Empathy: From Pretentious Preaching to Becoming the Basis of Your Business Model

What is your opinion on the word ‘Empathy’? Until recently I had nothing but disdain for this word, and everything it represented.I remember growing up when ‘empathy’ would intermittently appear in my life in the form of ‘value education’ lessons, literature assignments, newspaper columns, and elementary philosophy books, the kind a teenager would read. The basic idea being the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and feel what they feel.

And I lie not, I did try. It’s one of those things people preach about in your childhood and you decide to give it a shot. I tried imagining myself in another’s shoes. How do the shoes feel? Are they hard and stiff, or is the material soft and tender on the soles? Are they too large, where the feet trip, or too small, leaving painful blisters? Okay I am kidding, but you do get my drift. I did try. And like all the good things I have tried to inculcate through my life, this too began to slip.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but hasn’t ‘empathy’ for the longest time been associated with the less fortunate? The have-nots. The downtrodden. The beleaguered sufferers. We’ve read and heard enough preaching about empathising and uplifting the terribly oppressed that we could recite it in our sleep. But who really wants to talk about them, apart from activists and those who have a vested interest? For most, it’s neither a topic of top priority, nor something to chat about over a casual chai and biscuit break. It’s human tendency to skirt away from such conversations. Skirt away from topics that don’t involve our very selves, our ego in some form. And to be honest, we don’t even know enough about them to demonstrate appropriate empathy. I confess I am as disconnected as the next urban dweller.

For me, empathy became akin to ‘honesty’. Sure honesty is the best policy, it looks great in a thick hard bound book of quotes, and is so adorable to see little ones sing song it with half missing teeth. But who really wants to practice that? Unless it results in a fatter paycheck…

Anyway that’s been the general gist of my opinion for a very long while.

Until many years later. After architecture school, after years of immersing myself in various design practices, after getting a grip on my creative process, after ‘design thinking’ became the new buzz word, I found myself face to face with the blasted word ‘empathy’ again. I was mildly annoyed. It represented all those things that ‘should’ be done but are never really done because of poor enforcement or being poorly dressed up.

This confrontation happened in the form of a design thinking workshop I stumbled upon a while back, where 30 minutes of the 120 minute workshop was just about the importance of empathy. I was pretty stunned. Well the workshop by itself had little to offer as the facilitator was only introducing us to a methodology that I had learnt way back in Architecture school. What amused me though is the terminologies he used to define each step. As a designer I was going about the same approach, but was not aware of the boundaries of each step.

To give you an idea, the general approach is talking to the client and understanding what the client requires, writing a brief based on the discussion, creating a conceptual design that outlines the brief, developing the concept into something tangible with a model, and finally taking it to the client for a review. After which, the process is repeated until all the loose ends are tied, and the client is finally satisfied.

During the workshop I learnt that as per the design thinking methodology these steps are broken down as follows -

Empathy — understanding the client and their requirement

Define — writing the brief as per the discussion

Ideate — creating a conceptual design that outlines the brief

Prototype — developing the concept into something tangible

Test — review time

While the succeeding 4 steps were no surprise, the first one left me dumbfounded. I guess it was mainly because of the rigid opinion I had built around it all these years. That was when it dawned on me that empathy is everything more than charity. By definition it is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, but in practice it encompasses so much more. Especially in the professional world. The degree of empathy can make or break one’s business. At first, the thought was unpalatable. It’s like saying altruism is at the core of a successful capitalist market.

But as I sat with the idea for a while, it finally began to seep in. A lot of the businesses and jobs today revolve around the needs of the specific user. And so a user-centric approach is the natural way forward. This approach transcends the design sector, as it is applicable to so many industries. IT, manufacturing, advertising, consumer goods, to name a few. Now, it has slowly begun to take the form of a business term. Empathy. The first step to a user-centric approach, where the user’s needs, thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and the reasons behind them are mapped out to make sure the end product is developed in line with the user’s requirement. Phew. Now, how did that happen? From innocently stepping in their shoes, to becoming a complete intrusive stalker. And one stark difference between the definition of then and now is that, in the former we learn things about them that they already know about themselves. In the latter we learn things about them that even they don’t know about them. Creepy.

But that conversation is for another day.

For today we only talk about the evolution of empathy and the central role it has come to play in different industries. The dynamics of businesses have changed to better understand customers and consumers so as to create efficient and relevant products, with fewer iterations. It’s only going to get more complex and immersive as user data takes centre stage.

The empathy today, the business one, is not the aimless wandering and adrift kind like before. This one is purpose driven with an agenda, and on a mission to find a solution… often with the sole objective of a flourishing economy, a.k.a. a fatter paycheck.