Is empathy a strategic imperative? A review essay
Claire Yorke
 

ABSTRACT
Empathy is increasingly seen as integral to effective strategy, offering solutions to policy failures and new ways to achieve strategic and operational success. Despite its softer connotations, empathy is hard, requiring strategists to confront misperceptions and false assumptions, and overcome individual egos and national hubris. This article reviews the literature, examining some of the gaps and costs incurred. Whilst strategic empathy may have transactional and instrumental connotations, it suggests that the concept holds greater potential to transform strategy. Used wisely, it offers an ethos and means to put people first, foster greater security, and offer innovative approaches to contemporary challenges.

Making the Connection: The Role of Empathy in Communicating Policy

• 1. Introduction

• 2. Empathy in Communicating Policy

• 3. Case Study One: Germany, Refugees and the Migration Crisis

•  4. Case Study Two: Brexit and the UK’s Decision to Leave the European Union

• 5. Case Study Three: New Zealand’s Response to Terrorism

•  6. Conclusion: Empathy as a Variable Asset References

Transcript Preview
Edwin Rutsch 0:01
Hi everyone. It's Edwin Rutsch, director of the empathy center, and we're here today to talk about, how do we build a culture of empathy, make empathy a core cultural value. And I'm really pleased to be here with Claire York, thanks for joining me for this discussion.

Unknown Speaker 0:19
It's so lovely to join you again. Thank you for

Edwin Rutsch 0:21
having me. Yeah, and let me give a little overview of you. You're an author, academic advisor specializing in the role and limitations of empathy and emotions and security, international affairs, politics, leadership and society. And you also did your doctorial research on the role of empathy and diplomacy. And it's like how empathy can be a tool for navigating complex international transitions and building state relations. And that's what I've gotten from your My digging in report on your background from your website, and then you're the author of empathy and politics and leadership, the key to transforming our world. And yeah, I was gonna have a hard copy of it. I listened to it on, on Audible. You know, it was 12 hours. It's a long it's a lot of work you put into that. That's a really hefty work. And your website is Claire york.me, the links will be in the in the video notes below. And is there anything else by way of introduction? You know that you'd like to how you'd like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 1 1:35
I guess I should say that. I'm based in Canberra, Australia, and I work for Deakin University. I'm a senior lecturer at Deakin University, and I teach at the Australian War College, where I actually teach courses on the Indo Pacific region through the lens of empathy, so looking at the role of empathy and informing strategy, informing policy, and helping senior leaders make decisions about how we engage with allies and partners in the region, okay? And that's

Edwin Rutsch 2:05
indo, Pacific region. So in that area that include

Speaker 1 2:08
Indonesia, yes, it does. So it's Australia's neighborhood. So all the way up, Pakistan, India, Japan, Korea, Fiji, Solomon, Isles. So the whole kind of region we looked at that.

Edwin Rutsch 2:21
Yeah, I had first study. Started studying Indonesian language and culture, so that was my first area that I studied. I eventually kind of dropped that after a couple of years and got into economics.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
So, yeah, I'm still to go. I've heard it's amazing country, yeah.

Edwin Rutsch 2:36
Oh, great. So I would say that we both agree that, you know, it's important to make mutual empathy a core cultural value. Is that sort of, would you say that we have that in it, as in a core agreement? Yes, yes, I would, yeah. So you're like, like, how do we use empathy to get for for in politics and cultural relations, or kind of political relations is kind of your interest area?

Speaker 1 3:05
Yeah, I'm interested. So I believe in the real intrinsic value of empathy as a way of connecting us to one another, of seeing each other's intrinsic dignity and worth and humanity. But I'm then interested in what does that mean when we incorporate it into these more collective spaces like politics, like security, and I'm also interested in the tensions that empathy encounters, where you're trying to bring in ideas of understanding others while also having to deal with a sense of enmity, maybe that's involved in security or In threat or risk and power, and how does it interact with those kind of elements within our politics and security landscape?

Edwin Rutsch 3:47
Would you be it would be fair to say those are the risk, the blocks to empathy. It's like you're those things you're talking about are like things that would be blocking empathy. How do we address those? I think there's

Speaker 1 3:59
ways that they can coexist, and that's what I'm interested in really exploring. But certainly the enemy images, the dehumanizations that can accompany these spaces can be a blocks to empathy. They make it very hard.

Edwin Rutsch 4:13
Okay, well, let's maybe we should start with the definition of empathy. I find that, you know, there's a lot of books coming out about that are negative, critical of empathy. And for the most part, I think it's just the definitional problem. We're talking about different phenomenon. And so I think it's really helpful to spend some time kind of exploring that. And I sent you sort of my definition, or if you had a chance to look at that, I call it the holistic empathy definition model, and I did see on your definition, you did talk about affective and cognitive empathy. Is that? How do you feel about that, that definition, or sort of like a academic definition, which I kind of disagree with, yeah, yeah. Is affective and cognitive. Anthony, I just feel that the cognitive scientists have done a real disservice to empathy. So anyway, just where do you kind of what? What's your definition? Let's kind of go from there.

Speaker 1 5:09
Yeah, so I listened to your definition on holistic empathy. I think there's a lot that we share in how we define empathy, and I share as well, your frustration with the binary between cognitive and affective. So in my work, I often engage with those as being the way that literature currently captures empathy, this idea of cognitive and affective. But for me, I argue that if you want to do really good empathy, even if it's the more say cognitive form, which is the more deliberative that it's talked about as being the more deliberative, conscious process of understanding others, and especially in a strategic space where maybe you don't have that emotional connection with the people that you are empathizing with, I argue you still need to understand emotions. And this division between reason and emotion, to me, is a false dichotomy. It doesn't work, because if you are going to do reason properly, you need to understand the ways in which emotions shape, how we interpret the world, how we give it meaning, how people respond to it, and what it is that is informing their judgment. So for me, in both of them, you need to have a bit of both, and so I try and find a bit of a middle ground there.

Edwin Rutsch 6:23
Yeah, you know, the model that I've been doing, how I've been defining empathy, is I've been trying to make it more concrete, because it tends to get very abstract, you know, especially among academics, because the work, you know, the definition I'm using is based on the work of Carl Rogers, who I kind of really admire his empathy work. And he developed the whole active listening process. So he was a clinician, so he was actually very involved in the experience as well as the scientific so explaining how things worked in science, in scientific works, you know, with studies and his process was, you know, the act of listening is the empathy is kind of sensing into someone's experience. So now I'm you're listening to me. You're shaking your head like, you know you you're hearing me. I feel like you're kind of getting what I'm saying. So you're sort of sensing into and empathizing with me. I'm kind of doing an interview with you, and I'm trying to sense into what your experience is, and that sensing into is what I would just call basic empathy, that I'm trying to understand who you are, but it's hard to differentiate between your your thoughts and and your feelings. So yeah, so that that's kind of how and not also doing it within the context of the empathy circle. The Empathy circle for anyone listening is, you know, we have a group of four people. I listen, one person speaks, and the other listens the and then they reflect back their understanding and make sure that they understand what the speaker is saying when we're have time turns, and maybe five minute turns, when the time is up to listener becomes a speaker, and they speak to someone else, and we go around in that process and and that's sort of what I consider, yeah, what I consider empathy is that sensing into and you're aware of both the feelings and any sort of thoughts, and they're almost indistinguishable. You know, it's like hard to really distinguish. And I Yeah, so I just wonder how you sort of, how that kind of lands with you, and where you are with that.

Speaker 1 8:37
Yeah, that lands with me and and I think, I think what's interesting is I also differentiate between different types of empathy, because it can often become this word that captures so many different forms of that understanding and that process of listening and seeking to gain a deeper appreciation of different people's internal worlds or their reality. And I talk about empathy as being a lens to emotionality, and I use empathy in all environments. I mean intentionally, because I I think we can use concepts like perspective taking, but to me, they sound too abstract. I want us to get better as individuals or as professionals, at seeing how, as human beings, we are very naturally emotional. And that's not not something we should shy away from. That's something that we should actually get more curious about and more literate about. And I think the work of people like Susan David on emotional agility, that we should learn how our emotions shape, how we respond to others, but also get better at reading them in others, so that we can say, if someone sat in front of us, you know, what is it you're actually feeling beyond what you're telling me? Because I feel like there's something there, you know? So that then helps aid that connection, but we can only do that when we understand emotions more fully and. We're also not connected too deeply to our ego or our sense of that vulnerability that can come with sharing emotions. Yeah, the

Edwin Rutsch 10:10
sorry, it's more No, no, okay, yeah, so that's where you're saying that that differentiation between feeling and reason or thought that that sort of a it's, I don't find it's very helpful, because even reason, when people reason that there's a felt experience associated with the feeling, and I've done, I did an empathy circle once on the question of, What does reason feel like? So there is a visceral, felt experience when people are thinking and reasoning. Sometimes it's kind of constricted a focus, feeling of focus and so, yeah, it just that whole differentiation between the two. And Carl Rogers never differentiated between feeling and reason when he was listening to people. So I think that that, and also that term cognitive empathy and affective empathy is so academic sounding that it has a it kind of, I think for lay people, it just confuses the situation.

