Читать книгу Leading with Empathy - Gautham Pallapa - Страница 26

Empathy is the powerful driver of breakthrough change toward achieving a much more just, caring, and compassionate world. Now, as individuals and teams, we can bring new energy and determination to making empathy a way of life that infuses all of our activities and relationships and sparks inspired positive change.

Says Jamil Zaki, in his groundbreaking 2019 book The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World: “Empathy is in short supply. Isolation and tribalism are rampant. We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them.”⁵² Studies show that we are less caring than we were even 30 years ago. In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama said that the United States is suffering from an empathy deficit. “As you go on in life, this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier … we live in a culture that discourages empathy.”

According to Zaki, empathy is a skill that we can develop and sharpen over time. By working on this skill, we can improve our ability to be empathic and utilize it in our everyday life. This point of view resonates deeply with me. I believe that while some people might have a genetic disposition to higher levels of hormones that trigger empathy,⁵³ a more significant influence on developing empathy resides in our support networks, environments, experiences, cultural backgrounds, and interactions. My wife comes from a close-knit joint family with stronger bonds, while I come from a nuclear family.⁵⁴ I have been fortunate to have had an influential empathic role model in my mother growing up; however, my wife has much more empathy than me, perhaps because of her more robust support structure and family bonds.