Empathy is a Technical Skill With Andrea Goulet (PNSQC)

 

Today has been a whirlwind. I was up this morning before 5:00 a.m. to teach the penultimate class of my contract (sorry, I just love working that word into things ;) ) but suffice it to say the class is still happening while PNSQC is happening. That has made me a little tired and thus a little less blogging today. Add to that the fact I was called in to do a substitute talk in the afternoon (glad to do it but that was not on my dance card today) and I'm really wondering how we are at the last talk of the day and formal conference. regardless, we are here and I'm excited to hear our last speaker.

I appreciate Andrea talking about this topic, especially because I feel that there has been a lot of impersonal and disinterested work from many over the past several years. I was curious as to what this talk would be about. How can we look at Empathy as a technical skill? She walked us through an example with her husband where he was digging into a thorny technical problem that was interrupted by Andrea asking him for a moment. His reaction was... not pleasant. As Andrea explained, she realized that he was deeply focused on something so all-consuming that it was going to be a big deal to get his attention for needful things. Instead of it being an ugly altercation, they worked out a phrase (in this case, "Inception") to help see when a person is on a deep dive and needs to be in their focused state, at least for a little while longer. While I don't quite know that level of a dive, I have times in my own life when I get caught up in my own thoughts and I bristle when someone interrupts/intrudes. By realizing these things, we can not just recognize when we ourselves are focusing on deep dives, but we can also recognize when others are as well. This is a development of our own empathy to aid us in the process of understanding when people are dealing with things.

Okay, that's all cool, but why is this being called a technical thing? Because we are free and loose with the use of the word "technical". Technical comes from the Greek word "Techne", and techne means "skill". That means any skill is technical when we get down to it. It also means it's a skill that can be learned. Yes, we can learn to be empathetic. It's not something we are born with, it's something we develop and practice. Motivation likewise drives empathy. In many ways, empathy can be a little mercenary. That's why we get it wrong a lot of the time. We often want to reach out and help in ways that we would want to be helped, and thus our empathy is highly subjective and highly variable. Additionally, empathy grades on a curve. There are numerous ways in which we express and experience empathy. it's not a monoculture, it is expressed in numerous ways and under different circumstances and conditions. There are a variety of components, mechanisms, and processes that go into our understanding and expressions of empathy. It's how we collaborate and solve complex problems. In short, it's a core part of our desire and ability to work together.

Andrea showed us a diagram with a number of elements. We have a variety of inputs (compassion, communication) that drive the various mechanisms that end up with a set of outputs. Those outputs come down to:

• Developing an understanding of others 
• Creation of Trust
• A Feeling of Mutual Support
• An overall synergy of efforts   

 Empathy requires critical thinking. It's not all feelings. We have to have a clear understanding and rational vision of what people want, and not specifically what we want. 

On the whole, this is intriguing and not what I was expecting to hear. Regardless, I'm excited to see if I can approach this as a developed skill.

Mental Fitness is the X-Factor with Julie Wong (#PNSQC2021 Live Blog)

One of the biggest challenges I think many of us have faced in the past year and a half plus is coming to grips with whatever "new normal" means. For me, working from home has been a reality for an extended period. I made my last visit to a formal office setting back in October of 2017. As such, I have actually been home at least twice as long as many others have had to be. That has been both a blessing and a curse in a sense that, while I have a work environment that allows me to work from home and has done so for an extended period, I was just as much hit with how my reality changed during the COVID pandemic.

Back in 2019, I had the ability to go many places, I played shows in nightclubs, I performed at festivals, and I had many options to go places unhindered. Today, while there are more opportunities than there was last year, that still has not returned to anything at all feeling like normal. Thus, even people like me who are the veteran work at home people still finds himself dealing with mental oddities because of the pandemic. It's taken a toll on me as well.

Thus it is with great interest that I find myself listening to Julie Wong and looking at how I might be able to better handle my overall mental fitness and where I actually am at this point in time. Mental Fitness is more than just thinking a lot or being "in shape". Physically in shape is easier to quantify, albeit the fact is we have at times a messed up vision of exactly what physical fit looks like and the number that that can play on us. trying to get a bead on what it actually means and looks like to be mentally fit is even more challenging.

Mental fitness is, effectively speaking, how we deal with stressful situations and the ability to being able to do so with positivity.  We currently live in a hurry-up-and-deliver culture where we have to aggressively perform for arbitrary times and reasons. 

Julie shares this idea that there are 10 saboteurs that we deal with and 5 sage powers. If we get to understanding who and what those are, we can better work with and talk down those areas that hold us back while allowing us to work with them to succeed. 

The Judge is one saboteur, and these are the nine others that work alongside The Judge

To be clear, each of these areas is not necessarily "bad" by itself. There are good elements to each of these as well, but for our mental fitness in this context, each of these can be saboteurs to our mental health and happiness. In moderation, these can actually be good for us but in excess, each of these can absolutely sabotage us (though I'd argue playing the victim is always a saboteur behavior).

By contrast, we also have Sage Powers that we can uncover to help us. These are more right-brain-oriented areas, where we exercise empathy, curiosity, creativity, compassion, serenity, and laser-focused action.

 

Ultimately, what we put out attention and focus on is what comes to pass. If we feed our negative side, we reap negative consequences, even if the result could objectively be seen as good. By focusing on positive outcomes, we can be in a better place, even if we don't necessarily achieve what we hope to. That's profound and quite neat. It's wild to think I could succeed and be miserable and by contrast not achieve but still be happy. Ultimately, though, I think by focusing on the positive I can ultimately achieve (note to self: while the saboteurs can be good if not applied in excess, consider the sage powers working oppositely. You can achieve them but you have to focus on them more directly and almost try to get them in excess).

This was a nice way to end this conference. Thank you very much for this, Julie :).