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that’s everybody’s expectation. They know they’re going to get their issue taken care of and don’t really have to talk to anybody. As long as everything works out, they’re going to get their life fixed. However, if there’s a kick-out, we will have to intervene. That intervention probably means there’s something wrong, so we have to be at the top of our game not to alarm people and to use empathy to make sure they’re not alarmed. Secondly, if it is a conflict that needs to be addressed, we need to communicate that we understand what they’re going through and approach that in the right way so as not to escalate an issue or conflict.
So, yes: it’s interesting that there is increased awareness around empathy and that we’re driving it harder in our organization. I have retooled empathy learning experiences for every line of business we have, and it’s an expectation that we get very good at that before the automation pieces start to hit the floor.
: Do you think when we get past this time of so many converging crises we’ll still see as much of a focus on empathy as we do right now?
: I always want to point out that as we use artificial intelligence and augmentation in our jobs, there’s clearly going to be a focus on empathy. I’ll be interested to see what happens from a leadership perspective. Is empathy just heightened by our current circumstances or are we going to look at leaders differently going forward? I would bet yes: we’ll look at them differently going forward. We’ve always had that emotional intelligence quotient that drives to this a little bit, but
it hasn’t become a permanent expectation of our leaders. I don’t know if the word empathy is going to be on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but that might not be
a bad thing. If empathy just happens and we start to expect it, that’s good. We don’t have to talk about it as much. We’ll have hit that tipping point where it just becomes part of the way we are.
: Being in the insurance industry and, as you said, dealing with people who are upset and in fragile states of mind, are there instances where empathy is awkward?
: For our people, it’s awkward when they can’t give the customer exactly what they want or fully meet their emotional needs. Really, all you can tell an employee is to continue responding empathically until the customer feels very comfortable that the employee knows how emotional their situation is. Then, they can at least deal better with the tangible, but that can be awkward because the employee needs that clear signal from the other person that their emotional needs have been met – to the extent the employee can meet them – and now let’s deal with the real issue. That’s probably the most awkward thing, because we know that, many times, tangibly we can’t meet everything that their emotion is telling them they need.
Even with COVID, there are disability issues: our employees are trying to figure out the level of disability for customers, who are scared. They know that this could go really bad at some point for them and we just have to let them know that we’re all trying to figure this new thing out. We tell them we’re going to help them as much as we can and through their disability determine when they’re ready to get back to work, but we’re all still very much trying to figure it out. And yes, that’s awkward. If you break an arm, there’s a lot of research to say when
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