863: Mastering Empathy to Enrich Relationships and Reduce Stress with Anita Nowak

Pete Mockaitis

Anita, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Anita Nowak

Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m stoked to hear about your book Purposeful Empathy: Tapping Our Hidden Superpower for Personal, Organizational, and Social Change. But, first, I want to hear about your travels. You’ve been to 65 countries. What is the story here?

Anita Nowak

Well, I just love being in a new place, meeting new people, having conversations that you wouldn’t expect to have in unusual spaces. So, I’ve traveled to Bhutan, and I’ve lived overseas in Thailand, and been to Morocco, and all over South America, now, 65 countries and counting. So, maybe, maybe, maybe hit 80 by the time I die.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there perhaps an underrated country or location you think people are missing out on and they should know about?

Anita Nowak

Well, I do think that Copenhagen has got the most beautiful people in the world, whether you’re eight months old or 88 years old. Men, women, everybody there is beautiful. And I don’t mean just physically beautiful. I just mean kind and considerate and they have great social policies, so I think Denmark is an underrated place to visit.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. I had an amazing trip to Lithuania, and I think, like, that should really be on people’s list, but it doesn’t seem to make it. But that’s my plug, Lithuania.

Anita Nowak

My husband is Georgian, and so we’ve, over the years, sent some friends over to Georgia. Tbilisi is a really cool city right now.

Pete Mockaitis

Nifty. Well, thank you. Well, now let’s hear about empathy. I guess you worked that muscle chatting with different folks in different places in 65 countries. Can you tell us a particularly surprising or counterintuitive insight discovery you’ve made along the way when it comes to this empathy stuff?

Anita Nowak
I think people don’t realize that practicing empathy is actually really good for you. So, the neuroscience is out, so they’ve studied what parts of our brain light up when we’re feeling pleasure and the rewards part of our brain. So, if we’re eating chocolate cake, that’s what lights up. If we just had a great orgasm, I’m not sure how they test that, but that part of the brain lights up. If you’re high on psychedelics, it’s the pleasure and reward centers that light up.

Same thing happens when you’re in an empathic embrace. If you’re in an emotional resonance with someone and feeling connected to somebody, that’s what lights up in the brain. And so, it sounds like practicing empathy is always about extending empathy and being empathic to others, it’s so altruistic, but, in fact, it’s the ultimate win-win when you practice empathy that you benefit, too, physiologically, spiritually, psychologically.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. Well, that almost sounds like a thesis statement right there, but how would you articulate the big idea behind your book Purposeful Empathy?

Anita Nowak

Well, I think the world needs more empathy. We, in our lives, need more empathy. I think we’re born with the capacity to empathize and become more empathic with practice is possible and that it’s good for us. So, those are, like, the five levels of why I think we have to dial up the empathy in the world. There’s a few examples that I’d like to share just as an experiment.

When I was studying the neuroscience of empathy, this is what happened to me more than 10 years ago. I was in a lineup for a FedEx at a FedEx counter and over the holiday season. A long lineup, 30-minute wait, everybody was bored, frustrated, nobody had cellphones, it was a long time ago, so you didn’t have anything to distract you.

And I got up to the counter, and the woman who greeted me was extremely rude, I mean, really unnecessarily rude. And I had a reaction to her, like, “How dare you? Like, what’s up with you?” and I wanted to call her out on it, but because I’d been doing this reading about the practice of empathy, I decided to put it into practice, and this is all happening, like, in a matter of nanoseconds, but I just looked at her and I said, “Are you okay?”

And there was this little pregnant pause as she was trying to figure out whether or not I was being sincere, if I was being sarcastic, and she discerned that I was being earnest, and she just burst into tears. And she looked at me, and she said, “I’ve been working two weeks double shifts, my son is at home with a fever. I think I’m coming down with something. It’s 3:00 p.m., I haven’t had a lunch break. I’m just flat out exhausted.”

And we looked at each other, and I held her hands across the counter, and she was crying. And we just held space together. I went to get her a mint tea afterwards, and she got herself together and sent my package with efficiency and grace, but that moment of human connection was available to us just because I asked the question, “Are you okay?”

And so, I think that we’re living in a world right now where we are constantly stressed out and busy all the time, and triggered all over the place, and I think that leaning into our empathic proclivity is going to really save the world. It’ll help other people and it’ll also help us as we journey through life.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. Well, so you mentioned a few benefits of being more empathic: increasing dopamine, reducing stress, boosting self-esteem, heightening the immune system, enriching our relationships. All that sounds swell. Could you share with us any particularly hard-hitting studies that made you go, “Whoa,” like they had some big numbers or transformational differences unfolding there?

