What is empathy? In this episode, Co-founder of Geocodeio and author of Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen, talks about empathy and the importance of understanding other people’s perspectives.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. This is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. My guest today is Michele Hansen, the co-founder of Geocodio, which by the way, is a freaking fantastic software as a service that we use regularly at Titan for geocoding addresses and that kind of stuff, co-host of the Software Social podcast, and the author of Deploy Empathy.
Matt Stauffer:
If you know me at all, you know that I'm a big fan of Empathy. You also may know that I'm a big fan of Michele. These together is just a wonderful thing. Michele, hi, would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself, and whether it's your personal, your professional life, but just say to the people and introduce yourself?
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, thanks.
Michele Hansen:
As you mentioned, I am co-founder of Geocodio, which started as a side project with my husband and I in 2014. Actually led to the first time, I think, I met you, which was at Laracon in 2017, when we spoke about ... I think that talk was scaling a side project from zero to six figures. I think you're around 100K or something a year at that point.
Michele Hansen:
Went full-time in 2017. My husband went full-time in 2018. We have been running that full-time for, basically, three years now. Basically, what we do is help people convert addresses to coordinates and coordinates to addresses, because computers only understand coordinates. They don't understand an address. Similarly, humans don't really understand coordinates, we understand addresses. Then there's all these other kinds of data.
Michele Hansen:
For example, if you need census data, or congressional districts, or all that kind of stuff, time zones, you can only get that if you have the coordinates. We help people do those address coordinate conversions, and then also helping with data that are doorways from having those coordinates. That's my main job. But then, as you mentioned, I have other stuff going on. Which actually, I think, you've talked about how you have ADHD as well, right?
Matt Stauffer:
Yes.
Michele Hansen:
Yes. I have ADHD. I have multiple things going on.
Matt Stauffer:
Always.
Michele Hansen:
Always. I co-host a podcast about having a software business, or small software business, called Software Social, started that about a little over a year ago, 14 months ago. Then I also wrote a book this summer ...
Matt Stauffer:
Just little thing.
Michele Hansen:
... called Deploy Empathy. Yeah. I'm so excited to talk to you, because I know you totally nerd out on empathy as well.
Matt Stauffer:
Absolutely. I want to ask you a million questions. But I have forced myself into the structure. We're just going to get this question out of the way so we can start talking about empathy. Do you have any life mantras or phrases or ideas that you try to live your life by? I know these may necessarily lead into the empathy conversation, but may not. What does that bring to your mind when I asked that?
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. There is one quote that I do, and it's very personal to me.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay.
Michele Hansen:
It is a Bible quote. But before I say that, I want to say I'm not super Bible quoting person. I say that because people who what the Bible often they're going to be like, "Oh, what's wrong with that?" People who don't are going to be like, "That's terrifying." I'm not a super Bible quoting person. But I remember reading this in college, and it just really hit me.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
That is from First Corinthians. It is "To each has given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."
Matt Stauffer:
For the common good.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
That's really interesting. Can you ... Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. I read that and it's feeling this sense of duty and purpose to not only discover what that is within ourselves, but also to pull that out from other people.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I'm going to take your quote and give another quote. But there's something I heard that had a very similar impact on me was something like, "Blah, blah, blah, what God needs is manfully alive," or something like that. It's not from the Bible, at some other thing. But it was based the fullness of God is manfully alive. Of course, by man, they mean person.
Matt Stauffer:
But it's similar to me, like it was a perspective that I hadn't had before. The best thing you can do in life is figure out what makes you alive, and then help other people figure out what makes them alive. It's the similar vibe of like, "Wow." That's a really interestingly simple way of saying, "The common good, the good of the other person."
Matt Stauffer:
Anyway, I know that that's not exactly the same as what you said. But that's really interesting to me to have that as such a foundational thing. Do you think that that does or does not have an impact on what we're talking about today? Is what we're talking about today a direct outflow of that or not, or is it a minor reflection, does it connect at all?
Michele Hansen:
It's a really good question. I have been thinking about that, as I knew this question was coming in. I've been thinking about it for a few days. To me, those interests happened independently of one another in my life. I remember reading that in college, that was long before I hadn't really learned very much about empathy. I wasn't in therapy at the time. I didn't really know much about that.
Michele Hansen:
But connecting the two, I can see how empathy is about perspective taking and recognizing that other people's perspective is valid, and that they are contributing something with that, even if you don't agree. I think there is a commonality there with seeing that everybody has some uniqueness to bring to the world. Framing it as how do you pull that out? How do you pull that uniqueness out? How do you help yourself bring whatever your uniqueness is into the world, and also look for that in other people?
Michele Hansen:
I guess both of them look for context and look for further detail beyond the surface. I think there is some commonality if I stretch it. But ...
