Page 38 - Demo

: In one sentence, what is empathy NOT?
: Empathy is not “a given”. It should be, but it simply isn’t.
Empathy takes constant effort. It is much easier to just worry about ourselves and our needs alone. In order to understand someone else and how they see the world, we must take a moment to stop considering our own perspectives and remove ourselves from the picture. It’s a necessary and conscious first step we must all take if we want to empathize with someone else.
: When empathy is aimed at employees in the workforce/ workplace, what does it do for those who receive it, and what does it do for those who give it?
: I would never consider COVID a blessing, but one good thing that might come from it is the collective recognition of empathy as an important leadership skill
– whether your workplace is the theater or the boardroom. Empathy is something that theater artists do naturally because it is a part of our work. It
is highly validating to know that this valuable skill we have spent our entire lives honing and sharpening is something so sought after now as we face the “post-pandemic unknown” together.
I went to Carnegie Mellon University to study musical theater and acting at the school of drama, which was part of CMU’s CFA, which stands for “college of fine arts”. CMU was also known to be a great school of engineering and architecture, and other university students would make snide remarks about us in CFA. “CFA stands for ‘can’t f**king add’”, they’d scoff. There was a misconception that somehow the skills we learned in acting class had less “real-world value” than the skills they were learning as they were coding apps and designing buildings. I’m sure many of those engineers and architects have since learned that they, too, need empathy in order to be successful at their jobs. After all, what value does an app have if the coder doesn’t put themself in the shoes of the user? What good is a building if the architect doesn’t use empathy to try and understand how the building will be utilized?
My roommate in college, Peter, was a great performer. After he graduated, he decided to follow in his parent’s footsteps and go into medicine. He’s currently working at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital with cancer patients. A few years ago, our acting teacher became a patient, and we would sit and visit with her. Forever the acting teacher, she watched Peter go from patient to patient and remarked how present he was, emotionally, with each and every patient (including herself). She said, “You learned that in acting class. You’re using acting, and you don’t even know it. You make each person feel like they are the only person that matters in that moment and you make them feel important.” That was empathy in action.
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