Anita Nowak

Well, okay, there’s at work, but let me just start with Jamil Zaki’s work. He’s a professor at Stanford who studies empathy, has a great book on empathy, and his research looks at just having the belief that you can become more empathic actually changes our behavior so that we behave in more empathic ways. So, just thinking it’s possible is already important.

But if you’re asking about stats, I think this is kind of a really important set. I’ll share three stats for you, specific to the workplace, since that’s what’s your podcast is about, becoming better at your job. Right now, 78% of employees would work longer hours if they knew their employer cared about them. So, that’s four out of five employees that would work longer hours if they felt…

Pete Mockaitis

For no extra pay, just because.

Anita Nowak

For no extra pay, okay. Number two, so two out of three workers believed that empathy is critical to business success but only one out of five think it’s rewarded at work. So, they think it’s important but they don’t think that companies are paying attention, and I think that that is a really important gap that leaders and organizations need to pay attention to. And then at the C-suite level, 84% of CEOs believe that empathy drives better outcomes, but seven out of ten fear that they’d be less respected if they showed it at work. And that’s a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m actually having a hard time imagining how I could show empathy and then be less respected. I’m trying to concoct a scenario. Can you give me one, Anita?

Anita Nowak
Well, okay, so an example that I talk about at the office, which has a six-step process to becoming sort of a more empathic leader is a scenario where, let’s say, you’re at your office desk and you’ve just read an email from someone in the organization, and it means that you’re going to have to cancel plans for the evening, or work late, or work on the weekend, or some KPI, you missed a KPI. You’re stressed. So, you’re reading an email and you are feeling personally triggered.

And a knock on the door comes in, and it’s your star performer that says, “Listen, I need to take a week off because my partner just had a miscarriage.” So, this could be a real-life example. It doesn’t have to be a miscarriage, but he needs time off. And so, how are you, as a leader, feeling your own stress about the email that you just read, able to sit down and really hold space for someone else?

Oftentimes, you go straight to the action plan. Oftentimes, it’s like, “Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. Sit down for a minute. Okay, well, if you take a week off, here’s what we’ve got to do in order to finish that project that you’re not going to be able to work on.” But, in fact, there really is more to the story than just that.

There needs to be, from the leader’s perspective, self-awareness that you’re triggered to start with. And that happens in life. Forget about just in the leadership suite. This happens when you are in a conversation with somebody, and something gets heated up. You have to actually, like, recognize how you’re feeling.

So, have that self-awareness, and then begin to self-regulate, which should be a second step. So, take some breaths so that you actually can bring about the parasympathetic nervous system so you’re not feeling the stress hormones running but that you can actually soothe yourself through some big breaths. Then, as another step, you want to actually intentionally cross the bridge. I call it bridge-crossing where you’re, like, saying, “I’m stepping out of my own space, my own scenario, and I’m going to meet somebody where they’re at in order to perspective-take.”

So, when you’re listening to someone, often we are busy in our own head thinking how it relates to me, or we’re listening to respond and not listen to understand. So, if you really want to engage in some cognitive empathy, you really have to sit with the person and imagine what that situation is like for them. So, that’s all the pre-work to the purposeful empathy. Then, of course, is the empathic action that you take.

Now, in that scenario, it’s not usually likely as a leader that you should actually start troubleshooting in real time. When somebody comes into you with a problem like that, and they need to just share, holding the space for them and asking questions from a place of sincere curiosity, asking that cliché question of “How are you feeling about that?” giving them space to sort of just unburden themselves, then you could take time afterwards, and say, “How about we go circle back and talk about what the implications are?” That’s the empathic action that you take after the fact.

And then the sixth and final step is to actually practice some self-empathy, because we all need to replenish our batteries. Because if we’re busy being empathic all the time with everyone else, then we’re going to run on low energy and a big propensity for burnout and compassion fatigue. So, it’s really a matter of actually taking care of yourself.

So, if a leader does show empathy in that way, the process that I just described, you would be hard-pressed to say that somebody would be disrespectful. Imagine a leader feeling like, “They wouldn’t respect me. In fact, they would feel the opposite,” but not everybody does that. Not everybody manages their empathy quite that way.

Pete Mockaitis

So, what would be a poor attempt at empathy that could reduce respect?