Matt Stauffer:
I mean, it feels very similar to me. But honestly I put you in the place to not only connect them, but also connect them before you've actually talked about the topic today. Sorry. But as you were talking, my eyes start going up to my Mr. Rogers like guy right here. I don't know. It felt very Mr. Rogersy to me about like, "I think that you're wonderful and you have great things to offer. I think I'm wonderful and have great things to offer." We all together ... Anyway, you're speaking my language right here.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm on an empathy nerd high right now. But let's actually transition to the actual topic. This podcast is about one topic that you're really passionate about. Can you just introduce what are we talking about today, despite the fact you've already said a little bit, and just get us started, and I'm sure going to have a million questions for you.
Michele Hansen:
I am passionate about empathy, which you are also passionate about. I am passionate about it in the specific context of understanding customers and building products and delivering services that help people do what they're trying to do better. How do business owners and people who make products and developers and everybody else, how do you figure out what it is that people are already trying to do?
Michele Hansen:
Then you can better mold what you are able to contribute in a way that makes sense to them. The book is about how to interview people to understand what those needs are, whether it's before you build something, or sell something. After you sold it, you want to figure out why they switched to you, rather than doing what they did before, or why they've been a customer for several years, or why they canceled, or ...
Matt Stauffer:
It's just why they left. Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
... whether they can use something that you made. Then the core of that book is how to speak with empathy, and use that to pull those things out of someone.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. First of all, everybody who has not read the book is now ready to go by it, especially ... As well, they should. You all can go check out Michele's Twitter feed, and you could just see person after person after person talking about how absolutely amazing this book is. But I'm going to go in assuming that I've never read any of it. I've read some of it, but not the whole thing yet.
Matt Stauffer:
I get to be the idiot today and pretend I don't know anything about it. I know that you have been doing the podcast circuit a little bit right now. I've listened to quite a few of them. One of the things everyone does to you on day one is just asks you to define empathy. I'm going to do that to you, too. Apologies. But I do think that the core understanding what empathy is, and isn't does shift a lot where we're going with this conversation.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm just going to do it to you. Can you tell me what is empathy? Are there any misconceptions that you want to unset if anybody listen to this podcast has never heard you on another podcast, or just heard your pitch or read your book, just give me where should my brain be as I start entering in this idea of deploying empathy in my conversations with customers or elsewhere?
Michele Hansen:
The definition I tend to use is Brene Brown's definition, which is basically taking on someone else's perspective as valid, regardless of your own perspective on a situation. Ahead of this, I was listening to one of your old talks on empathy from Laracon. I noted how you went into definitions for cognitive empathy versus ... I want to say ... you call it emotional empathy?
Matt Stauffer:
I think so. If not, it's similar to that.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. What I'm more speaking to is the cognitive empathy side of, I can understand that your perspective ... What is your perspective? Holding my own perspective aside and just trying to explore your experience, your perspective, your situation as much as I can from every angle that I can, being a witness to your experience, less so the emotional empathy side, which is often defined as taking on someone else's feelings and trying to feel what they are feeling.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
I don't really use that as much and there's a couple of reasons why. The first one is I don't ... Anyone is capable of cognitive empathy, of understanding someone else's perspective, of with enough practice, checking your own judgments and just saying, "Okay. I'm just trying to understand how they think about it." I already know how I think about it. Let's understand how they think about it. Anyone can do that.
Michele Hansen:
There are so many people who, for a variety of reasons, do not think they're capable of empathy. Or maybe they have been told they're not capable of it. But they are capable of cognitive empathy. It is a learned skill.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes, man.
Michele Hansen:
As Brene Brown says, "Anyone can learn empathy." With emotional empathy, and the idea of taking on someone else's emotions, I almost think it's dangerous. Because I think if people start from the perspective that I'm going to go into this, and then I need to take on this other person's emotions. That's scary. If you don't have strong emotional muscles and know where your boundaries are ...
Matt Stauffer:
It's just good boundaries.
Michele Hansen:
... know how to protect yourself, know how to get yourself out of a situation ... I was thinking about this the other day ... That could be very scary for you. But I think about this the other day, and you probably watched the Olympics. You probably saw Simone Biles in the vault, where she was supposed to do two and a half twists, and she did one and a half twists.
Michele Hansen:
One of the first things you learn in gymnastics when you're learning a new skill, because I'm also a gymnast, you learn how to do the skill, but you also learn how to fall. You learn how to protect yourself. When you practice it, you also practice falling. I think about that with emotional empathy.
Michele Hansen:
Because if you go in taking on someone else's emotions, and you don't have the muscle, that training, that ability to focus on what should happen, and how to protect yourself in that situation, then it's scary and you don't know how to get out. Simone Biles has enough skill to be able to fall out of that. To somebody who was watching that, they may not realize that she was supposed to do two and a half, and she just did one and a half.
