Lean Communication for Leaders: Part 2, the Empathy Erosion Trap

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In part 1 of this series on Lean Communication for Leaders, I talked about the ethos trap, which is the tendency of people in powerful positions to rely on the big stick of their title and authority to influence others, and less on convincing others through the logic of their idea. In short, leaders get lazy.

But laziness is easy to overcome as long as you care about getting the job done right. If you truly care about putting together the best possible message for your followers to hear, you already know how to do it—you’ve done it countless times in your career, or you would not have risen to the level you have. As long as you care about what your followers think, you can avoid the ethos trap.

But, what if you stop caring about what others think? What if you start seeing others more as tools to exploit to get your way? It’s a form of “altitude sickness” called empathy erosion, and unfortunately it’s a condition that is likely to become worse the higher you go.

Let’s first remind ourselves how important empathy is in communication. It’s so important that it’s the first rule of lean communication: I call it outside-in thinking. That’s because the number one imperative of communication is to add value, and only the recipient defines value. That means that you must be able to take the other person’s perspective on every issue, and communicate in a way that they are most likely to understand, believe and accept. Two sides can communicate much more effectively—and pleasantly—when each side strives to meet the other more than halfway by seeing things from their point of view.

In leadership terms, outside-in thinking is about getting followers to do what you want for their own reasons. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

How Leadership Can Erode Empathy

Leaders should be able to effortlessly think outside-in—it should actually be easier for you as a leader,     because after all you’ve been in their shoes but they haven’t been in yours.

But what happens in reality to perspective taking as you gain power? Unfortunately, a lot of evidence suggests that you’re less likely to take others’ perspectives into account as you become (or at least think you become) more important. In his book, The Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner says, “When we experience absolute power, our attention shifts to our own interests and desires, thus diminishing our capacity for empathy—understanding what others feel and think.” (p. 101)

Keltner refers to absolute power, but Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky has demonstrated that people who are primed to feel powerful even for just a short time, show diminished empathy in three ways.

• When asked to write the letter “E” on their foreheads, they are almost three times as likely to write it so that it appears backwards to an observer. In their own minds, they see it correctly from their own perspective, and they fail to take into account how it looks to others.
• They’re more likely to suffer from the Curse of Knowledge, which means that when you know something, you assume that others do as well, so you leave out important details and context to help them understand—and probably get impatient when others don’t get it.
• When shown photos of people expressing various emotions, they become less accurate at reading them.

Galinsky summarizes by saying: “…power was associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend how other people see, think, and feel.”

And what could be less conducive to outside-in thinking than  feelings of entitlement? Here’s more evidence: In another study, researchers observed a four way stop sign, and counted the number of times a driver cut someone else off by going before their turn. They found that drivers of expensive cars cut off people 30% of the time, four times as often as drivers of less expensive cars.

In another experiment, college students of different socio-economic backgrounds were brought in for a study, and afterwards they saw a jar filled with candies. They were told the candies were for young children involved  in another study down the hall, but they could have some if they wanted. The richer students took twice as much candy as the poorer ones.

Finally, there’s the additional problem that Heidi Grant Halvorson, in her book No One Understands You, tells us that people in power tend to view others more instrumentally: how can they make use of them? You see them less as a person and more as a tool. You can even measure the erosion of empathy. There is a phenomenon called motor resonance, which simply means that when we observe someone else doing an activity, the same areas that are firing in their brains during the activity are firing in ours. We feel them, and it’s what helps us imagine things from their perspective. But those with more power showed diminished motor resonance in in MRI scans of their brains. They do think differently! As Halvorson says: “It’s not so much that they think they are better than you as it is that they simply do not think about you at all.”

Why does it matter?

If you step back and look at the problem practically and non-judgmentally, is it really such a bad thing if leaders are less empathetic? There are times when the job demands less empathy; sometimes you have to make hard decisions for the greater good and if you tore yourself up about each person it’s going to affect, it would probably paralyze you. Eisenhower knew that thousands of those troops he led would not survive executing his orders—but he had to issue his orders anyway.

And you have so many important tasks on your plate that it’s tempting to put efficiency and speed over relationships. You just don’t have the time, and if you don’t get it done, they’ll find someone who can.

But there’s the paradox: the fact that you don’t have enough time to devote to thinking about the people side is exactly why you need to take the time to think about the people side: no one can do everything by themselves. They have to trust others to do things, and they need for them to give their best efforts. Who will give their best efforts for someone they don’t think cares about them? When someone does something because they have to, they will generally do exactly what they’re told—and not a bit more. When they do it because they want to, they do it for pride, for meaning, for each other—maybe even for you as a leader whom they respect and admire. (If they respect and admire you, that is…)

So, think of empathy as an investment in long-term leadership effectiveness.

The good news about empathy erosion

But wait, there’s good news in all of this. There’s evidence that the condition is not incurable.

Other research shows that when leaders are reminded that the goal requires them to see others’ individual differences, they can actually do it more effectively than the less powerful—so maybe their empathy isn’t eroding—it’s simply being put aside for most of their tasks.

So, the simple cure is to accept that empathy is a critical tool in your leadership toolbox, and to remind yourself that it’s not something you “have” or “don’t have”; it’s a skill that you can and must cultivate. As a leader, you have countless opportunities to strengthen and demonstrate your empathy—as long as you make it a priority.