Anita Nowak

Well, certainly, so using the same scenario, knock at the door, “Well, can we meet later about this?” That’s a tough one for somebody to hear. If they’re taking the time to knock on the door and share, like they probably had to gather up quite a bit of their own courage to come forward, so you make space for that, except if you really can’t self-regulate.

If you cannot, if you’re stuck in your own head, you can actually say, “You know what, John, I think this is such an important conversation that we’re having, and right now, I just need five minutes to go to the bathroom so that I can really be present for you.” So, taking a minute or two away from the circumstance so that you really can recalibrate is very, very important. And if you don’t do that, people can tell if you’re present for them.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. Okay, well said. And can we recap those six steps here? What’s step one, two, three, four, five, six?

Anita Nowak

Sure. First one is self-awareness, knowing how you’re feeling. Number two, self-regulation, being able to bring down your triggers. Three is bridge-building, so you’re crossing the bridge, you’re really trying to get to the other side. Fourth, perspective-taking, so that’s active listening and imagining how someone is experiencing someone. Five is empathic action. What is the action you’re going to take that will be empathic for that person? And then six is practicing self-empathy.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So much good stuff to dig into here. So, we’re using the word empathy a lot as well as the term hold space. So, can we just clearly define or identify what counts as, “Yup, this was an empathic conversation,” or, “That was not an empathic conversation”? What are sort of the fundamental difference-maker or ingredients that make the distinction?

Anita Nowak

Yeah, beautiful. So, there’s these four words that get conflated and treated as synonyms: pity, sympathy, compassion, and empathy. And I put them on a continuum in that order. And on the pity side is what defines pity is a power asymmetry embedded in a relationship. When you pity someone, you are necessarily looking down on them, “Oh, you poor person.” So, a lot of foreign aid, a lot of philanthropy is predicated on the very paternalistic pity paradigm.

As you make your way across the continuum, and you get to empathy, empathy, for me, is the innate trait that unites us in our shared humanity. And that means there is no power asymmetry. You look upon someone knowing that they share the same humanity, they deserve the same degree of respect, and they have the same intrinsic worth. They’re just in a different circumstance than you, but you could be in that circumstance where the universe is a different place, if you’re living in a parallel universe.

So, being empathic requires humility and requires us to really accept that we’re on the same journey of life together, having the same joys, having the same fears, having the same shared loves, that we share that common humanity. So, really, the important ingredient is that there’s not a looking down on somebody, “Oh, you poor person.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, that’s empathy. And then in terms of a specific conversation in which you said, “That was an empathic conversation,” or, “That was not…” I suppose, in some ways, that might be in the eye of the beholder, or the interlocutor, the person participating in the conversation, like, “I felt as though that person was connected to me, my emotions, what I was feeling, experiencing, and understood me. I felt seen.” Is that accurate or how would you grade the conversation?

Anita Nowak

Well, there are a couple of big ways that a conversation can feel un-empathic and that things slightly derail. One is that a person starts to problem-solve, and I’m guilty of that. Somebody is trying to unburden themselves, share a story, and instead of just holding the space, as you said before, and sitting with them, even through the uncomfortable quiets, that I start to respond with, “Have you tried this? Have you tried that?” and that’s not very useful most of the time, unless they’re asking, like, “What would you do?” then that’s an invitation to help problem-solve.

Another one is to hear a story and relate it back to yourself, “Oh, gosh, you remind me of,” or, “I know exactly what you’re thinking because that happened to me or my aunt,” or whatever. And those are two really hard ways to end an empathic connection but that we do very often, so we have to be really conscious of it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, if we’re not doing that, if we’re not problem-solving, well, I guess you could also just be totally zoned out, like, “If I’m not problem-solving, and I’m not relating it back to me, but I’m also kind of just ‘Uh-uh,’ ‘Yeah,’ ‘Right,’ ‘Okay,’” I guess if you’re totally zoned out would be another way that you’re not empathetic.

Anita Nowak

Totally. And there’s research that’s showing just the presence of a mobile phone on a table actually distracts you something like by 50%. So, it’s like the old fashion, you go to a cocktail party, and you’re looking over somebody else’s shoulder, just that phone as a distraction is a real empathy breaker, too.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right. Anita, I always wonder, because it feels so big in my pocket, when I sit down at the lunch table, where should I stick it? Because I’ve heard about this research, I was like, “This is uncomfortable in my hip but I don’t want to put it on the table because I’ve heard the research.”