Michele Hansen:
But she knew how to get out of it. Because she had those hundreds and thousands of hours of training on how to get out of that situation in this very complicated thing. Emotional empathy, I think is very difficult, and not something that everyone can access, and maybe not something that everyone should access, because it could be quite threatening and emotionally dangerous for you to get in that space.
Michele Hansen:
I basically leave that to the side entirely, and really only talk about cognitive empathy. As you've said, as well, understanding someone's experience and their perspective, it can lead to compassion for their situation. It can lead to a little bit of, "Oh, yeah. I can understand what that would feel like, that makes sense." I think compassion is a safer place for people to be in than emotional empathy.
Matt Stauffer:
I think that's great. I think it was something Brene Brown as well. There's an animation that I used in my ... I stole snippets from my talk, where someone is down in the pit, in a hole, and it's representative of depression or whatever. They said, "She was making the distinction of sympathy versus empathy." She said, "Sympathy is like standing up at the top of the hole and kneeling down, sucks to be you, basically. Empathy is walking down into the hole with them."
Matt Stauffer:
I've always thought a little bit about that is sometimes walking down the hole could be, like you're talking about, emotional empathy. It can be like, "Should I walk out down the depression?" But it is interesting to me, because part of that illustration was walking down there and just putting their arms around the person. Sometimes for me, I feel like if there is an emotional empathy that is a little bit healthier for the average human being to do, it's less about actually fully entering into somebody else's feelings.
Matt Stauffer:
It's a little bit more about choosing to sit as close to them as you can and just comfort them whether or not you're going to fully go there emotionally. Again, that's not the topic of our conversation today.
Michele Hansen:
It's an act of empathy, I think.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
I love what you're pointing out there. I do think that there's a lot of emotional danger. With Simone Biles, one of the things that happened when she did that was all these gymnasts were like, "Hey, if I had just done what she did, I would have broken my spine." I think that was really what made it really clicked for me is just how much skill it took for her to be able to recover from that situation. We're not all therapists.
Matt Stauffer:
There's going to be something that we can all do, and there's going to be something that only some of us can do. That's perfectly okay. But one of the messages that I've heard from you loud and clear is that what we can all do is more than I think a lot of us think. You are telling people, you all think there are people who are born empathetic and people who are not. I'm telling you, you don't have to be Simone Biles of the empathy world.
Matt Stauffer:
You can be just Joe Schmo of the empathy world, and you can still learn this set. That's why you really focus on the cognitive, in addition, because it makes the most sense in your context. The Joe Schmoes, all of us normal people who may not have been born super empathetic, can learn some skills. Let's talk about cognitive skills. Could you give me a really high level? If we're talking about cognitive empathy, and we're talking about the average person learning, I want to talk in just a second about the particular context that you're writing about.
Matt Stauffer:
But what does even learning empathy mean? What does it look like? What does it look like to be not empathetic and then to be empathetic, because you gave us a definition of empathy? But could you talk a little bit more about what does the transition look like for someone to be, someone who struggles to think empathetically, and then someone who learns to think empathetically, if that makes sense?
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. I think we should continue with the story that you mentioned there about being in the hole, because I think that could be really helpful. When talking about being empathetic, it does help to define sympathy and compassion and judgment. If we imagine ourselves as the person standing on the top of the hole, which we've been rewatching Parks and Rec.
Michele Hansen:
I don't know if you've seen it. But the whole first season is about this giant pit in the town and they're trying to solve it, and people keep falling in the hole. This is just ...
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Good visual imagery for this one.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. But standing on top of the hole and saying, "Oh, that sucks to be you." That's pretty judgmental. That's not very helpful. It's close to sympathy of, "Oh, I feel sorry for you." Which, as Brene Brown says it, "We think it's helpful, but it's really creating distance between the person speaking and the person receiving that," the person in the hole in that case.
Michele Hansen:
It emphasizes that the person speaking is not experiencing what the other person is, and makes them feel even more alone. As Brene Brown, again, has said, "Possibly the only feeling worse than feeling shame is feeling alone." Sympathy saying, "I'm sorry, that happened to you," things like that. They're so common. There's the thing, you talk about learning empathy, and being naturally empathetic, we learn these phrases from the people around us.
Michele Hansen:
If those people did not focus on learning empathy, and speaking to us with empathy, even if they're very nice people, and then we learn that, "Oh, when something bad happens to someone you say, I'm sorry, that happened to you," even if you're feeling compassion for them, and your ... those kinds of ... the words matter, and they create distance.
