So can you walk us through the steps and talk about its usefulness in the workplace? Yes.

Yeah, so imagine we're all born with this superpower, but we've had all these messages that have told us, no, you can't use it, you shouldn't use it, or we haven't had the role models, or our bosses aren't encouraging us to do it.

But once you turn that light on and you actually start to realize, oh, this is what's been getting in my way, it makes it a lot easier.

It can start to become second nature, but you have to learn how to... hold your power and use it sort of responsibly.

So five steps based off of the barriers to empathy.

The first one is dismantling judgment.

And that's the hardest one.

How would you introduce that initiative?

How would you define empathy? Yeah.

Yeah, that's the colloquial definition of it.

And it is true.

I often, when I'm giving talks on empathy, I'll ask the audience to give me some definitions of empathy.

And I typically hear three different things.

One is walking in someone else's shoes.

But I also hear something around feeling the feelings of somebody else or emotionally connecting with somebody and understanding what they're feeling.

And what do you think, what are the benefits do you believe that has for employees? And then if you extend that out further, perhaps on organizational performance?

if that has moral or ethical implications, and if it does have consciousness, what does that mean? So can you talk a little bit about what you found in that article and your thoughts on that?

sure and we'll put a gift link to that article in the show notes for everybody to check out and there was also a piece in the new york times about the same thing where the the in-demand job in silicon valley now is our philosophy majors and so this has been around for a while that there was an early i think he was on in at google and involved with their ai development and he was felt like he was starting to see signs of consciousness and if you know, consciousness is an evidence of life or sentience and then maybe self-awareness.

And so if something is conscious, has conscience, consciousness, what does that mean in terms of the ways that we might treat it? The, you know, human rights equivalent for AI, for another living being, effectively.

And so starting to look for this because they are, you know, some people are seeing this and obviously enough that they're concerned.

And actually in the article, Chris Ola, who's one of the co-founders of Anthropic, he said, we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling.

This is a quote in the article.

We find evidence of introspection in states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease.

They

For some groups.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's true.

And how hungry are you? But then, yeah, what are the societal norms that start to get established? And I really think about the familial group and even within empathy.

I'm rewriting the introduction to my book as we're going into a paperback version this fall.

Tell me more about that.

Solving the Empathy Crisis, One Conversation at a Time, available wherever you buy books.

And

Mm-hmm

... our bias really gets in the way.

I recently had Claude analyze transcripts of, uh, somebody from a, the Navigating to a New Normal study.

So this is somebody I've been talking to for six years, and a new moderator is gonna take over those conversations, and I wanted to present sort of the, the analysis of this individual's journey and tips for the next moderator, and I fed all of it into Claude.

And as I see that respondent, she tends to be far right, Trump supporter, and homeschooling and anti-vax, and, like, a lot of different things.

Hmm

...

so I, I'll probably mispronounce his name.

Rob, I want to get right into your founder story of the Empathy Activist because the book, the work, the mission, everything that you're doing right now with empathy, why? Where did that even come from? Why?

Well, the story of Empathy Activist begins with the early days of Ignite360.

So we've got our rollback and actually it goes even before I started Ignite360.

I've always been an empathetic person and attuned to other people's feelings.

And in 20 years ago, 2007, got into qualitative research, going out, talking to people, understanding how they think, how they feel and helping our clients understand.

make decisions and drive their business forward based on that, based on building that real connection.

A study came out in 2010 that said, hey, there's been this huge decline in empathy abilities amongst college students looking at this huge period of time from the late 70s.

You have to remember you're separate.

Mm-hmm.

He was affiliated with Yale, and he wrote a book called Against Empathy.

And the, his argument was, like, you shouldn't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by emotions, and you needed to actually measure that or marry it up with rational thinking, and it was a radical, uh, rational compassion, radical candor.

And that, I mean, you know, when his book came out, I, I was like, what? [laughs] What do you mean against empathy?

Uh-huh.

I don't know Donald Trump.

I've never had a personal interaction with him, so I can't say if he truly does.

I only know his public persona.

[laughs]

... a while back when you and I were first talking about doing this.

And Claude feels that, yes, that is the thing.

And the, but seriously, the philosophers and researchers do think that that awareness that we're going to die someday is a big driver of, like, all the decisions that we make.

And, and I don't know about you, but I was pondering, like, the, I, you know, as I mentioned in the last episode, like, I've got three cats, and, like, they're 15, and they're getting a little rickety as 15-year-old cats do.

And, like, are they aware that this is the end, or is it just, you know, Thursday-

Yes.

And way, way back in time it was the, you know, ruffling in the, rustling in the grass, and that could be a predator of some sort, or it could be another tribe.

And you may know Rob from his empathy work, and his best-selling book, and the fact that he was on this podcast before, but you already know me, so I'm gonna give Rob a quick moment here to introduce himself and talk about his amazing work.

So yes, I'm the empathy activist, Rob Volpe, author of Tell Me More About That! Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time.

And my works is... sits adjacent, I think, Maria, to yours, at least when I talk about us.

You know, I really got into helping people understand how to be empathetic, like the barriers to overcome, and that led to the five steps to empathy.

And so that's what I write about, speak, talk, think, you know, ar- around how empathy shows up in so many different ways in our life, but all based on that dismantling judgment, asking good questions, and all, all the things.

Right.

And what...

So one of the things Michael Pollan found and talks about in his book and the interviews is, you know, there's this sentience, which is the sort of lights are on, if you would.