Speaker 1 11:17
I do think that the cognitive this idea of cognitive empathy becomes more pertinent to those who are maybe in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or they're in a government bureaucratic building where they do not have maybe that felt sense of what everybody they're designing policy for feels, and they could, therefore it's more of a cognitive process. What might people be feeling right now? And because there's so many people that they're designing policy for, and they're having to think about very diverse communities and disparate people, then actually, that cognitive process becomes a more comfortable space to engage in the practice of empathy, because we can't expect people to hold all those emotions. I don't think we can have access to that in any accurate form. And so the cognitive is about saying, Okay, well, how do you then go through a process of thinking about what this might mean for different people, about how they might see the world, and how the ideas that you're developing might land with them. What is your history with them? What kind of levels of trust are they having government? What kind of experience do they have of being disappointed by policy directed towards them? How have they been let down? And so that cognitive is also I also find that a lot of it is about how do we get more people to understand the value of empathy? And we're still dealing with a resistance to the importance of emotions, and it's seen as something that's weak, and it's often gendered, this idea that emotions are something that women do and not men, which I think is ridiculous. It's not, you know, it's not irrational women that are the problem right now. And, you know, how do we, how do we then encourage people to start to see it? And I think that often takes steps. I think it takes people to go, oh, that's where emotions play a part. That's how they create meaning in people's lives. And doing it through that more cognitive process can can be a bit of an entryway to that. And sometimes you can't carry the emotions of people you disagree with. And some of the work I do on empathy is about, how do you empathize with adversaries. You know, maybe that's the Taliban. Maybe it's a terror you know, other terrorist organizations or people who've committed serious crimes, it's often hard to get a sense of how you feel, because you don't feel naturally caring or kind or understanding towards them. So it then becomes more of a cognitive process, what are they thinking? What are they doing? What choices do they have? What motivations are they being guided by? So that's where I think that cognitive element has a beneficial function.

Edwin Rutsch 13:53
So one area that I see is becomes confusing, is there's the empathy of sensing into someone's situation, sort of more of a direct like we are now. We're kind of facing each other. We're sensing into each other's experience. I'm, you know, sort of reading your emotions or sensing your enthusiasm or curiosity, etc. And then there's what I would call imaginative empathy. I think those two get conflated, and sometimes cognitive empathy is another word for imaginative empathy in the sense that I can sort of imagine what your situation is. I can kind of put myself in your situation, or I can put myself in my situation, in myself and being in is a Taliban. I can imagine being a Taliban, and what this, you know, how I would feel, let's say in that situation, or I can imagine what it's like to be a Taliban in their situation. So that's so that's like an imaginative and there is a problem with that in this, and it's a good it's a way of knowing. And I think, right. Obama, that's kind of how he was defining empathy. Quite often, it's a way of knowing. But the problem with imaginative empathy is you can be right or you can be wrong, and sometimes it turns into projection, where you imagine the Taliban being a certain way, and you project it onto them, and it's not accurate. Whereas the basic empathy of sitting down with the Taliban, hearing what they have to say, and sensing into you know what they're saying, that that's more like a direct, more accurate way of knowing, because especially using active listening, where you have to reflect back your understanding to get confirmation that you do understand that person,

Speaker 1 15:42
yeah, and I can understand that. And I guess there's a couple of points I'd say in response to that. One is I, I love the idea of imaginative empathy that you outlined, and for me, it really spoke to like one of the examples you gave in the video. And hope you link the in the notes to the other video, so people can follow up, is, you know, you can empathize with animals. And when I was doing research for the book, I discovered that actually, that's something that's really going on in Denmark. There's a organization in Aarhus, and it's one of their projects there, which is, it's the organization is designed to build community and to help citizens reclaim a bit of their agency in their local area and shape their city. Aarhus is in the north of Denmark, and one of the projects there is encouraging people in the city to imagine what life is like for the urban wildlife. So what is it like when you put spikes on the top of buildings. For pigeons, where are they nesting? So I think for me, imaginative empathy is a little bit more for how I interpret it creative, you know, where you're people, where you can't maybe have those conversations. You know, for for animals, where we can maybe take a guess, but we we really can't determine from them what it is that they feel like. But you're right that the danger with some of the more cognitive forms is that we're still projecting. And that's why, for me, self reflection is an integral part of defining empathy, that if we are going to empathize with other people, we also have to be able to reflect on ourselves. What am I bringing to this encounter? What is it that maybe in the past, I have done that means my words and my actions have shaped how I'm going to be received by this person? And again, this is maybe where my work with government organizations and public servants and the military shapes my my my understanding of it. But there, you're not just dealing with a person engaging with another person. You're dealing with the politics of someone who represents an organization in their engagements with someone so it's not just like I as an individual could sit down with a Taliban. If I were a member of government sitting with them, there's so much politics around them, and they would then represent everything that they are, for everything they're representing, in terms of the ministry or the organization and the history, and especially for countries like Britain, where you can tell I'm from, or Australia, there's often kind of colonial legacies or historical legacies in those engagements that as individuals, we Just need to be conscious of. So it's never just in that moment, there's a element of understanding what we bring each time we show up.

Edwin Rutsch 18:28
Okay, well, that's a good example. Then we have the Taliban. You're talking with the Taliban as a as an example, and what I'm hearing you say is that you're bringing a lot of past history, a lot of, maybe judgments, or, yeah, just all kinds of other stuff that you're bringing to to the relationship and that you're it sounds like you're thinking wanting to do sort of a self analysis, or self analysis of what you're thinking and bringing to the table.

Speaker 1 18:59
Yeah, it's part of my belief that we need to get better emotional literacy and more emotional intelligence in ourselves. So what is it that I expect to find? What are my assumptions? What are they rooted in? And I think it's impossible to go into such encounters with no preconceptions or ideas or stereotypes, but at least if we're aware of them, we can more critically interrogate whether or not we were right in that, whether or not that aligned with what we found. But the danger is, if we take a projection and a stereotype and we just perform empathy, and I talk in the book about that idea of, you know, just the sincere empathy and performative empathy, then you're not actually going to get to know the different people on their own terms. That doesn't in any way mean you agree with them. It doesn't mean you sanction their actions. It doesn't mean that you think what they're doing is right. And I think there's a whole other topic to discuss around the boundaries of empathy, but I think just being aware that we get that more accurate understanding what. Is it that they're dealing with beyond the projections that we put on different people.

Edwin Rutsch 20:04
So it would be a projection you would have like, what would be? How do you think if you're sitting down with the Taliban to negotiate some kind of an agreement, what would maybe? What would be an example? Can you think of one? Might be one of your many?

Speaker 1 20:21
Yeah, that'd be many. I mean, I think what you know, one very obvious one that I would have to that I would struggle with, and empathy is uncomfortable, and that's something that people who say it's a weakness miss. You know, it's very hard to sit with people so you actively find conflict with your worldview, the way they live, the way they think, the way the actions, you know, and as a woman, I'd struggle with the treatment of women, and I think trying to understand, why is it that you think hiding women away and restricting their access to education and the arts and music is okay in order to just gain an understanding that was kind of, I mean, it's never going To be objective, but a little bit more objective, I would struggle with that, and I'd have to be very conscious of the fact that I would take that bias in with me to any conversation, because it disagree. It disagrees and does not align with my view of the world. But I you know, if you want to understand why is it you do that like let me actually understand what's going on. I have to be conscious of that bias and that tension, and it might even help to articulate that. I might even say this is a point of resistance I have with you. Were I ever to get that origin to be in that position?

Edwin Rutsch 21:38
Yeah, so you in that situation. You probably be against, I guess the CHA do, or is that the full Cloaking is you, I imagine you'd be against that. And women being, you know, kind of pushed, treated, and, yeah, can't go out in public on their own. And so you would be against that, but you'd be willing to sit down with with someone from the Taliban and listen to their point of view and try to understand, understand where they're coming from, not that you agree with it, but that you would try to understand,

Speaker 1 22:10
I think, as well. How do you design policies that make things better if we don't understand the nature of the problem and what we're dealing with? And I probably am not the right person for that job, in all honesty, but you know, I think that's something that we do have to bear in mind in even the less extreme instances. How do we make sure that when we're trying to use empathy in context to make people's lives better, that we're not showing up and interpreting someone else's experience through our own lens in a way that's not self reflective? If you go into certain neighborhoods in America, you might have certain preconceived ideas because of what the media says. And I imagine, once you get into certain neighborhoods, whether they're the poorer neighborhoods, whether they're, you know, some of the more run down neighborhoods where the cities left them behind, you'd probably find people just like you, who care about the world, just like you, and if you go in with preconceived ideas, you might be shut down to that, because you're looking for certain things and not looking for what people are actually like.