Michele Hansen:
Instead, something empathetic, as you mentioned, is simply you could go down into the hole with them and sit with them. Or you could simply sit on the side of the hole and just listen to them. I think just listening to someone is so key there. But listening is not, how did you get down in the hole? Can I get you a shovel? It's not here, like, "Let me tell you what to do." It's "Hey, how can I help? What have you already tried to get out of this hole?"
Michele Hansen:
It's understanding and helping the answer come out of them. I think this is one thing that people have brought up to me from the book of has been really challenging for them, but also really helpful in their personal lives, is not offering suggestions. When someone says, "Oh, I had such a rough day today. My boss yelled at me." Not saying, "Oh, have you considered getting a new job? What did he do? Did you go talk to someone?"
Michele Hansen:
Not asking them a ton of questions or giving them suggestions. Like, "You should go talk to HR?" It's like, "Oh, he yelled at you, God. How does that make you feel?"
Matt Stauffer:
Yes.
Michele Hansen:
Right. That's what it is. I spent a huge part of the book just which I call how to talk so people will talk, which other empathy nerds might recognize that from the famous book, what is it, is it How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk, which is one of my favorite books, and also has some great cartoons in it about empathy, but how to talk so people will talk.
Michele Hansen:
A lot of it is about not talking and not using the kinds of phrases that we are socially conditioned to use, like, "I'm sorry, that happened to you," or "Why did this happen?" and telling them what to do.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. It lines very well up with the definition you gave of empathy, which has a lot to do with validating their perspective and their opinions. It's really tough to do that without listening first. You can't know what you're validating. You can't know what you're holding as, maybe not good. I listened to your interview with Justin Jackson, which I'll link in the show notes below.
Matt Stauffer:
But he was giving an example of someone who was interviewing a flat-earther and saying like, "What does it look like to fully allow that perspective to be something that ... " I guess I don't have the right words because valid it feels like you're saying they're potentially correct. But I felt like when you define empathy, you gave me some words that are now slipping my mind of like, "I am fully giving space to understand this."
Matt Stauffer:
A lot of things that you just said in terms of space for them to talk, you can't understand them. You can't understand them until you actually heard what they're saying. You can't hear the initial thing and try to fix the thing without understanding what's going on. Anyway, I feel like I'm taking what you said and muddying it a little bit.
Michele Hansen:
Well, yeah, I agree with that. It doesn't mean saying what they're saying is right. I always want to be very clear about that. You talk to somebody who's a flat-earther. You're not saying, "Oh, yeah. I agree with you. That makes sense." You can say, "I can see why you would think that."
Matt Stauffer:
Right. Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
That's a very different phrase. Or it makes sense why you think that. That is a very different phrase than, "Yes, I agree." Those are two very different things, because agreeing is judgment.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
Disagreeing is judgment.
Matt Stauffer:
Man.
Michele Hansen:
Simply saying that it's makes sense from their perspective is just mirroring.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I understand. I understand what you're saying. I understand why you're saying it or whatever. That's cool. Let's transition a little bit into the specific context that you're writing about. If we're talking about not just empathy in general, not just cognitive empathy in general, but we're talking about using it at work. I talked a lot in my talk about how programmer should use it. But I think you're focused a little bit more on a broader swath of people, if you're working with customers.
Matt Stauffer:
You could be a programmer. You could be a business owner. You could be a copywriter, or whatever. Can you give me the tease of the book, of the general? What's the pitch you're making to business owners and people who run software as a service and that about what the benefit is, about what the steps are to get there? What's the general TLDR of applying empathy in a particular context you're writing about?
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. The general idea is that you could have a more successful business if you use empathy to understand your customers. That sounds like a lot.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
People often know they should talk to their customers, but maybe they don't really know how, or they're like, "Well, I talked to them in customer support all the time. Why do I need to talk to them more?" But really interviewing them is really helpful and taking that space to understand their perspective and what they're trying to do and why they've come to you. Then how you can serve them better? How you can sell them more things? How you could make them stay?
Matt Stauffer:
Make more things that want in the first place. Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
Right. Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
The idea of the book is to make it as easy for people to get started with that. I have been talking to people for years about this, became known among a subset of founders as somebody who's really into customer interviewing. Had calls pretty regularly with just helping people get started about it. People were really nervous about what they would say, and what questions they would ask.
Michele Hansen:
The meat of the book is both how to speak with empathy, and how to treat someone with empathy. Then there's also specific scripts for common situation. Whether you're trying to figure out what you should create, or you want to know why they bought something, you want to know why they cancelled.
