“I’m a daughter”
My wife Aliya came home and told me that the staff at Bunnings (think “costco for home improvement” for my non-Australian friends) are wearing this kind of label on their uniforms now.
We both knew immediately what it meant. When she told me it instantly broke my heart. Aliya confirmed our hypothesis with the staff member.
Service staff are being harassed and abused by customers. This label is intended to remind potential abusers of their humanity.
You really can’t argue someone into a broader and more generous sense of empathy.
They either have it or they don’t.
Maybe you can help someone get a fuller sense of the context and facts of someone else’s life. Maybe even you can remind them, in a heated moment, of their existing empathetic instincts. But it seems to me, some people lack the basic ability to imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes.
The former might be helpful when dealing with complex issues like systemic racism and poverty. It might even be useful when dealing with a detached voice over the phone that is only providing scripted responses. But for people to require a reminder of someone’s basic humanity when they are right in front of them, in a store, face-to-face? It’s beyond me.
I can’t believe it needs to be said over and over, but here it is again. A snippet from the section on Empathy from my upcoming book:
“One of the ways to improve your empathy is to remember that everyone is suffering. Each of us wears different masks in different contexts. A work mask, a friendship mask, a family mask, and so on.
Either through conscious effort or through a simple limitation of our facial expressions and communication skills, those masks often reveal only a small fraction of the emotional journey going on inside us. It is even more rare that we can fully express the depths of our childhood traumas or the personal challenges we’re going through. This is especially so at work.
Despite knowing this about ourselves, we often accept whatever we are presented (a polished or dialed down version), forgetting about the suffering of the people with whom we are interacting each day.
Leaders try to remember that the inner emotional journey of others is likely as rich, complex, and difficult as their own. It is a journey they might not even fully understand, or one of which they may not be completely conscious. They recognize that maintaining a healthy relationship with anyone must start with internalizing this fact. Doing so often means that any generous interpretation of (and reaction to) others’ actions includes empathy and patience for their suffering, their perspective, and their fears. Leaders also know that they might sometimes need to play a role in alleviating the suffering of the people they encounter.”
In short: try to be kinder please.
