On Your Side
What’s the difference between sympathy and empathy?
This was the question that Mark LeBusque posed to his podcast guest Sarah Norman in this week’s episode of ‘The Simply, Practically Human Podcast’.
Sarah used the analogy of someone being in a whirlpool. She said the sympathetic response is to get into the whirlpool with the person, whilst the empathetic response is to step back and keep some distance, and help the person in the whirlpool develop some insight.
She goes on to say that the sympathetic response may not be appropriate in the workplace because once you have got into that whirlpool, you’re in it (and by implication might not be able to get yourself out either). Whereas the empathetic response allows you to help from the sidelines.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with Sarah’s take but it did get me thinking about what I though the difference is.
To me, sympathy is about the self. It is you expressing your feelings, albeit about someone else’s situation. It is something you give, you express. It comes from you.
Whereas empathy is about the other person. You are saying ‘I know how you feel, I feel how you feel’. The focus is very much on them. Empathy is not something you give, it’s something you are. It’s a state of being.
The issue of focus is the critical difference. With sympathy, your ego is present because it’s about you. With empathy, your ego isn’t (or is at least very much in the background) and that the best position to help the person in the whirlpool to find their own way to escape it.
I do agree with Sarah’s warning about getting overly sympathetic. To use her analogy, you might climb into the whirlpool because you want to be the hero that pulls them out (the ego, again) but you’re putting yourself in danger. Sometimes it’s the hero who dies during the rescue.
I’d be interested in your views. Drop me an email, DM me on LinkedIn or make a comment on this post on Substack.
Under My Thumb
Are you ever surprised by what you find lurking in all those open tabs in your browser? You know, all the things that catch your eye and you intend to come back to later?
You either lose them because your browser eventually falls over, or you have a periodic purge. During one of the latter, I came across this Harris Poll report “Toxic Bosses Survey: What they do and how we cope” and I wasn’t just surprised, I was startled. (Partly because it’s been sitting there since October!)
You know it’s going to be bad because it’s about toxic bosses, right? But, my word, I didn’t expect it to be this bad!
(It is a US survey, so maybe things are better elsewhere but I somehow doubt it’s that much of a different picture).
First thing to note is that there are a lot of toxic bosses around. Over two-thirds of employees report having experienced one and almost a third are suffering under one right now.
These aren’t just bad bosses (god only knows how many of them there are around!), these are ones who are actually harmful to the employees and the organisation.
About three-quarters of those suffering a toxic boss report it affecting their weekend and suffering from anxiety about going back to work on the Monday.
41% seek therapy to cope with an existing or previous toxic boss!!!
(I’m in that cohort, although it took me about 20 years to realise I needed it - something I’ll write about more in coming weeks)
What this report doesn’t actually say is that these toxic bosses are a psychological hazard and are actually causing trauma to the people who work for them (and probably people who don’t, too). It does provide the evidence but this fact needs to be shouted from the rooftops. With a loud hailer.
Instead, it’s normalised. 60% say they’ve seen toxic bosses rise through the company and about the same number say their company should have better ways of dealing with these arseholes.
Of course, the glib reply to anyone complaining about a toxic boss is “Well, you should just get out and take your talents elsewhere”. It’s just not that easy and people have to endure a toxic boss for all sorts of reasons. The ones given in the survey are:
Salary
Convenience (e.g., close to home, set work schedule) i.e. other commitments
Benefits (e.g., healthcare, 401(k), etc.)
Too hard to find another job
Love for the company or industry i.e. why should an arsehole force you out?
Upcoming bonus or a raise
Remote work
All good reasons, aren’t they? Although the 40% who cite ‘Remote work’ are really saying that the distance makes it easier to avoid the toxicity.
Some of these are short term (and if ‘Love of company/industry’ is the motivation, then you kid yourself the toxic boss will be short-term. I know, been there, seen it, got the T-shirt.), so it won’t surprise you that two-thirds of these employees are intending to move as soon as conditions allow.
What is interesting is the revenge fantasies that people have. The survey has four scenarios based in popular culture;
''Devil Wears Prada’’
(i.e., realizing they aren't worth it, quitting to pursue own passion)
''Office Space’’
(i.e., quitting and smashing the computers)
''The Office’’
(i.e., make jokes about the boss behind their back)
''Emily in Paris‘’
(i.e., showing your boss you are very valuable, even if they don't see your worth)
We don’t know what unprompted ones they might have come up with. Mine often involve machine guns. Or the bastard getting ‘accidentally’ run over by a large truck in a narrow street in Italy.
No, I’m not prepared to say who the driver is.
But now you know why I ended up in therapy!
So, Toxic bosses, what do we do?