Michele Hansen:
There's a whole bunch of different scripts in there, and lots of specific phrases you can use to ask them questions, follow with them, and get the things that will help you make better strategy decisions, better marketing decisions, product decisions, all these kinds of things to ultimately have a product or service that they want to use, they want to keep using, and they want to tell their friends about.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. If somebody was outside of the bootstrap founder world that you and I are both in, but it's actually relatively small world, they may not have heard how common it is for people to be having these questions about, like, "I built this thing and nobody's coming." Or, "The teachers who are trying to say, don't do that thing." First figure out what people actually want, and then build what they want.
Matt Stauffer:
I do think that the idea that it's abnormal advice to even consider customers and customer base, before you just build that thing that you're excited about, that's already foundationally setting people up who've heard this advice, or who haven't heard this advice to just understand it like, "This is already a different way of thinking, if that makes sense, to just think about the customers."
Matt Stauffer:
Just the fact that someone can say, "Hey, you should make sure that his target market before you spend a thousand hours building a software as a service seems like wild advice to people. It seems like what you're suggesting is not only empathy in interviews, but I think a lot of people are learning from you just the concept of interviews, how to do interviews, that you should do interviews, when the interviews make sense.
Matt Stauffer:
It was interesting to me, because we call it a book about empathy, but it's also just a book about interviewing customers. Which again, in theory, if you're running a software as a service or company or something like that you got customers, and you exist to serve maybe a couple of different groups. I was actually curious to hear from you how you balance those groups, because, for example, I run an agency. It's not exactly the same as a software as a service.
Matt Stauffer:
But I'm trying to make sure that my clients are happy. But within my clients, you've got the owners, the people who signed the checks. You've got the product managers, product managers, you've got the industrial programmers working with, and they also have their customers. Then we've got my team. You've got the individual programmers who are working on the project. Then also you got me and Dan trying to actually make money in the end of the day.
Matt Stauffer:
There's all these different people we're trying to understand. I wonder whether you've gotten any pushback or anything like that, or you have any thoughts about what does it look like not only to care more about your customers and your clients, but also to have a really healthy balance in your head of being empathetic towards multiple people, including yourself, in your decision making.
Matt Stauffer:
Let's say, I do a really great customer interview that you taught me how to do. Now I walk away, I'm like, "Oh, I really understand it. But that's going to make me miserable, or that might harm this other person." What does it look like to keep these things in balance, if that makes sense?
Michele Hansen:
I feel like what you're underscoring here, and I'm so glad you are, is the concept of boundaries, which is something that I didn't really dive into in the book. I've been thinking about how to write a newsletter about this. Because we need to have empathy for ourselves We need to understand why a particular request or client or project might make us feel stressed out. Listening to customers doesn't mean verbatim doing everything that they say. This is a really common misperception people have.
Matt Stauffer:
Misperception. Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
You're always weighing this against what's viable, and feasible for you to build and deliver. If it's not viable for you to sell something to a client, even though they really want it, then it's just not going to work. You could move mountains to try to make it happen, but you're not going to be very happy, and you're not going to want to do it again. Having those boundaries, which I talked about in the book, as more as frameworks of looking for the things that they talked about that are problems that are frequent and painful.
Michele Hansen:
Because they're more likely to pay for those things or, as I mentioned, using Marty Cagan's framework for successful products, which is that they're viable for the company, valuable for the customer, feasible for the company to build, and then usable by the customer, using all of those different things. But really what they're talking about is boundaries, and not letting yourself be run over by someone.
Michele Hansen:
I think actually, this is something that's been really interesting. The book has been teaching a lot of people about the concept of empathy. I say that like, "Most people don't sit down with their daily to-do list and write be more empathetic." They write a landing page, build a thing, sell more stuff. That's the stuff that ends up on the to-do list. Basically, what I'm ... I joke that my secret mission with the book is to teach people empathy through stuff they're already trying to do.
Michele Hansen:
For most people, they're really learning about empathy, and that it's something they're capable of being. But for the people who are natural empaths, or whose parents learned about empathy, and then treated them with empathy, and so they're more attuned to it. I've had people come to me and say, "I've actually learned that I'm naturally empathetic. I've realized that a lot of people come to me for advice, and to be that for support, and that that exhausts me. I'm not getting empathy from anybody else."
Michele Hansen:
Because empathy needs to be a two-way street, you need to both give it and receive it.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
That's been a really interesting angle here. That's ... I feel like all of this, whether it's should we build this project that is normally takes us four weeks, and they're asking for it in one. We're talking about boundaries, fundamentally. I think boundaries is a really, really important thing to be conscious of. It's really hard thing to both be conscious of, and to enforce them as well. I feel like that's something that went far beyond the topic of the book. But is also an undercurrent at the same time.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I think that it's certainly something that people who are currently empathetic, whether it's because they recently learned it, or were raised this way have to grapple with. But I also think it's very ... It's a useful thing if someone ... because I think one of the potential objections to the things we propose in the book could be, "If I just go and ask these customers what they think, well, then now I'm going to feel like I need to do all the things they say."