Anita Nowak

Maybe restaurants should have Velcro under the table, and then give you a patch to put on your phone.

Pete Mockaitis

I will actually stick it under my leg.

Anita Nowak
Yeah, sure. That’s a good idea.

Pete Mockaitis

And then I’ll need to alternate because I’m off balanced for a while. So, okay. And I’m not about to get a phone holster. That’s not my style.

Anita Nowak

Your style a purse, no?

Pete Mockaitis

No, I’m not doing that either. Okay. So, there are some don’ts, don’t problem-solve, don’t say, “Oh, I know exactly how you feel. That happened to me,” dah, dah, dah, make it about me, don’t zone out, don’t have a phone there. Holding space, what does that mean?

Anita Nowak

What does holding space mean? It means to listen with the intention to understand and not the intention to respond.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, holding space, I’m almost imagining, like, a physical space in terms of I’ve got a beautiful clean kitchen island, and I enjoy beholding its emptiness, and yet it’s so tempting to stick anything and everything right there because it’s so convenient because it’s right there. But to hold the space would mean that, “Oh, no, no, we allow that emptiness to remain much like there’s emptiness in my own head of my own agenda.” That’s what I’m thinking about holding space. Are you thinking about that?

Anita Nowak

There’s a great practice, you can become certified as a practitioner of empathy circles, which I am, and it comes out of a place in California. I’ll make sure to get the notes on the website how to get there, for your listeners. Essentially, empathy circles work where you’re, let’s say, five people on a call on Zoom, or together in person, and you spend 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes together doing this empathy circle, and it involves pairing.

So, let’s say the first pair, the listener and the speaker, and the other three are observers. And then throughout the entirety of the time, the pairing switches to different pairs so everybody has a chance to pair up differently. And so, let’s say you have four minutes as a pair to start talking about anything that is the prompt question. So, like, “Why is empathy is important in the world today?” could be the prompt question.

So, the first person will answer but not speak for four minutes on a roll, but actually speak in a bit of soundbites. So, they’ll speak, they’ll say something, and then the person who’s listening responds back, reflects back with what they hear. And then the speaker will continue with the next soundbite, and another reflection back, and it’ll go back and forth, back and forth.

[21:17]

Or, if there’s been a misunderstanding, the person who’s speaking will hear the responder reflect back something that’s not quite right, and then actually correct them until the person has reflected back, like, “Yeah, you got it now.” So, this goes back and forth, back and forth for four minutes, and then it’ll switch to another pair, and another pair, and another pair.

And the goal of this practice is actually to become a better listener. And I remember thinking about this, I’m like, “I’m a fairly good listener. This is not going to be tough at all.” And when you do that for half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, or longer, not only when you’re an observer, as you’re listening to what somebody is saying and then saying, “Oh, that’s so interesting that that person reflecting back picked up on this, or emphasize that,” so you’re busy listening all the time.

But when you’re actually the active listener, reflecting back, you realize how much focus is involved in actually paying attention to what somebody is saying so that you’re not busy in your own head. You’re really listening and then reflecting back what you heard. So, this is an excellent, excellent practice to debunk the myth that we’re good listeners because we really aren’t.

So, another way to be empathic and to hold space for someone is not necessarily to sit in a dome of silence, but to reflect back, and sometimes even using the last few words of what somebody said, as mechanical and robotic as that might sound, actually really, really does help the person feel heard. And psychologists and therapists, who are doing one-on-one coaching or one-on-one therapy, know this all too well.

So, there’s this cliché, “So what I heard you say was…” dah, dah, dah, dah. You might not actually want to use that language but you do want to do the practice of reflecting back because it opens up for the person to be able to continue talking. It’s an open invitation.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s an open invitation.

Anita Nowak

Yup.

Pete Mockaitis

See what I did there, Anita?

Anita Nowak

Yup.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, okay. We had Chris Voss, the negotiation guy, talk about that as well in hostage negotiations that’s apparently super effective for folks because folks feel like, “You must have been listening at least somewhat in order to be capable of repeating those words.” That’s cool. Well, as you mentioned these empathy circles, that was my reaction, like, “Oh, boy, that sounds exhausting. An hour plus of straight listening, like I’m going to need a walk and a snack and a nap after that.”

Anita Nowak

I did have a headache.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, okay, understood. So, empathy, holding space, huge benefits. Lay it on us. I think, Anita, in my own experience of trying to be…well, hey, first of all, are empathetic and empathic synonymous or is there a distinction between these words, too?

