Jackie Acho on The Currency of Empathy

Photo Credit: Dave Munch, The Chautauquan Daily

When we think of pathways out of polarization and toward social trust, we often focus on institutional reforms like ranked-choice voting or non-partisan redistricting. Sometimes we look upstream, from politics to culture, to bridge-building efforts meant to foster constructive dialogue across differences. In this post, we will go further upstream, to our individual capacity for empathy. How do we develop the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others, to see and feel things from their perspective? How could we use this capacity to help alleviate some of the thorniest challenges we face?

Our guide in this exploration will be my friend Jackie Acho. I first met Jackie a decade ago. A Cleveland-based nonprofit on whose board she served had retained a colleague and me to help it sort through some pressing strategy and organization questions at a critical meeting. Jackie was our liaison to the organization’s executive director and the rest of the board. We could quickly see in our preparations for the meeting that Jackie was a highly effective leader who was already helping the organization work its way out of the corner into which it had inadvertently painted itself. Over lunch on the day of the session, I asked Jackie what her secret was to being such a great nonprofit board member and a leader in general. Taking her energetic style up a notch further, she began talking about the importance of empathy – not something that typically came up when I spoke with nonprofit leaders and board members. My ears perked up.

I’ve been learning from Jackie on this theme in the years since. During them, Jackie has been exploring why and how we need to rely more on what she calls “the currency of empathy” for our organizations, communities, and society to flourish. At first glance, Jackie’s background – a Ph.D. in Chemistry from MIT, then rising through the ranks to be a partner at McKinsey – may not seem like the most fertile ground for an empathy maven. But Jackie’s exploration and advocacy of empathy incorporates a researcher’s concern for telling data and a consultant’s penchant for asking “why” until they get to the heart of the matter. As a result, she has changed the career trajectories of individual leaders as well as the culture of hard-to-change organizations like the Cleveland Police Department.

The following interview originated with an email exchange I had with Jackie, who relocated to Istanbul last year to receive cancer treatments not available in the U.S. (about which, more below). She has continued to inspire me from afar with her wide-ranging and unstintingly candid blog posts on the power of empathy and the pain that results from its absence. I’m grateful for the chance to introduce Jackie and her ideas to readers here at The Art of Association.

Jackie, let’s start with the basics: How do you define empathy? The ability to understand the feelings of another and have an appropriate emotional response. That last part is really important and often omitted. To sit with someone in their pain, joy, etc. (empathy is not just about suffering!) requires that we recognize and move beyond our own emotional triggers. If not, we are just taking our own trip down memory lane or reacting based on how that person’s emotions affect us, which is very common. To truly sit with someone in their truth, whatever it may be, is a gift like few others. Empathy is a human superpower.

Why is empathy in such short supply? Empathy is in short supply because we have personal and systematic barriers to practicing it – to developing our empathy muscles. Let’s start in early childhood because that’s the time when our empathy circuits are growing most quickly, given the right environment and attention. We first learn empathy affectively or emotionally, in body-to-body communication before we have words. If we are given what we need when we need it as babies (food, warmth, affection, etc.), empathy flows freely and develops. We grow our capacity for empathy in loving relationships. What gets in the way is lack of time, especially in the U.S., where we rank last in parental leave among the developed world and near the bottom of work/life balance. The second major chance most people have to remember empathy is as a parent because empathy is a two-way street. Of course, you don’t have to parent to become empathetic, but hands-on caring is one of the best ways to practice. The other side of empathy is cognitive or imaginative. Cognitive empathy develops later, as we have words to describe and connect to the situations others face. Again, this takes time, and we learn via modeling. Most people do not listen simply and sit with others. They skip to offering solutions or telling their own stories. None of that is empathetic. Work environments that force competition rather than collaboration exacerbate empathy deficits, and the political divides in recent years have been very emotionally triggering for people, which also gets in the way of empathy.

What problems arise from a lack of empathy? So many manmade problems stem from our empathy deficits, individually and societally. Individually, we are all built for connection. Lack of the opportunity to give and receive empathy creates a void that is unnatural and capable of contributing to loneliness, depression, anxiety, and more. Severe lack of empathy leaves people capable of great harm to others, physically and emotionally. Interestingly, the synergy between cognitive and affective empathy matters. Psychopaths have excellent cognitive empathy but lack the ability to feel – the affective or emotional piece - leaving them capable of manipulation and atrocities. Many of our inhumane policies and business practices stem from a lack of empathy for people, especially those most vulnerable. Would we really produce Pepsi and Jacked Doritos and market them to kids if we cared about their health? Political divides are made deeper by lack of empathy because judgment replaces curiosity, assumptions overwhelm conversations, and true communication stops. This dynamic affects democracy negatively overall because debate and dialogue lead to some of our best answers. Many of our biggest worries about the future, such as global warming and the concurrent increase in environmental disasters, as well as manmade disasters like war, can be seen as a lack of empathy for others, future generations, and the planet. We should be saving the earth for everyone rather than building spaceships for a rich few to escape.