Matt Stauffer:
I do think that even with the guy who was interviewing the flat-earther. There's a natural predisposition we have to presume that if I am giving this person space to say the thing without correcting it, therefore, I'm inherently agreeing with it. It's interesting for us to cultivate in ourselves the ability to ... just like you've been saying this whole time.
Matt Stauffer:
Here and validate and understand somebody else's opinion without internalizing it or choosing to pass judgment and agreement on it or disagreement on it, and just let it sit there. It's a gray that I feel like we aren't culturally used to, to be able to just hear it and not have to yell it down, or choose to internally. I think for that reason, I think sometimes people here, interview your customers empathetically, and maybe at least subconsciously, here. They believe that they're correct and do everything they say, right?
Michele Hansen:
Right. Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
No. Go ahead.
Michele Hansen:
This is why I also, in the book, use Chris Voss's definition. Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator who wrote a book on negotiations called Never Split the Difference.
Matt Stauffer:
So good. Yes.
Michele Hansen:
Who says, "The beautiful thing about empathy is that it doesn't mean you agree with them." His book, which is fantastic, also talks a lot about how you don't have to agree with someone. The people he's negotiating with, the people he's using empathy with, are bank robbers. They've taken hostages. They're threatening to blow things up. Maybe they have blown things up.
Michele Hansen:
These are incredibly high stakes situations with people who are not very sympathetic. How do you get into a space where you can talk to them in a way where they feel understood, they feel seen, and you get the end result, which is, in many cases, the direct opposite of what they want? They want to rob the bank. The hostage negotiator wants them to not rob the bank.
Michele Hansen:
But you can use empathy, or he can. I don't know if I can, to get out of that situation. It doesn't mean that you agree with them. I love including that in the book. I think for that crowd that's like, "Oh, this is very soft."
Matt Stauffer:
Exactly.
Michele Hansen:
It means I agree with him. Like "No." If the FBI uses this when they're negotiating with terrorists, you can also use it.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Not only that, but ... I think you said this once or twice in your interviews. He's a badass. It's not just that he's the soft guy of the FBI.
Michele Hansen:
No.
Matt Stauffer:
The FBI and other tactics that weren't working, and then this guy now trains other people to use these tactics, because it actually freaking works. Now everyone wants to be like this. He'll say things. They'll just be like, "Yeah. I mean, I originally didn't think this was the way that was going to work. Then I discovered that it turns out being able to take this mental space with them is actually the most functionally effective thing."
Matt Stauffer:
Not to say that everyone's going to be a dude, bro, who just like, "Here's empathy." Says, "Oh, that's soft," or whatever. But I do think that some of us, especially who haven't been raised around that context, there's just maybe a subconscious expectation that doing that is like a giving in and no longer having your own desires, or anything. As someone who I think ... I come from a background that is very empathetic, but very bad at caring for what I care about.
Matt Stauffer:
Empathy is very easy for me, but focusing on my own desires is very hard for me. It was really helpful for me to hear his perspective, and also some of the things you said of just remembering that hearing this perspective the other person has nothing to do with not caring for your own perspectives. It has nothing to do with not having your own vision. It has nothing to do with not being empathetic with yourself.
Matt Stauffer:
It just means the skill, the learned skill is more than anything else, a combination of listening and being able to hold those two things in tension at the same time. Validating and understanding and hearing your thing does not mean devalidating, and whatever. The opposite would be my own perspectives, or that of my programmers, or that about my team, or whatever else. I appreciate that a lot, and the way you have teased that out.
Matt Stauffer:
Of course, this is not all just a sales pitch for this book. But if anybody is in this space, you should definitely get in read her book 100%. We're getting close to wrapping up on time. You know that I've got one question I'm going to ask you at the end. But before I do, is there anything you wanted to cover today about your topic that we didn't get a chance to cover it yet?
Michele Hansen:
I've been really curious about your perspective on all of this, because this is a topic that you are so interested in as well. I think the important thing there is that whether it's programming or whether it's running a business, empathy can be used in any situation. But it also doesn't have to be used all the time. This is something that I ... what you were just saying about being nurtured to show empathy for other people, but maybe not for yourself.
Michele Hansen:
I like to stress to people that the conversation tactics I talked about in the book, it's really helpful to practice them on people in your personal life, practice them on your co-workers. You can have a lot of benefit from that. You do not have to be empathetic all the time. It's an action. It's not an emotion. But there are some times when you're not in the space to just simply quietly listen and you really want to just relate to someone.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Michele Hansen:
To put yourself in a space of being empathetic all the time is exhausting, and not practical, and also robs you of receiving empathy yourself from other people. I just feel like this is something that gets a little bit missed in the self help empathy world sometimes, that you don't have to be empathetic all the time.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. It's funny, because there's certainly a perspective of it that would say what you just said is a bad thing like, "How dare you suggest that I should not be considering other people all the time." But the thing is, you mentioned a few things, it's very difficult to receive empathy when you're in a place where you're hyper focused on the other person.