We have to stop seeing them as an aberration, as an exception. They are not a ‘bug’ in the organisational systems we have, they are a feature. They are what the system produces and so we have to have systemic change to rid ourselves of them.
In the meantime, we have to find better ways to protect ourselves from the harms they represent.
Slip Sliding Away
I had a couple of toxic bosses, one of whom I call ‘Psycho Boss’ for reasons that should be self-explanatory.
The report has this definition:
A “toxic boss” refers to a boss or supervisor who has exhibited any toxic behaviors (e.g., micromanagement, credit-stealing, unreasonable expectations, unprofessional behavior, being unapproachable, etc.)
The ‘etc.’ includes having favourites, chucking others under the bus to protect themselves and discrimination.
Quite a list, eh?
Apart from the revenge fantasies, employees respond by cutting back on work effort and hours (Quiet Quitting?), negative coping mechanisms (drinking, overeating etc.) and taking their frustrations out on others (in increasing degrees of awfulness; on customers, on coworkers and on friends/family).
These are the observed behaviours but underlying this is emotional trauma that can lead to feelings of fear, helplessness, and hopelessness; heightened anxiety and stress; and feelings of exclusion and loneliness that exacerbate the impact of other stressors.
These put you at the top of a slippery slope that can lead to workplace PTSD. That’s the reality here, these toxic bosses can cause severe, long-term psychological damage.
Whilst you may be able to endure the individual actions of a toxic boss, it’s the cumulative effect that does the damage. That could be having one toxic boss for a long time; a few over a period: or the hostile atmosphere that they create collectively that takes a toll on your mental and emotional well-being.
This means you have a fairly significant chance of working in an environment that is harmful to you, possibly for the long-term. I reckon it’s about evens.
Let’s put it this way, if you were offered a mode of transport that gave you a 50-50 chance of getting to your destination without injury, would you get on it?
American Idiot
To end with something more amusing, you remember how a few weeks ago AI was going to take over the world?
I’ve just read that AIs like Chat-GPT are degrading with use due to their interactions with humans!
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the flaw in the robots’ plan for world domination is that they have to think like us first, and we’re so stupid it makes them malfunction?
Although there is also a phenomenon that an AI that trains itself on the output of AIs becomes unintelligible after a certain number of iterations (I think it could be as little as three).
So now I’m trying to figure this out.
Maybe the AIs aren’t as smart as we think they are; and the people making the AIs aren’t as smart as they think they are; but we’re not as smart as the AIs think we are; however we’re also not as smart as the people who build the AIs assumed we were (because they are not as smart as they think they are); so the AIs are too smart for us to work with them (which proves that they are not that smart after all).
Ouch! Makes you smart, doesn’t it?
In the war against the robots, our stupidity, it seems, may be a secret super-power!
(And if you are waiting the the singularity, I reckon there’s a good chance the computers will reject us).
Read All About It
I announced the Decrapify Work Clarity Session last week to all you subscribers.
Here’s the deal: it’s a free structured conversation to help you figure out what about your work is causing you pain and how you might go about solving it. I hope to give you some ideas for the future and a bit of a boost to go and take some action.
I want to help you because I know what it’s like to be in that position of frustration and helplessness. I’m not just sympathetic, I’m empathetic.
I do coach/mentor people, so I might talk to you about that if it’s appropriate and I think I could help you further. It would be kind of odd if I didn’t, wouldn’t it?
I love to talk to my readers and find out about your world and help if I can. This is just a more focused version of chats I’ve had with others. If it sounds like something youd find useful, get in touch.
(Anyone else who would just like to have chat - I’d love hear from you too!)
Pick a slot on my Calendly page (button below), or email / DM me on Linked if the times available don’t suit.
I'm a nurse and the empathy/sympathy distinction is made much of in training. It's essentially as you state - maintain professional distance, while also communicating to the patient that it's OK to vent, to cry, to complain; conveying that you 'get it.'
And also to not get too personally emotionally involved. The only case I've personally seen of drug diversion was a pediatric nurse who couldn't handle kids dying and got wrapped up with the parents' suffering. Opiates helped to numb all that.
Hi Colin, I work alot in mental health and wellbeing and we teach people about empathy. Empathy really is about seeing things from the other person's perspective and trying to understand/sense/imagine how they "may feel" . We cannot ever feel what someone else feels so we should avoid saying " I know how you feel" because we are all different and we all experience life challenges differently. Instead we can say " I can only imagine how you may feel". Equally, people think that empathy also means sharing stories of similar experiences as a means of creating a connection (good intent). We generally advise not to do this because it removes the focus from the person seeking support to yourself and can make a person feel less supported. I hope this is helpful.