Myth #4: Maybe he’s born with it, or maybe not.
I remember this commercial from the 90’s that said “Maybe she’s born with it…”. I think it was for Maybelline makeup, but I remember thinking “none of these women are born with it – that’s why they’re selling it”. Even at 16 I was questioning what it meant to have something ‘naturally’.
Whether these women in the commercials had it or not, it didn’t stop them from buying into the idea that you could, at the very least, enhance what you have. Some were more ‘talented’ than others (if you look at beauty as a kind of natural talent), but every one of them thought they could work at that talent to get better.
Newsflash: empathy is the same.
Some people think empathy is a fixed personality trait, which means it can’t be changed, and that while some people have it, others don’t. Biologically we are hardwired to have empathy for each other, because it’s how society runs, but that’s not the whole story. It’s not even most of the story.
We’re back to not understanding the basic definition of empathy. It’s about taking the perspective of the other person, and that’s something you can practice and learn.
I’ve worked with execs who thought that since empathy was soft, you didn’t have it if you weren’t a warm-fuzzy kind of person. I’ve seen people who didn’t think you could fire someone or give a bad performance review if you had empathy. I’ve seen people-pleasers who would say “I guess I just have too much empathy”, almost as an excuse. But just as none of these things are indicators of empathy, there’s also nothing there that says you can’t learn empathy as an actionable, strategic, targeted skill.
Because you can.
Here’s the truth: Empathy isn’t a trait. It’s a competency.
It’s a set of trainable behaviors.
And it’s the most underrated leadership skill available.
When we say that either we have empathy or we don’t, it becomes an excuse not to bother learning it, and that’s a shame since empathy isn’t just a transferrable skill when dealing with people, but the transferrable skill, and it costs productivity, innovation, and profit by ignoring that.
The real question isn’t “are you an empathetic person”, but “have you taken the time to build empathetic skills”?
You’re not unempathetic. You’re just not trained. And training is something we can fix.