Edwin Rutsch 23:10
Well, we've been doing mediation between the political left and right. You know, we take our empathy tent out to public spaces where there'd be, you know, right wing and left wing, and they're, you know, having knock down, drag out battles with each other. And we asked, we say, Oh, we're willing to listen to both sides and then try to bring the sides together to have empathic dialog with each other using the the empathy circle practice. And, you know, I've had people say, Well, you have to really study both sides, like where they're coming from. But I find it's actually, I don't want to know much. I don't want to do a big study about their background. I want to focus on the space that we have, a space where people listen to each other. So that's what I'm interested in, holding, that creating an empathic space, and that people will slow down and, you know, listen to each other, and it's through the and if I bring a lot of analysis and preconceptions and so forth to the to the situation, you know, it's not it's not going to Help. Doesn't help that it's creating the space for mutual listening and that both sides feel heard. So with the Taliban, I would be, you know, if we were doing an empathy circle with the Taliban, you know, I'd be hearing, you know, why do you think women you know, should you know, be under the chador or whatever you know, or treated that way? And then I would say, Well, it's my turn to speak. Now, I totally disagree with that. I believe in mutual empathy, and I don't see that that's creating empathy. You're kind of suppressing their voice, and you're not giving them space to be be empathic. So I would be advocating for empathy itself in the relationship. With, with that Taliban person, yeah. How do you

Speaker 1 25:04
find the city dialogs go? Do you find that people show up with certain ideas and then leave with different

Edwin Rutsch 25:12
Yeah, I would say, you know, we did. We went to some demonstrations, and during the day, we had a whole film crew, you know, filming it. So it's in this documentary called Trump phobia, what both sides fear. And this filmmaker had gone to all these demonstrations and and had videotaped just all these street fights the first time Trump was elected. And then she she came to Berkeley, where we were at and we were there listening to both sides and said, Oh, you're the first people I've seen who are doing anything like this. So she had us come down to Los Angeles, and there was a demonstration there against Trump, and there was a pro Trump demonstration. And we set up and had six pairs of people from one from each side, you know, six times or for about 45 minutes or an hour each. And then I would use empathic listening, like in the empathy circle, I would listen to one side, then listen to the other. And then also had time turns. So you have, like five minutes was the maximum time, so you put a limit, otherwise, you know, people will talk forever. And then after I modeled the listening to both sides. I had them start listening to each other and reflecting back. And then they would do do that for a while. And then at the end of that, we had the, you know, I would give each one a hug. And then they actually five times, five of the pairs hugged each other too afterwards and on the other side of the street, there they were. The police were keeping them apart. They were screaming and yelling at each other. Police were in our in the empathy tent. They were kind of giving each other hugs after listening. So the you know, the what changed was the animosity, you know, the animosity went down, and they started feeling like, Oh, the other person's willing to listen to me. We might disagree, but it's not, it doesn't have that level of conflict, because at least I know the other side is listening, and he actually is kind of a nice guy, you know, or woman, or so it was the empathy itself is sort of like a healing quality that you might not convince the Taliban, but you still might take that the conflict down several notches, and this is only like after an hour, right? So you know, if you go for a couple days or an ongoing dialogs like this that I think that over time, people start understanding, and we've done it with pro life and pro choice too, where, you know, we didn't at the end, they were still pro life and pro choice, we could just see the whole narrative of why people had their their positions And and it just created greater understanding. And I think in the long term, people could maybe find policies or steps, the next steps forward, that they could agree to. I think that, yeah, an agreement, and that's what I call empathic action. So it's the action that comes out of that mutual empathy and that mutual understanding to where you see each other's deeper needs of what you're trying to create, and then you can you find that connection, then you create some policies that address those needs for each of you.

Speaker 1 28:32
Yeah, I think that's one of the critical roles that empathy can play right now in our politics, is create a space where we can lower the animosity and reduce some of that tension, because it's incredibly hard to get to what is actually the problem? What is it that we are arguing about when we're so wrapped up in villainizing each other or seeing these divisions as being just so all encompassing, and so I think by creating the space to say, Okay, what's actually going on here? What, what is the issue that you're concerned about? What is your fear? What is your anxiety and and what are also your aspirations and your hopes? And I think that's actually where we'll find people are more aligned than we realize. Is actually most people want safe and secure societies. They want to be able to guarantee that they know that they're going to have some money left over at the end of the paycheck, that they're not going to be stuck if they need medical care, or that their children can't go to school, you know? So there's, there's certain things that we can tap into, but we have to create that space, and that's where I think empathy really does play a

Edwin Rutsch 29:38
vital role, yeah, and that's what we're trying to create. Is that space like, how do we make mutual empathy a core value so people can have their different opinions or desires or needs or what have you, but that the empathy is a space to work through those those issues, and I think that one of the healing aspects of it is. Just knowing that the other side will listen to you, you know, say, Okay, we might disagree, but I know that you will listen to me and that we can and dialog, it dialog, and you're not going to try to dominate or ignore or, you know, talk over, over me. So yeah,

Speaker 1 30:17
that speaks to something that for me is so important for empathy is that it makes people feel like they're seen and they're heard and they're mattered and that they matter. And so how do we do that? And where is that we've been failing that in our politics? Where have we been overlooking people or marginalizing people, or making them feel like they're not hurt? And that's a real corrective that I think empathy can address.

Edwin Rutsch 30:39
Yeah, I'm just finding, I'm wondering, how did you get interested in this? Like, how did I mean that, that that state, you know, wanting to create that environment, like, what led you to even want to study this and work on this?

Speaker 1 30:52
Oh, I always, I've always loved people since I was very little. And I studied languages. I love that. Every time I studied a new language, you open up this whole new world of history and culture and meaning. And then I actually, after my master's, I did my Master's in Middle East politics. And then I actually went into parliament in the UK, and I worked in the House of Commons for three years for a really brilliant politician. And there I had friends across all the different parties, and you see that everyone's in it for what they consider to be the right reasons. And you disagree on the maybe the policy measures, but people all are in it because they want to make a change in society. I mean, this was back in the early 2000s so I think politics has maybe changed a little bit. Now it's become more tense. It wasn't so tense back then I joined Parliament when Tony Blair was prime minister and and then I worked at Chatham House, which is a think tank for international affairs in London. And there that one of its big strengths as a think tank is and a research institute is that it has convening power. Everyone will know the Chatham House rule, and it brings people together from different perspectives to learn and to share and to gain greater understanding about the world. So I saw it there, and I found that there was a lot of different knowledge and perspectives, and it wasn't always translating into policy choices and decisions. And this would have been at the time of the Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, and I just, I was left with a lot of questions around what, why are we not better at understanding each other and holding space for each other? And that then led to my PhD at King's College in London, and it just really evolved from there. And I think my background in politics means that I watch what's going on with a real kind of dismay. We've got to this point. We we want vibrant, demo democratic societies. We believe surely in the power of pluralism, and now that's being challenged. Why is it? How can we do more and and also, how do we as citizens do more? Because I think it's very easy to look at politics and blame the political class and say all our politicians are corrupt. That's not my experience. I think a lot of politicians are very hard working. There will always be the bad eggs, but you're going to get them in every walk of life. How do we as citizens start to be more active so that we elect the right people, so that we understand our democratic rights but also our responsibilities that we also find politics in the local area. Because for me, politics is also what your local council does, what your local school board does. You know, the decision to ban books is a political action. That's something a local school board does. So how do we understand how to reclaim that politics in our everyday right? Because I got frustrated with the apathy as well that people were feeling this disconnect from really critical choices about their well being, their society, their communities. So, yeah, I guess that's how

Edwin Rutsch 33:51
I got in and about the word empathy, even the concept, I mean, you kind of described your interest, but worded, sort of the word or concept of empathy, you know, kind of enter that

Speaker 1 34:02
when I first started. I mean, I think I've always found that idea interesting, but it was actually when I started the PhD that I kept coming across this idea of empathy in the literature, and I found it didn't always align with my experience in practice. So I was really interested in, okay, people are talking about it this way, but it's quite abstract. What does it mean when you start putting it into practice, when you actually start incorporating it into diplomacy or politics? How does it become influenced by those environments? How does it encounter obstacles? How can it maybe be improved and enhance some of those environments a bit more? So yeah, I just was interested in that tension between what I was reading, which is quite a neat, clean idea of empathy, and then the reality of it's, it's hard. Our systems aren't always wired