Matt Stauffer:
My very, very, very good friend and mentor who will probably listen to this and hopefully give me enough grace to know I'm not criticizing him. He and I had a conversation recently, where he was talking about something very difficult that he's going through. Immediately afterwards said, "But everyone's got it much worse than me. I'm fine that I don't have COVID, or whatever."
Matt Stauffer:
Just immediately jumped to this perspective of empathy ... Maybe that's not the right word for it. But just like, "What I'm going through can't be that bad." He's a deeply empathetic person, who's just like, "I understand how difficult other people have it right now. I shouldn't have even talked to you about this negative thing." I'm like, "Bro, no. Thank you for telling me about this. Thank you for making this a space that is safe for you to be able to have talked to me about this."
Matt Stauffer:
I don't know if I would have been that way. In the past, I'm very grateful to be in a place where I'm like, "Dude, you had a hard time. It's okay. That other people having hard times does not make your hard time any easier." Just allow yourself to have had a hard time and talk to your friend about it. Likewise, I think in business context, there's both really helpful ways to have empathy in nontraditional expected empathy.
Matt Stauffer:
For example, when we have conflict with our clients, and it feels to me this is going to be the moment where they have to fire us, or we have to fire them, because this is not working. There's two elements of that, that are both times where it's really helpful to use empathy, and really helpful to just have to turn it off at that moment.
Matt Stauffer:
The really helpful use empathy with me, and I know this is not my podcast to interview someone to be short. The really helpful time for me is when they are doing something that seems really, really unreasonable to us. In that moment, our default response is to put up a wall and say, "No. We're not going to do that. We can't do that. That's the wrong decision." The more empathetic response as a client relationship manager type role, for me, I've discovered to be, instead saying, "Stop."
Matt Stauffer:
Even though we don't agree with what they're saying, let's stop. I've often used a visual analogy. Sorry, non-YouTubers. But I'm on one side, and they're on one side, and we are coming with opposite perspectives, and we're butting into each other. I tell my team, the desire instead is to come alongside them, and then say, "Cool, we understand why you're coming this way. We understand why this is what you want."
Matt Stauffer:
"However, we think that that's not going to work to keep going the same direction. Now, can I guide you a little bit to the left or guide you a little bit to the right. I understand, evaluate your perspective. But here's the problem we're all going to run to as we together walk the same way. We together walk in this way, and it ain't working. But you may not realize that yet. We got to go a little left, or we got to go a little right or something like that."
Matt Stauffer:
That's a way to turn a conflict into an alignment. Then at that point, we don't want to say, "No. We're not going to do this thing you want, because that's not a healthy thing to do with the client." But instead, we're going to say, "If you do this thing you want, you're going to have these negative consequences that I don't think you want to suffer. I don't think I want to suffer them either. Here's some other alternatives."
Matt Stauffer:
For me, that's the time where as a client relationship person, it's very helpful to use it. When I find that at work, it's got to be turned off is, interestingly, if my empathy for my ... the people who work for me, makes me realize that the actions of somebody who doesn't work for me is damaging them, then I have to go to the point with that client or whatever else, and just say, "I'm sorry, I can potentially understand the reasons why you're behaving this way. But right now, what you're doing is unacceptable. We need to change this or we need to not work together."
Matt Stauffer:
In that moment, for me, that's a really hard conversation to have, because I'm a conflict avoidant person by nature. All I want to do is say, "I completely understand why you're being this way. Let's just work on it together." But by doing so, I would be disrespecting the experiences my programmers. As I had empathy for them how difficult the situation was. There is an element where empathy is helpful for us for understanding other people.
Matt Stauffer:
But sometimes it can get in the way of us having hard conversations, because we're too busy trying to people please them, to just do the thing that needs to be done. Anyway, sorry, that was a very long response to your prompt. But thank you for asking about that.
Michele Hansen:
I feel like what you just said is so important, because empathy does not mean being nice.
Matt Stauffer:
Come on.
Michele Hansen:
It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to you. It doesn't mean sacrificing yourself at the altar of other people. Empathy requires boundaries. As you said, when your team is in a difficult situation, you need to lay down the boundary with the client. There may be situations where as you said, you're butting heads, and you're going back and forth on something, and it's not working.
Michele Hansen:
In that situation, it may not feel empathetic to lay down a boundary and say, "This isn't going to work. But what you can also do is use empathy to understand, "Okay. What are they trying to do in the first place? What are we trying to do in the first place? Then how can we expand the pie from a negotiation's phrase standpoint? How can we expand the pie and do something that gets what they want done, does it in a way that we can do it, but is maybe different?"