Anita Nowak

Those are exact synonyms. Just some people prefer the extra syllable, and I do not.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. There we go. Well, empathic makes me think of Deanna Troi from Star Trek. It’s like, “Oh, you have superhuman powers? You’re an empath?” Okay. So, I find in my own attempts to be empathic, it’s interesting, like sometimes I’m just in the right emotional groove, and sometimes I’m not. And it almost feels like there’s a particular emotion, or state, or combination of interior elements that mean I am in an empathic groove and ready to rock and roll with that, and other times I’m just not.

So, is that typical of most people as they try to be more empathic? And what are these ingredients? And how do I conjure them up within myself?

Anita Nowak

I think it’s perfectly normal to have all of those emotions and not be constantly on the ready to be empathic and hold space for other people. We’re only human, and I’m perfectly flawed, too. I’m not always in a good mood and stressed. Our brains actually cannot be in a state of anxiety or stress and empathy simultaneously. It’s not possible to our brains.

So, we’re living in a society and working where we’re feeling a sort of either low-grade or mid-grade chronic state of stress and anxiety, which is why our empathy is so sorely lacking because our brain cannot do both at the same time. So, there are some practices that we can do to actually become more empathic with practice.

And it’s interesting that one of the slides that I use, if I’m doing a visual presentation, is I’m up in Montreal where it’s still winter. We’re expecting a big snowfall. So, imagine freshly fallen snow, and your kid, 10 years old, and you have to cross a football field to get to school in the morning. If you’re the first kid, you have to do the hard stomping across the snow, and if you’re the next typical kid or kids, you’re going to follow in the footsteps until the path is created. That’s a very simplified version of how our neural connections are formed too, and our neural pathways are formed.

When we’re born, we have very few neural pathways because we haven’t had a lot of thoughts, and we haven’t experienced a lot of life. But in those first few years of our life, we have exposure to so much, and our neural pathways get formed as a result of all the experiences that we have. And the more often we experience similar things, the thicker our synaptic connections and our neural pathways will be.

So, if you’re a child born into a family where there’s lots of harmony and love and nurturing, our neural pathways will develop differently than if we’re born into a family where there’s a lot of strife or stress or worst going on. So, you’ll know some people in your life as adults that have become very, very defensive just that’s their way of being. You can likely trace that back to some early experiences in life.

And when I first started reading about that, I was like, “Well, that’s just too bad for the children that are born in circumstances that are unfortunate.” But the neuroscience research says we don’t have to let that be prescriptive. We can become more empathic with practice. Just like you go to the gym and you do bicep curls and your muscle grows, we can change the neural pathways in our brain, it’s known as neuroplasticity.

And so, the story that I shared about the FedEx counter, as I was learning about neuroplasticity, I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to try being more empathic with practice.” And so, all day long, every day, we can find opportunities to engage in a little bit of purposeful empathy, and practice empathy on purpose. When you get to the doorway, even if you’re in a rush, hold it open for someone else. As a regular habit to do, all sorts of little things, like smiling and naming somebody who’s wearing a name tag, like actually using their name and making eye contact. Get off the phone, have a chat with the barista.

There are so many little minute ways that we can practice empathy on purpose and become more empathic. And the result, over time, is that we have a different reflex, and we respond more empathically organically. It’s like we’ve changed our patterns. But we are not living in a society right now that makes that easy to do, unfortunately.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s hard-hitting. And so then, I’m looking for opportunities to be empathic. And then I suppose is it fair to say the common denominator in all of these is to sort of recognize the humanity of another person, like looking them in the eye, have a conversation, use their name, hold the door open? Is it fair to say that the common thread here is that I am just putting myself in their shoes and imagining their life experience, and entering into it?

Anita Nowak

Yeah. And so, I have a lot to say about the workplace, but just so that you understand the context of what I could share later, if you want me to dig into that, is that researchers who have studied our evolution as a species, point to empathy as the reason why we survived. So, 40,000 years ago, homo sapiens were not the only large-brain species wandering the planes. We had other large-brain species but they died off and we survived and thrived, and they point to empathy and collaboration as the key drivers for that.

So, how they figured that out is that whites of our eyes grew. We have huge whites compared to other mammals on the planet so that we could read each other’s facial expressions and eye expressions. And we know that. That still lives on. We go to meetings, somebody says something at a meeting that you’re, like, you think is stupid. You look at a colleague and you have a knowing glare, or with your best friend at the table when somebody’s flirting, or whatever. We know that.