Edwin Rutsch 34:51
for it. Yeah, the that's I've been trying to do with the the holistic empathy definition to ground it in the empathy circle. So, you know, take. An empathy circle of, you know, maybe four or five people in a circle using that mutual active listening in order to talk with each other and then naming the phenomenon that happens within that so, so it doesn't get so abstracted, because a lot of times it's like, oh, empathy. It's like being nice, you know, or whatever. And it gets very abstract, and so I kind of try to bring the the experience into the empathy circle, so I can name what's happening, so that you know the basic empathy is listening to you, sensing into your experience. And then the self empathy is what I find is even listening. When someone listens to me, I'm able to sense more into my own experience. And so that sensing into my experience is self empathy, the imagine, you know, that imaginative empathy, which is more the imagination you know, like, like taking on a role in imagining someone else's, is a separate phenomenon. And then I've been looking at what I call mutual empathy. So in a group, you know, a lot of for me, the academic empathy is very individualistic. As you as an individual, empathize with someone else, and that's kind of where it's left, but it's really a relationship, or in a relationship. So I kind of see the empathy circle as a model of mutually empathic relationship. You know, because everybody's listening to everyone else, there's a degree the empathy level goes up. And we just did a marathon empathy circle marathon for eight hours. We should take part in one just you can, I think you want to ask about your criticisms of the empathy circle, but, and then there's empathic action. So when I do conflict mediation, you know, people are in conflict. There's all those walls that you were talking about. You get people listening to each other, they start understanding each other. And then the question at the end becomes, well, what do we do now? And then you come up with steps going forward in conflict, like, how, what are we going to do? And that's sort of an empathic action that comes out of that mutual understanding. Instead of, like, sympathy, I'm going to do something for you and and, you know, I don't know, really, it's more like, you know, addressing your own problem pain, than really having a dialog and coming up with a shared solution. So that's sort of the framework that I'm kind of using for. I'm just wondering about what you think of that whole that model. Yeah, I

Speaker 1 37:38
mean, that makes sense. And I think that idea of mutual empathy, I think I call it collective empathy, but I suspect, how do we create those spaces where it's more normal that we feel this it's more and I talk about empathy as like an ethos and a mindset and a skill and a practice, but an ecosystem. It's not something that just an individual does. We have to start thinking about, how does it exist in different spaces, and help us connect with others in a more everyday way so it just becomes a normal way of being. And I think you know this difference between the basic empathy that you've outlined makes a lot of sense, and I think that's the one that most of us are familiar with, just our everyday interactions and relationships with friends and family and strangers. I think that individual empathy, I think that's a really vital part, that self understanding, self understanding, where one is feeling things in response to what they're learning, how one is also thinking about what they think. And I do think that should be an iterative that's part of relationality that we question ourselves and that we're able to reflect on that. And I think that imaginative then allows that more creative element, that we go beyond those relationships into the more expensive. What does it mean when we apply it to animals or to fruit? I think was the other example in your video, you know, where we start to think about how the world is experienced by other beings, and then that mutual. I think there's some real space there to expand on that as well, because I think that's what's missing. Like, how do we start to create that as just a way of communities engaging with one another, and so modeling that, letting people discover its value. And I think one of the things to emphasize is that it's not an immediate win, and it's going to take time for the for that kind of mutual empathy, or the individual empathy, the interpersonal to grow, because it's not always instinctive. Sometimes it will be something where those people that you've done empathy circles with will go away. They might have found things a bit confronting, they might have found some of it a bit uncomfortable, and then they'll reflect on it, and something will happen. And I've had students come to me and go, I wasn't sure about this empathy thing, and then I had this issue, you know, at work or. Or in a personal environment, and I could totally see now why it would be helpful. And I think it doesn't always happen immediately, but we need to stop kind of cultivating the practice, and the more we do so the easier it gets, the more natural it gets, the more widespread it becomes.

Edwin Rutsch 40:17
So what would be your strategy for bringing it into the social, political environment, like, what's sort of some actual strategies you would have for that?

Speaker 1 40:28
Yeah, so I've got a few in the book just to do a mini plug. There's a kind of some ideas at the end. I think there's multiple different levels, and part of it is, maybe akin to your model, is that it's it's about how we engage in those spaces, so that we start practicing it in our everyday and we start listening to people with different views. We start not shutting people down because we disagree with them. We actually get a bit curious, and we lean in and we ask, Well, why is that? And we try and find some form of common ground, and we make people feel heard, not with an intention to respond and put them right, but just to hear them out, get a sense of what what they really think and why it is that they think that. How have they been let down by politics or government or the local community? I think we need to get get better at engaging at a local level. In our communities, I think there has been a disconnect from civic life, and there's a lot of really great work going on right now that's really energizing civic life and community. That's where I found a lot of hope, that empathy is growing, that there are organizations that are building connections between people. I think we need to get involved. Volunteer, help out, be a part of your local community. Figure out what it is you care passionately about. Lean in a little bit more. I think we need to read news or get outside the algorithm so we escape the bubble of just what we always read. You know, try and understand how the world looks to different people, because that really shapes how they then approach topics. And if you don't understand their major environment, you suddenly just think, where are they getting this from? So just be aware of those different stories that are being told about the very same thing. I think we need to have higher standards and hold people in power to higher levels, we need to have more expectations of that and hold people to account, because I think, you know, we are seeing certain people in positions of power who I think aren't demonstrating that kind of basic form of empathy. And we have to ask ourselves, why, what is it that they bring? Why is it that we see that growing and and I think as well, you know, part of it is about getting better at the dialogs that we have with others and and encouraging that civic education. One of the things I found really encouraging when I was writing the book was countries like Finland have a huge amount on just a huge amount of time in their curriculum to teach young students about what it means to do democracy. And that's where you learn that differences in innate part of democracy, that disagreement, is something that can be healthy, if it helps you work together. I'm a big fan of citizens assemblies and participatory democracy. I think that's a really good way that you get a bit more of that mutual empathy that you spoke about, because people then have time to go deep on an issue, to hear the different facts, to hear the different perspectives, and then to collectively come together and talk about what they might do differently. So just a few ideas have more. But yeah, yeah.

Edwin Rutsch 43:41
Glad to hear all of them. So is it, are you seeing that as sort of an individual, we as individuals, kind of do this? Or how do you see that it being part of a collective or or a government policy that supports empathy? I'm seeing a

Speaker 1 43:59
lot of grassroots up initiatives that even if they don't center empathy as their reason to enter, even if it's not a core part of what they're doing that is effectively what they're doing, they're saying, there are gaps in what we're seeing from government. There are spaces in society where we would benefit from more community, whether that's through community centers or after schools club or sports clubs for senior people, or bringing together generations. You know, where you've got young people and old people spending far more time together, learning from each other, finding that they aren't as different as they may be previously thought. And I'm seeing a lot of grassroots initiatives around the world that are really championing this, and I think that's a good way of people getting familiar with the concept at a more local level. And it's also something where you are often connected by mutual interests or mutual concerns about your community, or about what you'd like to see, or what what you're motivated by. And that helps us see those people. We maybe think differently or live differently as more like us, and that's what we need. We need more of these spaces, and you had in the US the former Surgeon General talk about this loneliness epidemic, and I think that's another way of also helping cultivate that belonging. And belonging is a key way to build resilience within society. It's a key way to help people feel less alone, to feel like they are part of something bigger, to feel like there is purpose in politics. And so any kind of initiative that helps do that, I think, starts to contribute to that sense of mutual empathy and connection, and to me, that they're really connected those two concepts. Well, you

Edwin Rutsch 45:40
know, we're talking about politics. I actually ran for Congress here in the in my district in this year, near Berkeley, California. Yeah, four years ago, three or four years ago, and I ran as the empathy candidate. And the first thing I did is I invited the other candidates to take part in an empathy circle. And our topic was, how might we bridge the political divides in the countries? And I only got 3% of the vote, so still pretty good. Yeah, it was another candidate who's sort of the establishment candidate, been in politics long time. He won the it, but the election, but, and then we held an empathy circle with candidates for the state assembly here in California. And we always like 11 candidates, and they actually, I think 10 of them, took part in an empathy circle. So it was actually at UC, Berkeley. We had one of the halls there, and then we mediated or facilitated an empathy circle with them. So, and then we've done the empathy tent, you know, being out in public. And that's really where we've gotten the most publicity, you know, for, you know, on TV, newspapers. Oh, we actually, just recently at the Democratic Convention in in San Francisco, the state convention. And we, you know, a group of us, we set up at a table. We offered empathy to, you know, listening to, you know, people walking by. And I did, you know, meet Adam shift, who's a Senator for California, you know, federal Kent senator. So that's what we've been trying to do, you know, in terms of, you know, the politics and, you know, doing this empathy tent. I do want to kind of scale up on that. And one thing I'm thinking we can, just like your thoughts on this is, is, I think that the empathy movement, and we're, you know, the empathy Center, which I'm director of, has the mission of making a movement to make empathy a core cultural value. And I'm thinking, what we need to do is, with our empathy tent, do something like Occupy Wall Street, where we actually occupy a space, you know, in a park, maybe the state capitol here in California, and we say we're not leaving until the Republicans Democrats have empathy circles with each other, because this polarization is very destructive. And so sort of an activist, you know, using nonviolent, say, direct action for empathy building, you know, for calling for it. And then we have the empathy circle is sort of a first step. You know, if we get politicians taking part in an empathy circle, they they model it for the public, right? How the public can see it? So, just wondering, What you thinking about, sort of a non violent direct action empathy sort of a movement?