How can we rebuild our capacity for empathy in the here and now – both as individuals and across society at large? We need to change the way we live and work in order to steward empathy – our vital currency. The first step is to recognize empathy’s economic value. It’s a force driving elusive inclusion and organic innovation, which require trust, open communication, and mutual understanding. We’ve focused exclusively on competition and short-term profits for too long, at great human cost. Gallup has told us for years that ~65-70% of people are disengaged at work. We have lost their hearts and minds. To grow empathy at work, people need meaning, a chance to grow, and the ability to live whole lives. It’s simple but not easy because we have to change how we’ve worked for a very long time. Most of the changes are about working differently and don’t cost much. We don’t need “empathy training” so much as a chance to live whole lives and practice affective empathy at work and at home. A great start would be parental leave on par with the developed world and work/life balance that acknowledges we are humans rather than cogs in a machine! Empathy is the secret sauce of great leaders; we would do better to give them time to practice hands-on-caring on their path to leadership than sending them to a Harvard MBA. Leaders would make decisions differently, affecting so many others. If we valued time for caring, understood how to mitigate our own emotional triggers, and were able to practice unencumbered empathy as individuals, our daily interactions and decisions would be much more generative, especially with our young children, when their capacity for developing empathy is enormous. We don’t so much learn empathy as we mirror and absorb it. Empathy begets empathy. It’s as contagious as a yawn.

How did you come to join forces with the Cleveland Police Department? What has been the focus of your engagement with its members? Detective Chris Gibbons in CPD employee assistance saw my 2014 TEDx talk, “A Good Day’s Work Requires Empathy” and called me. He said, “I’m with the Cleveland Police, and I think we have a problem with empathy. Can you help us?” I just about dropped the phone! Instead, we got to work. Our focus was both individual and systemic. We supported the development of individual empathy through practices (e.g., yoga, mindfulness, meditation, equine therapy) that mitigate the emotional triggers police face every day. We also worked on systemic changes. Most organizations sap empathy. It’s more immediately fatal when employees carry guns. We did an employee survey and engaged a CPD innovation team to make changes that helped the police recover the meaning they found in their jobs, grow as individuals and teams, and be whole at work. It was simple but not easy. Remarkably, because police led the work, the union was on board. So was the Chief. A successful pilot in the most dangerous District proved the model, and we expanded from there.

Have there been any observable effects from the work you’ve helped them with so far? Yes! In just 2 years, we saw 45% reduction in citizen complaints, 29% reduction in use of force, and more than half of the transfer requests across the entire city were into the District where we started – the most violent one in the city. Going to work there is dangerous, so that kind of influx was unprecedented. Across the same 2-year period, the yoga/mindfulness/meditation participants (voluntary and department-wide) showed 55% reduction in use of force. These kinds of changes work and create the results that matter in any organization, including the police.

What do you see as the potential for the “currency of empathy” to help resolve the growing problem of polarization? Are there instances or examples where you have seen this occurring already? The potential is unlimited because the currency of empathy compounds. Empathy solves polarization every day in big and small ways. I see examples in real life and virtually, whether we are connecting to the story of mothers and children fleeing Ukraine or just reconnecting with an old friend on social media. One caveat - we connect more through our vulnerabilities and honesty rather than perfect pictures on Facebook.

You have had a trying ordeal in your battle with cancer. Where and how has your thinking on empathy factored into that struggle? Have you learned something new about empathy during it? Ovarian cancer has been a profound window into empathy, how it flows and how triggers get in the way. Cancer is brutal, requiring more strength than I imagined. I’ve written extensively about the lack of empathy in cancer research and medicine, holding back true cures and prevention. My PhD was from a lab that focused on cancer drugs. I know this truth all too well, from inside and out. Systemically and personally. Yet I’ve experienced a great flow of empathy from family and friends. My own vulnerability has opened up new channels of honesty and humbly accepting help. I’ve also seen how fear about my situation and how it might affect someone else triggers a more narcissistic response. People often tell cancer patients to “be brave, strong, and positive!” That kind of advice is a way of separating yourself from the fear our situation triggers. What we really need is people who are just willing to be with us in what is.

Jackie, my heart is full, pondering what you have just shared. Thank you for your vulnerability and wisdom. Let’s wrap up here. As we do, what would you like readers to remember from this interview? Empathy is our secret sauce as human beings. It’s what kept us alive as babies and what has underpinned our best innovations and true, inclusive progress. Stewarding this currency individually, organizationally, and societally is required for us to flourish. We’ve tried the other way – stewarding currency/economics without empathy and humanity – for long enough to see it’s not working. It’s past time to focus on empathy. We can and should demand it. Looking at our kids, I’m hopeful.