Michele Hansen:
I think it can be very hard to do that when you're always looking for other people's context to weigh those against each other. It can feel mean to put down a boundary. But fundamentally putting down that boundary is having empathy for yourself and for your own context. Allowing yourself to have that. I'm more reminded here of ... I don't know if you're familiar with the trauma typology of the four different ways of responding to trauma. There's the fight response, we're all pretty familiar with that.
Michele Hansen:
There's the flight response, which can be running away or working a lot, or exercising or whatever. It can be a freeze response, which I think of as hiding under a blanket and avoiding the world. There's also the fawn response, which is what you said of people pleasing. I find that for people who see themselves in the fall in trauma response, empathy can be very difficult, because chances are in their life, they have given 90% of the empathy and received 10% of it.
Michele Hansen:
Your friend reminds me of someone who may have had to give a lot of empathy in their life. But if their response to themselves is other people have had it worse. I don't have a right to feel this way. That's telling me that somebody else's voice that has become their own internal voice, and they have not received enough empathy themselves.
Matt Stauffer:
That's really good. I hate that word 45 minutes, because I want to dive into this for another hour.
Michele Hansen:
I could talk about this all day. I mean, this is all the whole topic of this podcast, right?
Matt Stauffer:
I know. Geez. Okay. Wow. I'm going to sit with this one. I'm going to go back and listen to this one multiple times and just sit with it. But for the sake of the constraints that I put on here, I'm going to ask you your last question. What insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people give to others?
Michele Hansen:
Therapy.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, my God. I thought you might say empathy, because what you just said therapy. Come on. Yes. I don't even know if there's anything else we need to say. Do we need to say anything else about it? Go get therapy, people.
Michele Hansen:
Therapy is the greatest gift I've ever given myself. I think for people who did not learn empathy, or did not receive a lot of it, again, I'm thinking about your friend, and I don't want to project too much on his experience. But if your reaction to when you go through something, or you share something difficult with someone you allow yourself to be vulnerable is to say, "But other people have it worse. This isn't really that bad. I really shouldn't be complaining."
Michele Hansen:
You have not received a lot of empathy in your life. You would probably tremendously benefit from therapy, because one of the jobs of the therapist is to be empathetic with you. I feel like I really learned empathy from being in therapy, from receiving it myself. I think sometimes people have this perception that therapy is going to the doctor. You only go if you have a broken bone. You only go if there's something broken within you, right?
Matt Stauffer:
Right.
Michele Hansen:
But I think everybody deserves therapy. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Everyone can use more empathy in their lives. The more you receive it, which is the therapist's job to give it to you, the more you can give it, because you feel heard. You don't have to struggle to feel heard in these other situations of when people are sharing things with you of feeling like you have to offer your own experience because your experience has not been heard.
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. If I could give younger me anything, it would be therapy.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. It's a therapist's job. Also a good therapist, to me, shows you that balance of boundaries and empathy and all that stuff. A good therapist, both makes you feel heard and understood. Also tells you about yourself when you need to. A good therapist believes those things and also does not internalize the emotions of every single person they talk to, because they couldn't do that healthily.
Matt Stauffer:
It's cool because I didn't even thought about that. They also are a little bit of a role model of healthy and responsible empathy.
Michele Hansen:
They have therapists themselves. It is a very important part of being a therapist is having a therapist yourself.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I love that. Okay. Also I could talk about this for an hour. But we're ... Yeah. If people think you're amazing and they want to learn more from you, or make sure they can send their money your way, how do they follow you? How do they support you, obviously, buy the book. But where's the ideal place to buy the book? Where should they follow you? Tell us about it?
Michele Hansen:
Yeah. You probably just find me on Twitter. I'm @mjwhansen, that's Hansen with an E-N at the end. I probably spend too much time on Twitter. Then the book you can find it at deployempathy.com. From there, you'll find a link to buy a physical version of the book on Amazon. There's also PDF and Kindle and ebook options. I'm also doing an audio book that I'm ...
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, cool.
Michele Hansen:
... in the progress of recording. I'm releasing it every week as a private podcast. It started at the end of August and it will go ... I'm about halfway through the book right now. It'll go for a while. Then you just get a couple of chapters in your inbox every week as they are being recorded.
Matt Stauffer:
I have no idea I missed that. But I'm going to do that immediately. That's awesome.
Michele Hansen:
All from deployempathy.com.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. Michele, it was an absolute freaking pleasure having you. Thank you so much for joining today.
Michele Hansen:
Thank you.
Matt Stauffer:
All right, you all. Until next week, be good to each other.