Our facial hair dropped off, relatively speaking. Our testosterone dropped off, relatively speaking. We needed to find ways to communicate with each other and understand each other so that we could work together to fight against the circumstances of the day. So, it’s been part of us as a species to lean into empathy, and we need to do more of that today.

Another thing that I think is worth knowing is if you go back to the lineage six or eight million years ago, part of the great apes were descendants of the great apes. There are still two creatures that are much like us – the bonobos and the chimpanzees. Now, folks, the primatologists who have studied chimpanzee culture look at that and say, “Okay, they’re hierarchical by nature, they’re prone to violence, they actually have terrible acts of violence, including infanticide, and people say that’s part of us.” Our human nature is much like the chimpanzee.

But you’ve got somebody like Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist, who says, “I’ve studied bonobo culture for the last 50 years, and I think if more of us have studied bonobo culture, we’d realize that that’s what humanity is all about, because bonobos are nurturing, and collaborative, and compassionate by nature.”

They, literally, when they have problems, they don’t go into open warfare like their chimp friends. They actually make love not war. They’ll have like mass orgies to solve some problems. So, I think we have this belief that we are selfish by nature, and then, of course, some years ago, there was a book about this selfish gene. That’s all been debunked. We’re not selfish by nature. We are empathic by nature. We are collaborative by nature.

And it’s a story that’s untold. It’s not told enough in our culture. But if you give me permission to talk about why this all matters in the workplace, given that this podcast is how to be awesome at your job, I want to poke a little bit at, like, some major tectonic shifts that are happening in the workplace, and why empathy matters now more than ever.

Mental health crisis, America is the most overworked developed nation in the world, burnout rates all-time highs, we absolutely need empathic organizations to help with that. Then we’ve got everybody who’s been shaken by the pandemic. The workforce has got these new buzzwords. You’ve heard the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays. Everybody is rethinking their relationship to work.

And if you are in a war for talent, you’ve got to have a more empathic culture to bring these people in and keep these people on.

Psychological safety. Nobody wants to feel shame at work, and everybody wants to feel a sense of belonging. But guess what’s happening? Political polarization is pulling us apart, and it’s costing people money, it’s costing companies money. This us versus them is coming, it’s seeping into the workplace, so we need to find opportunities for bridge-building. All of that takes empathy.

Fourth one, no surprise, the whole DEI conversation. So, in the face right now of growing diversity training backlash, which is happening, unfortunately, we can look to, like, empathy-based interventions as another alternative to kind of create more feelings of inclusion and to celebrate the diversity. And last is the Gen Z.

They have totally different values. They’re allergic to power-over. They value things like collaboration, sustainability, authenticity. And to attract the younger talent, we all need more empathy in the workplace. So, I think those are, really, it can’t be oversold as real things that matter to leaders and companies right now.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, empathy is huge for individuals and our health, it’s huge for organizations and being competitive and flourishing. We’ve talked about a couple ways we can be more empathic. Any other top practices you recommend people or teams or organizations adopt, as well as top practices you’d recommend we drop?

Anita Nowak

Okay. So, two things that I would invite you to think about in terms of dropping is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we all know from our Psych 101 class, a little triangle at the top with self-actualization. There’s this belief that once our basic needs are met, we eventually self-actualize. We become our full potential. And even he himself, before he died of a heart attack, said, “Oh, my gosh, how wrong was I to think that that was the end all, be all of what we could achieve.”

So, the first thing I would drop is that the epic mountain you want to actually climb to is self-actualization. In fact, he said it really is about self-transcendence, this idea of being of greater service and purpose to something outside yourself. And I think about, so I’ll read out three quotes from three famous people who are all luminaries that walked the earth.

Mother Teresa, “A life not lived for others is not a life.” Gandhi, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Dr. King, “Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.” So, there’s this notion that when we are living our best lives, we are in service to something greater than ourselves, that idea of trying to reach for self-transcendence, even though that’s a very fancy word, but just service to others, that is what purposeful empathy is about. It’s about extending, being helpful to other people. So, that’s one thing I would lose.

The thing that I would bring in is a tool called The Personal Values Assessment by the Barrett Values Center. So, we think we know what our values are, and I’m sure you’ve come across the work of Brene Brown. She wrote Dare to Lead. She has this exercise where there’s a hundred values on a sheet of paper, like on one of the pages of her book, and she has a three-step process.

