an undeveloped notion for some and hence require greater cognitive effort.
There is good evidence that people become less empathic as they climb organisational power ladders, so appealing to a ‘one of us’ sense of belonging may not be effective. A gentle reminder about ideals and values might be more effective.
My time as a Disability ERG lead had a lot of focus on cultural change to activate greater ‘one of us’ empathy. But I also understood that stimulating idealism was important in the context of inclusion in general. I have come to understand that these are two different approaches that we shouldn’t confuse.
Sometimes we are united by lower status and relative powerlessness. This is often the case in hierarchical organizations where status and rank are coveted by people less inclined to be empathic. It’s not a great foundation for empathy and should never be exploited in an explicit way. But understanding what triggers empathy is important, as is fostering it in the highest way.
The reality is that Disability Inclusion isn’t usually something one seeks from a position of strength – unless it is accepted as a moral duty by an organisation or community as a shared responsibility. For me, the goal has been to get to that strength position – where empathy is the default response.
The critical value of insight
We can’t train the activation of empathy, but we can stimulate it provided we ‘educate’ for insight rather than information. Back in 2011 I completed a six-month program in applied management, for which, apparently, my employer paid $10,000. The program was solid and thorough, but I was always puzzled why I had no strong recall of the content, even though I applied myself diligently.
It was only last year (2024) that the penny dropped. I had been listening to a Your Brain at Work podcast from the Neuroleadership Institute when I heard about the difference between training for insight rather than information. If you read, listen or watch for insight rather than information critical ideas can trigger greater learning. But it’s better that learning opportunities are primarily designed to trigger insight. Mostly they are not.
Some people will not be strongly motivated to be more empathic. There’s no point in pressuring them because that will likely precipitate an adverse reaction. But you might be able help them gain insight into why they do not have a strong motive. They may resist. That’s okay. We don’t need to be judgy. However, they might appreciate understanding why other people are giving them a hard time.
Empathy can be hard to do
Expressing empathy is complex and personal. There was some research done a few years back on how corporate executives in the USA were responding to Disability Inclusion efforts. Some executives expressed interest but were not confident in engaging with staff with disabilities because they feared an adverse reaction if they came across as ignorant or insufficiently sensitive. That could have been an insightful moment for a lot of folks, but I heard nothing after. Maybe it was for some.
This is why I am such a fan of PurpleSpace. It’s the only group I know that is dedicated to Disability Inclusion by creating opportunities for insight to be triggered and empathy increased.
Conclusion
Our workplaces are novel communities, sometimes of great diversity. Our instinct to be inclusive creates a background of goodwill which, nevertheless, can be overtaxed by cognitive demands and result only in a positive sentiment.
We naturally imagine we are better than others find us. Positive sentiment can seem to be sufficient. But, when inclusive action is needed, we require a motive force. Here we must allow our workplace communities are stages for evolving ideas and values and consider two motives:
- Expand the sense of ‘one of us’ through positive culture change via communicating insights about diversity attributes and experiences that reinforce or activate a sense of ‘one of us’.
- Encourage engagement with ideals and values that champion the idea that ‘all of us’ is ‘one of us’. But while this is an adaptive pressure on our evolving diverse community it risks being distorted by dogmas and unsubtle moral pressure. It needs a light and patient touch guided by triggering insights rather than asserting moral arguments.
We realistically should be employing both motive forces, but not through formal processes like ‘training’. Formality isn’t a friend to empathy. What works better are managed engagements that foster openness and authenticity – conversations among peers and allies.
A weakness of the desire for Disability Inclusion is that we aren’t motivated to understand how we ‘talk’ inclusion while often we ‘walk’ exclusion. We can make inclusion selective and conditional in our own actions while seeking universal and unconditional inclusion from those we don’t see as ‘one of us’. We need a countering insight to stop this contradiction.
Insight begins with advocates being sufficiently self-aware of their own behaviour. What behaviour led an executive to be averse to engaging with staff with disability? How can that concern be addressed by a Disability Inclusion advocate? Can we have empathy for the unconfident executive? To be effective we must.
This is a hazard for a lot of efforts at inclusion. We assume that empathy must flow only toward those who feel excluded. But if those who are doing the excluding do so inadvertently, we must reach out to them. Even those who exclude intentionally may have no insight into why they do so, or the impact of their behaviour. Empathy is a relationship, not an attitude.
This is an argument for greater cognitive effort by Disability Inclusion advocates so that they are capable of performances that trigger insights rather than convey moral pressure and political argument.
Empathy is personal, direct and visceral, not abstract and rationally remote. It says, “I care for you.”