Speaker 1 48:43
Yeah, I'd love to see, I would love to see more politicians, Republicans and Democrats, sit down together and talk about what it is they're dealing with and what the challenges are. I mean, do you think you would? It sounds like you've got a big community there as well. It sounds like you'd actually get enough people that it would. It would be like an occupation, occupation, you know, like an Occupy Wall Street, where you'd have a presence, you'd have people talking about what it means and why it matters and and I think really it's it, it's important for people across the political divides in America right now to see that they're really there's core issues that they should be working together on, and so getting them to kind of find, where is it that you can start making small steps to at least address some of the challenges and bipartisanship in America seems to have declined significantly. We're not really sealing seeing much of that. So I think it would be great to see it around an issue where you think there could be quick wins in terms of bipartisanship, so not the big, toxic, hard issues, but just easing in. Where is it that we can agree we need to do something, and what is it that we can agree on?

Edwin Rutsch 49:57
Yeah, in terms of like, there'd be a there's. Small Group. I don't know how many are willing to do an Occupy, I mean, like, stay overnight, but it's kind of like you have to do it and see who comes sometimes, you know, you just, what I think is, is like, who is willing to, you know, put themselves on the line to to get out in public and, you know, stay overnight somewhere and where, and maybe even get arrested for for that, even though occupy, they didn't really do much resting of people. And then the idea would be to do around the clock empathy circle. So my marathon was sort of a test of how that worked. So it would be because the occup Occupy Wall Street is where I started with the empathy tent the first time. So it was like I saw that they said, Oh, it's the 99 against the 1% and I thought, I'm for 100% empathy. You know, as soon as you go into the us and them, there's even if it's the 1% you know, you chop off their head, then there's another 1% you chop off their head. So if an us versus them, I think, is not empathic, and it's also, you know, not, it's not going to be transformative, because it's always going to create conflict. So I went with a canopy, set up a tent, and I called it the 100% empathy tent. So we just offered listening. And I didn't have the empathy circle sort of a practice at that point, but it was a very dysfunctional space, you know, it was like, you know, drug addiction and homelessness. So just it was in groups against each other. So it's very dysfunctional. And to keep that from happening, it would be, everybody would be doing empathy circles from the beginning, right? It's like you're in a continuous empathy circle with with a group. You go from one group to the other, so you kind of create and maintain and everybody's welcome, conservatives, liberals, left, right, Republican, Democrat, Nazis, anti Nazis. Everybody is welcome if you take part in an empathy in an empathy circle, you know is, is a core sort of a practice. So, and then I'm looking at, we need a training curriculum, and I'm wondering what you have any thoughts on a curriculum? So that would be, empathy circle is the foundation, and then other practices. And you know, people's assemblies would be one of the practices. And I think empathy circles are a good found foundation for people's actually doing having trainings in that public space that are empathy building. So, yeah,

Speaker 1 52:39
yeah, I think encouraging people to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable is a good way of kind of leaning into some of that and and encouraging people to kind of ask the right questions, to follow up, to really get the heart of what people are talking about, and to be able to dig deeper into what lies beneath. Because often, I imagine people only have so long and so they talk at surface level. So how are you then, asking, what goes beyond that? Yeah, I guess as well, it'd be interesting to see what literature you might suggest to accompany it. What would be the kind of readings that would make people think about the other side differently. I think fiction is such a great tool for some of that. Or movies, you know, are there good movies that you could just encourage people to think about? And listening is a practice, something that we we can get better at, but it's also something that I think we often think we're really good at, but active listening is so much harder because you've got to be so present, and you've got to be able to really lean in to what different people are saying.

Edwin Rutsch 53:46
Yeah. So what are your thoughts about the empathy, sir, I think you said there was something about it that you didn't like and that you felt you weren't heard, or something like that. So I'm wondering what your your criticisms or were, yeah,

Speaker 1 53:59
and I guess maybe it's also understanding different people have different ways of feeling seen and heard. And I think for me, I really like the idea of coming together with different people. And I really like that people have a set amount of time to talk about something that moves them. What I struggled with, for me was because we did the the trainings, I think during the pandemic, there are some online trainings. What I struggled with was there were no follow up questions, and so if someone reflects back to me what I've said, I actually just feel like they're parroting. I don't feel like they've actually listened, because if they had listened, they would ask a question, to go deeper, not to tell me what it was they thought about what I said, but to go, why is it that you feel that way? What is it that happened that shaped your perspective? And I found that by be by people just reflecting back me to me, it it left me just feeling really unheard, because it's very. Easy to take someone's words and reformulate them, and I think there's a benefit to reflecting back to people. But then I wanted it to go a bit further. I wanted to go, Okay, what I'm hearing you say is this, but could you tell me a bit more about this? Or what was it that motivated that for you, and I think it's something that a lot of us do very instinctively in conversations with others, but I just felt like five minutes, if you're given that space to open up, you've actually touched on quite a bit in that time, but then you don't get to go any deeper, really, because then you just move on to another topic, and it may be because, actually, the training was very short, and that if you're actually sat for a long period of time with people, there's far more time to go into that. But I, I wanted follow up questions for me to feel heard and seen. I need to feel like someone is curious and that they're picking up on subtle cues of things that maybe I've said or alluded to that I haven't maybe gone deeper onto, because either I was conscious that time was a little bit short, or because I was just trying to warm up and make sure that I was in a trusted space. I'm not someone that will maybe go very vulnerable very quickly. I need that time to open up and I need to feel like someone is interested in me.

Edwin Rutsch 56:20
Can I sign you up for the eight hour empathy circles?

Speaker 1 56:27
Yes, yeah. If it's online during my daytime that's fine, because I can't. I would love to know how the empathy marathon goes when you're at like, 3am in the morning, because I think my empathy would be so low when I was like, I want bed or I want tea, like, we have to

Edwin Rutsch 56:44
find a time like now, which works for Australia and California. Yeah. So, yeah. The thing is, is with you were doing the training, so I don't think you had the full experience of the empathy circle, because it's very truncated. You got three minute turns. So it's very much a training experience. And it's, it's very short, you know, relatively short, speaking turns. And so it's, it's very different in your if you're actually in a two hour circle, so you'd have kind of more the the experience of it. The other part is, is, as a speaker, you're you're it's up to you to be heard to your satisfaction. So if you're not heard to your satisfaction, it's because you didn't say that you weren't heard to your satisfaction. You I'm saying is you can say I don't feel really heard in this situation. I feel like you're, you're you're not able to ask me questions. I feel something is missing, and so you could have, like, shared deeper about your dissatisfaction, and have been heard about that.

Speaker 1 58:02
I do, I do, and I guess as well, the training would have constrained that a little bit, because we didn't, you couldn't keep saying, I don't feel heard. But for me, a part of relationality is I want someone to ask a question about it, because I'm not just going to keep volunteering my perspective. I mean, I can talk for a long time about opinions. I have a lot of opinions, but with empathy circles being a bit more about that vulnerability or about how you feel or what is moving you, I my idea of relationality is that it's a dialog between people, and so I don't just want someone to reflect back what I've said. I want them to kind of probe a little bit deeper about certain things where they feel like, Hold on. What is it you're saying that I can feel there's more to it, and that might be something I wouldn't volunteer naturally if I was given more time, right? And so for me, that's about reading the other person. And I think another concern was that, and this would be something that I'd want to see by being in a longest empathy circle, is really, how do you deal when you're dealing with the very tense topics, with the heated emotions, especially when you're bringing people together who may have denied the rights to exist of others, or may have undermined their fundamental sense of self. And I think there I would want, I would want to make sure that there was enough safety in place, psychological safety in place for different people to say, you know, if they're Nazi, why it is they think that, but to not offend people who have been very much harmed by the ideology. And I think either you need to then make sure that you've got people in the circle who are robust enough that they know the terms of engagement, or you need to make sure that you can steer it and the fact that there was no questions, or there is you're not meant to set any boundaries. For me. I was like, I don't know how that would work when you're dealing with very fragile, very tense topics with people who are emotionally in the thick of it, like it's not like me now talking about something that's abstract and far away, if you're talking about a conflict in my homeland, and something that I may have been very directly affected by I may have lost family, I may have encountered hardships because of that. I'm not sure I would find it easy to show up as my most empathetic self in the first instance. And so I'm curious about how you curate that when you're dealing with those very hard topics, like what parameters you set. And I guess in the training, we didn't get time to see that in action, because you do need to see that in action over several hours.