She says, “Okay, read them all and circle the top ten that matter to you, not what you’re projecting onto yourself but what you actually really think are your core values.” So, you circle ten, I did that. Then she says, “Okay, now on a piece of paper, write the top five,” so I did. And then flipped the next page, and it’s like, “And now choose your top two values.” And then it gets really tough.

How do you choose between honesty and kindness? They’re both really important but some people value one over the other. It’s not one better than the other. It’s just that we all live different things. So, I think becoming aware of what our values are and being able to share with people in our lives and sort of align according to values, and then see differences and not see them necessarily as bad but just different, that’s a great practice to have.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Any others?

Anita Nowak

Any others. Well, I have been posting daily empathy posts for 2,414 days as of today, so it’s almost seven years of consecutive posting, and I’m posting only material that other people who talk about empathy are sharing. So, either research that’s out, reports that are out, there are so much to cull from that list.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah. Well, now I’m thinking Brene Brown style. Can you share with me, if you move from 100 to two, can we move from these thousands to a couple others that are really potent?

Anita Nowak

So, the simple practice of meta, meta meditation. So, we all this fancy, all this mindful thinking, mindful living stuff. The meta is a Sanskrit word for loving-kindness, so it’s a simple practice. It’s a four-step process. You could close your eyes or just look down, and you think about people you love. And it’s easy to send them loving-kindness. You want them to have a good day, you want them to get green lights when they’re in a rush and in traffic. You want them to be healthy, happy, satisfied by life, all that good stuff.

So, you think about them for a minute, take a deep breath, then think about people you like, people you went to high school with that you wouldn’t mind seeing again, going on a camping trip with, maybe your colleagues or your classmates, people you like, and you send them loving-kindness. Great. You do that for a minute, take a deep breath.

Then the third group is strangers, people you’ll never meet ever in your life. You think about, I don’t know, a fisherman in Ecuador, you’ll never meet him, or the farmer in Saskatchewan whose wheat is in the bread that you ate with your toast this morning. Send them loving-kindness. And then the fourth and final group or person that you send loving-kindness to is somebody that’s hurt you, or disappointed you, or that really sees the world differently and triggers you.

And the practice of meta meditation is to actually flex your empathy muscle and build up the capacity to be kind to people even if you disagree with them or even if they’ve hurt you because it makes you a better person, and you just don’t know what they’re going through, and you don’t know what level of consciousness they’re living, how they’re living their life. So, that’s a great practice to have.

Pete Mockaitis

And, in practice, what am I doing as I send someone loving-kindness?

Anita Nowak

You’re just thinking the thoughts, so I’m like, “Pete, I hope that tonight you have a great dinner, and that you have a great sleep tonight, and tomorrow morning, you wake up refreshed and everything about the day goes smoothly for you.” You just send them whatever comes to mind about. Like, you just want them, you wish them well.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you.

Anita Nowak

Another powerful exercise, if you want, is something that’s tough to do, you pair. Eye-gazing. So, a marital therapist say that a couple who’s having a problem, and they have to work through and find a compromise, if they do the practice of eye-gazing, they’ll have a better outcome than the couple who doesn’t. And I do this with all my students.

So, they sit in pairs, feet planted on the floor, palms up, facing up on the lap, you set a timer for 30 seconds, and you simply gaze into someone else’s eyes for 30 seconds. And it’s weird and awkward at first, and sometimes there’s lots of giggles and whatever, you get the heebie-jeebies off, you shake it off after the 30 seconds, you might tell each other how you’re feeling about it, how weird it is, and then you reset an alarm for another 90 seconds. So, in total, you’ve done two minutes of eye-gazing.

I’ve done this time and time and time and time again, and I can tell you, in a roomful of people, there’ll always be some that are crying. And in the debrief, you’ll hear people say, especially younger people, “I do not remember the last time I looked into someone else’s eyes like that. I don’t remember what it was like to feel seen like that. And it was so beautiful to communicate with somebody. I feel like I got to know them better in two little minutes.” So, it’s a very powerful practice.

Pete Mockaitis

I think I did this in a Landmark Forum or a Landmark Advance Class, and I haven’t thought about it in years and years, so you’re bringing me back, Anita. And I was, like, I’m pretty sure people were crying during that. And I think I was, too, but I don’t…it’s funny I don’t know why. It’s, like, help me out, Anita. What is really going on there?