Edwin Rutsch 1:00:47
Yeah, that was, you know, I mentioned the mediation, and there's a video, you know, of that video clip, part of the movie, because those people were in conflict. You know that we're mediating the political left and right, because on the other side of the street, they were screaming and yelling at each other. And the in the in the in the empathy tent with and in the empathy circle, people felt like, Oh, the other person's listening to me. So there was that, that that is that that helps, you know, some of the most intense empathy circles are actually with family members who've been in real conflict, you know, deep conflict. And I've had done empathy circles with family members who they're so triggered, they're so so in pain. You know about the family relationship that they they just stop being willing to do the active listening, the empathic listening. And then I would say, Well, if you're not going to follow this process, which I think creates a sense of fairness and actually safety in the process, then I'm not willing to be here, you know, and because this is the structure that, you know, I feel is an empathic structure. And then I've had them say, Okay, I'll stick with the structure, because I threatened to leave, right? And they know it's at the end of the relationship if they if I leave. And so there is, you know the circles that we do, you know 95% are not high conflict circles or people, but the higher the conflict, the more skill you have. You need to have to hold the practice so someone in the circle might stop doing the active listening, and then you as a facilitator, have to be able to maybe step in and reflect back like somebody's talking. And then, you know, saying something that triggers the other person. The other person says, I didn't say that. And then, you know, as a facilitator, I step and say, Well, I hear you didn't say that. And we would do want to hear your point, but we've all agreed to stay within the time limits and and the speaking terms, and so we just, we just continue and stay in the process. So and that takes some grounding as a facilitator to be able to, you know, reflect back what the person says, so that they feel quickly heard, but then bring them back, back into the process. So there is more in terms of the level of conflict that that's sort of needed. But the other part, too, I think you need to look at, too, is with the questioning. That questioning is like, can be a form of control, like I was a big question. When I did a lot of travel, I would ask questions all the time, but the questioning is a way of, sort of steering the conversation the way you want it to be, versus right when, when you ask questions to someone, you're sort of steering them in a direction, versus them following their own what's arising in themselves. And I do hear that when somebody asks you a question, you feel like they care about you. They're curious, and it's giving you a lot of signals. It makes it easier for you to share so you're sort of you sort of appreciate that. So I think there's, there is problems with questioning too, in the sense that it kind of controls the direction of the dialog, versus giving the person who's speaking a chance to let their own internal you know what's coming up for them, kind of direct them, and you just following them. But then when it is your turn to speak, to speak, you can ask all the questions you want. They won't be answered right away, but they'll get reflected, right so that, yeah, so I don't those are just some some thoughts. I mean, I really appreciate your, you know, exploration of the topic,

Speaker 1 1:04:52
yeah, and I guess it just speaks to the fact that we're all so different in what makes us feel seen and so understanding. Thing that that has different implications for how we engage. There is no one size fits all to empathy. You know, we might think we're being really empathetic, and someone might not see it that way, if that doesn't translate for how they've been brought up, either culturally or, you know, maybe there's certain things where they do find questions more intrusive, whereas others might find them a necessary route to that kind of connection. So I guess it's just reinforces the idea that there is no one size fits all, and encourages, therefore, to get curious about, well, what does it mean for you to feel like you matter or that you're heard? And I think that's an also important question that could be asked. You know, in this empathy circle, what would it mean for you to feel heard? What would it mean for you to feel seen in politics? What would it mean for you to feel you matter in your community? And then people can, you know, expand on the various different ways in which it is. And I imagine if you did that, you'd find very different responses from people that some people might just want services to work really well. They don't actually need the personal connection. They just want to feel like society functions. There might be others who want to have really long doorstop chats with their neighbors and invite them in for tea, or make, you know, lend bags of sugar or make cakes for their neighbor who's going through a difficult time. And there might be others who want to know there's a local football team that they can join. And so I think those kind of questions actually then get to, what is it that we all need in different ways? Because society is not one thing. The policies, the responses we devise, are not singular. We need to be speaking to the different needs and interests and wants of various different people. And I think by asking those kind of questions, that's how we get closer to it.

Edwin Rutsch 1:06:40
Yeah, well, how do you think if, if you're in your what happens in a normal conversations often somebody dominates, right? And what if the person says, I need to dominate this conversation, and then other people say, Well, I don't want you to dominate the conversation. And then you're you're there. You have no, you know, mechanism for working that out, where, if you bring it into an empathy circle, you can, you can, you know, you got a structure to hold it because it becomes unsafe for those people who are in that situation where there's no rules and somebody's dominating. So, I mean, I'm just, yeah, there's, what you're sort of saying is why everybody's kind of different. We can do, you know, kind of do things. Everybody does it differently. But I'm sort of questioning that that sort of approach to an empathic process. It's sort of like, you know, if a politician wants to be authoritarian, so this is a system that I want they have. I'm saying, Well, I hear that's the system you want. It's not the system I want. And I'm going to try to bring you into the system the mindset that I would like, which is a mutually empathic one. And the way I would try to bring them into is by the means of empathy, by offering them empathic listening to draw them into in it.

Speaker 1 1:08:02
Yeah. So, I mean, I think if someone was dominating a conversation, and I have done this before, I would probably point it out to someone, and I've probably done the same myself. You know, we all have pet projects or days where we just need to speak more than we listen, and I'd probably call them out. But I think we're talking about different things, because I'm talking about how we empathize. What makes people feel like you have empathized with them will be different. So for empathy, and it's my, my partner's grandfather, and is a big advocate of empathy, and his his partner as well, and they, they talk about empathy has to involve the other person feeling like you have listened and heard like it is that mutuality, that it involves people feeling like you've empathized with them. And I think assuming that empathy is only one way, that listening in one way or providing a space in one way will work is to me, also doesn't allow for that variety of people feeling heard. So for me, when I translate that to a policy space, I have very upset ideas of what I think would work, but I have to be open to saying, Well, what is it that in your community matters for you? What is it that would make you feel heard by politicians? And I think that's different. That isn't about saying someone has a right to dominate and occupy a space where they get to do what they like and ride roughshod over everyone else. That's against the whole idea of empathy, but we have to be open to the fact that what makes people feel like they are seeing, heard and matter is very different, and so that affects how we then relate and engage them, that we understand. What is it that will make you feel cared for right now, and the way I will probably respond to that might be very different from the way you respond to that? And our job as people who want to do empathy well is to try and understand what that looks like. And it might be we can't provide it. It might be that, you know, I want to sit here and talk for an hour about what matters to me, and you don't have the time. You can say, well, I can't do that. That's where boundaries come in. You know, that isn't a space that will work, but at least we gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for what it means to be empathized with. If that makes sense.

Edwin Rutsch 1:10:27
Yeah, I'm trying to, trying to grasp, I kind of come from the seeing that there's, you know, like the empathy circle is this core sort of a practice that most people you know, that they find that they're they're heard and understood within, within the process, and you were, yeah, I'm trying to understand that. And there what, you know, what is the structure? I'm trying to understand the structure that you're talking about, or the the approach, or the the the the attitude that you're talking about that, yeah, I'm not quite, I don't think, yeah, I'm not quite getting, you know, kind of the approach that you're talking talking about, I

Speaker 1 1:11:13
guess, based on my limited experience of the circles, because it was in a truncated environment where it was shorter, I didn't feel heard and I didn't feel seen, because I felt that just mirroring back to me what was what I'd said was not actually understanding what I'd said. That's just mirroring, you know that something that a flat plane of glass can do? I for me to feel heard and understood. I want people to show a little bit more curiosity about what lies beyond what I've said, or about where that idea or perspective has come from. So my suggestion was, I would be curious to know, if you did an empathy circle and you posed the question to people, what does it mean for you to feel seen or heard or like you mattered in society? What that raised because I imagine that different people have different ways of feeling seen and heard and like they matter.

Edwin Rutsch 1:12:06
Okay. Well, yeah, maybe we could do that. Maybe we could hold an empathy circle and have that topic and kind of explore it for several hours. I think would be kind of a way to kind of move forward on that. The other part that I'm looking at is that when, and I've heard other people say that they weren't, didn't feel heard, but they don't say that they there's, there's a sense of responsibility for a person to speak, and if they don't share what's going on for them, then they have to take responsibility for not being heard, because the space says you will be heard to your satisfaction, right? That's what we're saying. And if you don't share what's going on for you, you hide it, and then you say, Well, I didn't feel heard, but you have to take responsibility for not having shared what it was that you were feeling. If you're feeling unheard, you know, saying that there, there's a you're sort of like the teacher. You're the person in charge of being heard to your satisfaction. And so it's sort of like your responsibility to take that step.

Speaker 1 1:13:13
I'm trying to think how to visual in my head. I can see it as a visual. So I'm trying to think how to articulate it out loud. So if I'm given three or five minutes to speak, and then you reflect that back to me, and then I have another three or five minutes to speak. I'm going to kind of add to that, because I don't always find it very comfortable to talk about myself in a more vulnerable space, in a group with people who maybe think very differently to me, I'm very happy to share my opinions, but if you're actually intending it as a way to get people to be a bit more vulnerable. That's something that maybe, as a Brit is not something that comes as naturally. So I'd say I'd be given more time, and then that would be parroted back again to me, and then I'd be given more time, and I still wouldn't feel heard, because there's a lot I can talk about, but it would only get to a certain level, and the more time I had, the more I would just add more, but it would be on that level. But for me to feel heard, I want someone to kind of go, Okay, well, take us to that deeper level. Take us to what's underneath that, or tell us a bit more about where that comes from, and then that builds a different opening. And then for me, you know, if that's parroted back, if I don't feel it, I'll just keep adding to that. But I guess it's that kind of, it's the depth that would come in you're

Edwin Rutsch 1:14:29
kind of wanting something that kind of goes deeper, like, what is it that supports you? And going deeper in sharing what's sort of alive and what's going on on for you.

Speaker 1 1:14:39
And I think with politics right now, I think if I sat down with people in the UK or America or Australia and asked about politics, you'd get people talking about what they're frustrated with, politicians, society failing taxation, people who are billionaires getting away with not paying any tax. You know, destruction of the environment. You'd get that i. I could, I could reflect that back to them, and that may be a very accurate reflection. But what I want to know in order to truly empathize is, why is it that? What is it about that that most concerns you? What is it that you most fear? What are you most anxious about with that? What is it that you hope to get from change? What would a different system look like to you? And yes, that is leading, but I also think it helps kind of alchemize a little bit some of what they've said, because there's so much going on right now that I would if I was asked that question, I'd just give you like a litany of all the things that I think are wrong and you'd never actually get to well, what lies beneath all that. What is it that you wish politics did for you better? What is it that you wish society provided for you? What would a good community, a healthy community, look like for you? And then get people to talk for five minutes about what that would be, and then parrot that back, and then you might ask a question about, what would you do to make that change? And so for me, that is what a more empathetic engagement would look like. For me,

Edwin Rutsch 1:16:06
okay, so you're really, you're looking for depth, and how do we get kind of more that people be able to share more, more deeply? A couple of things that come to mind is, when you do the reflection, or it's, it's not like a parodying. It should be sharing your understanding of what the other person says. It's like saying this is what I understand that you say it's not like, just like saying the exact words back. So at the core, you kind of demonstrate that you understand what the other the ideas, the feelings behind it. So that's kind of one part, the other part in terms of how do we get that depth? It's one I find that, if you know that the other people in the circle will listen to you, that it creates trust, and as the trust gets deeper, that people share more about what's you know kind of going on in their lives, and they share it becomes more intimate. So I think that, for me, the process creates that that level of trust, and they can ask questions when it's their turn or your turn, you're welcome to say whatever you could have your whole you know, five minutes or 10 minutes, and sometimes we just make it no limit. You know that you can ask all the questions you want. The person who's who you're, who's, your listener is not going to be sharing what they think they're going to are share back what they understand your your questions are, and then when it's their turn, they can select to answer or not. So those are some sort of added dynamics, but I think it's a good question like, how do we get you know, how do we get more intimate, more deep. And sometimes it takes time. You know, it takes, can take a couple hours for people to share. Yeah, I found that to open, to open up more, yeah. So maybe we'll do that circle. We can kind of try it out. And yeah, kind of model that. So maybe we'll move on for that. Thanks for going deep into this. I think, I do think it's important, because it gets into the nuances of what, you know, an empathic relationship is all about. You know, what is, what are the real dynamics of it? So I did, you did mention in the book, some of the sort of the criticisms of empathy. So I don't know if you what you're I think you mentioned, you know, Fritz, Breithaupt, some of his, I don't know if those were criticisms that you agreed with. I don't remember. But were there any sort of criticisms, things that you thought were kind of problems with empathy, because I disagree with Fritz, and I've had conversations with him, so,

Speaker 1 1:19:08
yeah, I mean, I think, I think one of the challenges with empathy is that sometimes empathy can exist when we don't like what it looks like. It's not just something that's done by people we agree with. And so, and this is in some of the work that is critical, that of empathy is that it can be used to foster in groups at the expense of out groups, and it can be used by populists as much as those who want to see, you know, free, fair society for all as a way of building that sense of I'm listening to you, I see you, I hear you. You matter. And I do think we see that from some of the populist leaders. I think it's a good way of building that sense of connection, because we I'm curious to understand why some people are so popular, and I do think it's because they make certain parts of society feel. Like they matter, like their concerns are taken seriously, and that can be a challenge for people who see empathy is associated, maybe with kindness, or associated with a certain form of politics. So that's something that I think Fritz touches on. It's something Paul Bloom touches on. And I don't fully agree with all of their analysis, but I think they're right to point to the ways in which it can have different implications that may be perceived as negative, because it's a human response. It's a human it's part of how we relate to people. And it's not only people we like who do it well,

Edwin Rutsch 1:20:37
well that's that's where I think the definition comes in that so we know we're if we're talking about the same phenomenon. And like with Fritz saying that, well, empathy is directed towards your in group, and that's a problem with empathy. Whereas I see it that the problem there is that if you define empathy as sort of the mutuality, again, using the model of the empathy circle that we've got, let's say, four people in a circle, and everyone is listening to everyone else. You know, everybody's getting a turn to speak. And there's a shared that empathy is actually defined as the mute as a mutual relationship, and he's defining it as an individualistic again, that individualism, that, Oh, you're listening to just your in group. And that's for me, it would be like, well, that's a limit, limited empathy. It's not, you know, the true it's it's a fractional empathy, it's a part empathy. It's not a full empathy, so that a full it's actually a block. What he's talking about is actually something, something is blocking this empathic space between all the participants in the circle, for example. So I see that, and you know what? You know, I have trouble seeing the world that it's like, I can't believe that he can't see that, you know, it's like, you know. So I don't know, where were you thinking about that?

Speaker 1 1:22:12
Yeah. I mean, I think it exists on a spectrum. And I think, I think that idea of the individualistic empathy can exist as well as the mutual empathy. And I talk in the book about this idea of empathy as a means and empathy as an end. And I think there's that way of actually some people use it as a means to build connection in those more bracketed, fragmented ways, where it's directed to certain communities and certain people. And that's where empathy shows up as demonstrating care, demonstrating understanding, trying to get a greater sense of connection with certain groups, and feel like you're all moving in the same direction. But then I talk about empathy as an ends, and to me, that idea of empathy as an ends is much more aligned with that mutual empathy of this should be what just exists. This should be the nature of our politics, where we are able to encounter difference and discomfort in our everyday of politics. And so I think they both can exist. That's what I've observed, at least. And I think it's, it doesn't have to be one or the other, you know? And we see this with other concepts. So power, power can be just between two individuals, or can be exerted in a small group, or it can be used as a more collective way of creating change in the ways that people like Hannah Arendt spoke about, or, you know, the idea of power with, I think it's Mary Parker, Follett. I always forget the name when I'm talking about things, so I think empathy can have different meanings at the same time. What we have to be more specific on is, what is it that we're trying to create with empathy? And actually it's the breaking down of those fragmentations. It's actually creating spaces where everybody feels seen and heard and can share. But that also involves a certain process of creating collective ways of engaging with each other, that it means strengthening democracy, which is founded on the idea of difference and coexistence, even with people that we don't agree with. So I do think there's something to what they write about. And I do think empathy can have a darker side, but I think let's call it manipulative empathy. Call it, you know, make it clear that that is what it is, and then be very specific about the type that we're trying to create.

Edwin Rutsch 1:24:31
Well, yeah, with with that, that criticism of Fritz and others, too, for me, that would be limited empathy. And the problem is not with empathy itself. It's sort of like, it's sort of, to me, it's sort of like saying, you know, you drink water and it's really good, it's really healthy, it helps your well being. But if you don't have water, you're thirsty. Let's call that and then so it's a problem with water. Is that you get thirsty. So, so empathy. So it's like empathy is sort of like the water that if you don't have it, because you can sometimes not have it.

The problem is with empathy itself, and it like, logically, doesn't make sense, sense to me, that that you can be, you know, saying that because you don't have something, it's a problem with with that, with that thing, and the same way, you know, you're having, you're having limited empathy for maybe you're in group, and it's even a question if it's really empathy or just identification the end. So yeah, so I see that is like an invalid, and if you kind of say that, well, you can define it anyway. There's all kinds of definitions. Yeah, that's kind of a question. It's sort of like, if you're in the medical field and and a scalpel is defined any sort of a way you're going to have trouble with with the operation. So you got to get a bit, you know, clear on what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 1:26:01
But I think there's also a danger that if we see people who are using that limited empathy, let's say, you know, to create the in group. From what I've observed, they still use the language of care. They still use the language of caring about people. You know, the people who want mutual empathy are not the only ones who have a monopoly on the idea that they care most for people so much of the politics right now, as much as some of us, and I should probably identify so it helps like, I'm far more center left. I'm, you know, I don't like the politics of fascism or racism or homophobia or xenophobia.

I don't like this kind of rampant nationalism that's going on that is not something that sits comfortably with me. And I know there will be people that I encounter that think differently and that that's something I would want to understand. But I don't believe that in their discourse, they don't, in some ways, use the language of care that they care for certain people, and we see it that the language of the family values, that is often tradition of the very conservative right is rooted as well in a sense of care. I may not agree with that sense of care, because I don't necessarily think that is helpful, but it doesn't mean it's not a sense of caring.

It speaks that subjectivity of our experience and so that empathy, then is it reflects all the ways that we talk about empathy in a general sense. I don't think empathy is a monopoly of the left, and I think when we claim it as something that only a left, do we risk further perpetuating that dehumanization or that vilification of those on the right we disagree with, because then there's an assumption written into it that you don't care like I do. You don't think about the world like I do.