Anita Nowak

Well, we lay down our defenses, and some things that are happening in our lives bubble up, and it’s that same, “Why do we have such big whites to our eyes?” Because we are meant to see each other, we’re meant to see each other, not just look at each other, but to see each other. And that’s why the frame, “The eyes are the windows to our soul,” we feel touched when we feel seen. We are touched when we feel heard. We want to be known by other people. We want to feel a sense of connection and belonging with other people, and that’s why empathy is our superpower.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s true. All those things are true. And, yet, staring into a total stranger’s eyes in a facilitated exercise for two minutes lights that up within us. That’s just so fascinating. All right. Okay, well, I guess now I got to ask about eye contact, in general. When I’m talking with someone, I imagine it’d be more empathic to have more eye contact. Is there too much? And how do you think about it?

Anita Nowak

Sure, especially depending on the cultural context that you’re in. Like, proper holding eye contact with somebody in Japan would be seen as, like, audacious and rude. So, yeah, you definitely don’t want to make that a universal claim. I think the idea of, like, eyes darting around, that look busy as if you’re not paying attention is a distraction, and this can be hurtful, especially depending on what somebody’s talking about.

But you don’t have to constantly hold somebody’s eye gaze for minutes and minutes at a stretch not blinking. No, it’s not meant to be work at all. And one of the things, if people have trouble actually looking into someone else’s eyes, because it does take a fair degree of vulnerability, I even practiced it as a teenager with my dad when he was yelling at me, and I didn’t want to cry, I would just look at sort of the spot between his eyes or I would look even at his receding hairline, which made it seem to him that I was looking at his eyes when I wasn’t. So, that’s a little bit of a hack.

Pete Mockaitis

This is a very detailed question on this but when I’m looking at someone’s eyes, it’s sort of actually difficult to fixate on two eyes at the same time. So, does it make an impact if I’m looking at the left eye or the right eye, or shifting?

Anita Nowak

Not to my knowledge, no. You just don’t want to go back and forth quickly, but it’s a natural thing to do. And people actually mirror each other. So, if you’re holding space and somebody feels really connected to you, you could do a movement where you put your hand on your chin, and watch the person in front of you do the same thing. We really reflect each other, and we have sort of this emotional contagion. So, the eye shifting is perfectly normal.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Anita, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Anita Nowak

There’s always an opportunity to practice more empathy in the world all day long every day.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anita Nowak

Sure. It’s actually two quotes in juxtaposition. One is a Polish poet, Stanislaw Lec, “Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.” I think about that, it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t cause the problem,” “Oh, not my problem, not my responsibility,” versus St. Francis of Assisi who said, “All the darkness in the world cannot be extinguished by the light of a single candle.” So, I just like thinking about how you want to show up in the world. Are you somebody who’s just going to shrug and say, “Not my fault,” or are you going to show up as a light?

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Anita Nowak

Well, I think I’ve talked about both. I’ve talked about Frans de Waal, and bonobos, and Jamil Zaki, great work on how to become more empathic.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Anita Nowak

I love a few. I’m going to mention Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. I’m right now reading Marianne Williamson’s book called A Politics of Love. She’s just recently announced her run for President, and I think it’s going to be an important…she’s going to be an important voice in the next election cycle, this idea of a politics of love can be dismissed to our detriment.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Anita Nowak

Well, I mentioned that, too, The Personal Values Assessment by the Barrett Values Center. If you want to, you can fill it out, it’s free, and they’ll send you back an assessment about your personality type and the kind of person you are based on that assessment. It’s a great tool.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite habit?

Anita Nowak

Favorite habit? Drink two liters of water a day. I’m a work in progress.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Anita Nowak

Yeah, I think so. Descartes famously said, “I think therefore I am.” And I want to offer instead “I empathize therefore I am.” I think that’s what makes us human.

Pete Mockaitis

And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Anita Nowak

Oh, please do. My website is AnitaNowak, spelled N-O-W-A-K dot com. Obviously, I have a podcast called Purposeful Empathy, and a YouTube series. I hope people would check that out. And on LinkedIn, I post my daily empathy posts, nearly seven years running now, so you’ll get your daily dose of empathy every day.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Anita Nowak

Do the eye-gazing with a boss or a colleague, and see what comes of it. And when you are having a conversation, be intentional about listening to understand and not listening to respond.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Anita, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much empathy and goodness.

Anita Nowak

Thank you so much.