 You are based only on exclusion and racism, whereas actually what we should be getting on to, underneath to is, what do you care about? Where does our care coexist? It's probably about creating safe spaces for children, about looking after families and making sure that kids have good education. Surely there's spaces that we can disagree on, but there should also be a lot that we can agree on in that. And so I just I struggle with the idea that I assume that the people I disagree with politically don't care, what we need to understand is what that care means to them and have empathy for that.

And we can still call out the behavior that is bigoted and that is racist and that is, you know, offensive and violent, and we should be calling that out. But I think there's a danger that we take away people's dignity and their belief in their care. You know, most people I know who did vote for Trump, which is not something that I would do, do it because they think they're really caring. And I can't deny them that, because they are, in their everyday life, very caring. They are people who show up for other people. They are people who care deeply about their families. So that's why I think that idea of empathy is something that can have different meanings, is important.

Edwin Rutsch 1:29:07
I think that's a little bit different in the sense I agree with with that. And you know, when we do our empathy tent and we listen to all sides, and I have good relations with the people on the right or the left, so, you know, it's that that's not the issue that that I'm saying that, you know, Republicans are, well, one side or the other doesn't have empathy or care. That's not what I'm kind of addressing is Fritz's criticism of empathy, that empathy leads to sort of in group. It leads to in that it itself, the empathy itself leads to in group, sort of closing yourself off to other groups.

 And I think that's a misunderstanding of empathy. Because for me, true empathy is empathizing. Listening to all groups, all sides. Some people might limit their empathy, but that's the nature the holistic or mutual empathy is an empathizing with all sides doesn't mean I agree with with all sides. So it's more that, that it's a different it's a different criticism he's making than what you're saying, because I thoroughly agree that you know Republicans or conservatives, you know might care about each other, or might care deeply, or empathize deeply.

Summary: The Varied Dynamics of Empathy in Politics

The duo analyzes successful and failed applications of political empathy, citing Jacinda Ardern’s leadership after the Christchurch attacks as a model of empathy-as-strength, and Barack Obama’s "empathy deficit" rhetoric as a case study in the challenges of bridging partisan divides. They conclude that building a "Culture of Empathy" requires moving beyond symbolic gestures toward structured practices like empathy circles and active listening to foster genuine trust and long-term societal stability.

Detailed Outline
 

I. Introduction and Professional Background

• Context of the Dialogue: The conversation takes place during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic [00:33].

• Claire Yorke’s Expertise: Introduction to her work at Yale on emotions in foreign policy and her article for the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence [01:02].
  
   

II. Empathy in Strategic Communications

• Multiple Audiences: The challenge of showing understanding to diverse groups (adversaries, domestic public, party members) without alienating others [03:34].

• Defining Political Empathy: How leaders use empathy to connect with audiences and demonstrate they are listening [04:58].
  
   

III. The Perception of Empathy: Strength vs. Weakness

• The "Weakness" Trap: Why empathy is often viewed as conceding ground or being soft [10:45].

• Case Study - Jacinda Ardern: How the New Zealand Prime Minister combined deep empathy with firm policy action (e.g., gun control) to model strength [11:06].

• Boundaries and Empathy: The necessity of having firm boundaries for empathy to be effective [12:11].
   

IV. The "Empathy Deficit" and Partisanship

• Barack Obama’s Legacy: Discussing Obama’s focus on the "empathy deficit" and his admitted struggle to bridge the partisan divide [14:35].

• The Discomfort of Empathy: Why true empathy is painful, as it requires confronting worldviews that challenge one's own values [19:26].
   

V. Structural Barriers to Empathy

• The Justice System: Critique of the adversarial nature of the legal and political systems as "low empathy frameworks" [23:51].

• Polarization as Capital: How politicians currently gain "political capital" from dehumanizing the opposition rather than seeking common ground [25:11].
   

VI. Values of an Empathic Culture

• Core Principles: Discussion of openness, transparency, mutuality, and self-reflection [32:09].

• Managing Ego: The role of an "ego check" in the process of empathizing with others [33:44].

• Self-Empathy: The importance of being aware of one's own emotional state before engaging with others [34:52].

VII. Practical Application: Empathy Circles

• Active Listening: The foundational practice of reflecting back what another person has said until they feel understood [37:33].

• Scaling the Model: Edwin Rutsch’s vision for bringing "empathy tents" and structured circles to high-level political negotiations [39:06].

• Action Component: Addressing the need for empathy to lead to concrete policy outputs (e.g., healthcare, prison reform) [41:42].
   

VIII. Trust and Authenticity in Leadership

• Building Community Trust: Moving from "dehumanization" to trusting that an opponent means no harm [01:17:31].

• Performative Empathy: Exploring whether empathy in politics needs to be sincere or if "performative" empathy still holds value for the public [01:18:37].
   

IX. Personal Narratives and Success Stories

• Mediation Case Study: Edwin shares a personal story of using empathy to resolve a deep-seated family conflict on Christmas [01:24:26].

• The "Onion" Effect: How structured listening peels away surface anger to reveal core human needs and identity [01:27:51].
   

X. Future Vision and Movement Building

• Global Movement: The goal of making empathy circles a standard practice globally to reduce polarization [01:32:27].
   

• Human-Centric Policy: The ultimate aim of putting people and their vulnerabilities at the heart of decision-making [01:34:22].
   

Detailed Chronological Summary

[00:00:00] Introduction and Context
Edwin Rutsch introduces the dialogue, noting the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Claire Yorke introduces herself as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, focusing on the role of empathy and emotions in international relations and diplomacy.

[00:01:39] Strategic Communications and Empathy
The discussion turns to Yorke's article on empathy in strategic communications for NATO. She explains that empathy is often under-conceptualized in politics but is vital for connecting with diverse audiences, including adversaries and domestic constituents.

[00:04:58] Empathy as a Political Act
Yorke describes how politicians often intuitively use empathy to balance competing interests. She argues that empathy in politics is about "who" you are empathizing with and notes that expressing empathy for one group can sometimes be perceived as neglecting another.

[00:11:06] Case Study: Jacinda Ardern
The speakers analyze New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s leadership following the Christchurch attacks. Yorke highlights her as a model for combining empathy with decisive policy (like gun control), proving that empathy and strength can coexist.

[00:14:35] The "Empathy Deficit" and Barack Obama
The conversation shifts to Barack Obama's rhetoric regarding the "empathy deficit." Rutsch suggests that while Obama spoke eloquently about empathy, he struggled to bridge the partisan divide, which Rutsch characterizes as a failure to implement a grassroots "empathy movement."

[00:19:26] The Discomfort of Genuine Empathy
Yorke emphasizes that empathy is uncomfortable because it requires sitting with people who hold fundamentally different values. They discuss the "pain barrier" of truly understanding an opponent's worldview.

[00:23:51] Competitive vs. Empathic Systems

  Rutsch critiques the adversarial nature of the justice and political systems, describing them as "low-empathy frameworks." He contrasts this with "restorative justice" and "empathy circles," which prioritize mutual understanding over winning a battle.

[00:32:09] Core Principles: Openness and Self-Reflection They discuss the values necessary for an empathic culture, such as transparency, mutuality, and "self-empathy"—the ability to recognize one's own emotional state and exhaustion before engaging with others.

[00:37:33] The Practice of Active Listening
  Rutsch explains the mechanics of his "empathy circles," which use structured active listening where one person reflects back what they heard until the speaker feels understood. He shares experiences of setting up "empathy tents" during polarized political rallies in Berkeley.

[00:46:02] Trust and Long-Term Reconciliation
Yorke discusses the erosion of public trust in politicians. She argues that for empathy to be effective, it must be part of a long-term process of building trust rather than a quick political fix.

[01:03:03] Defining Empathy and Role-Playing
The duo explores different definitions of empathy. Yorke describes "imaginative empathy" used in her classroom, where students role-play as foreign diplomats (e.g., Iranian decision-makers) to understand perspectives outside their own cultural context.

[01:10:49] The "Dark Side" and Manipulation
They debate whether empathy has a "dark side." While Yorke mentions its use in manipulation or "power over" others, Rutsch argues these are actually blocks to empathy rather than empathy itself.

[01:18:37] Performative vs. Sincere Empathy
The discussion touches on whether political empathy must be sincere to be effective. Yorke suggests that "performative empathy" might still hold value for the public if it makes them feel heard, even if the politician's private views differ.

[01:24:26] Personal Application: A Family Conflict
Rutsch shares a personal story of mediating a heated family conflict during Christmas using structured empathic listening, illustrating how the process can de-escalate high-stakes emotions and uncover deeper human needs.

[01:34:04] Conclusion and Next Steps
Yorke mentions the "Compassion in Politics" movement in the UK. The speakers conclude by discussing the need for a global movement to train people and politicians in empathic dialogue to overcome societal polarization.