Written by: William Lee, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
No matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to walk into another person’s body and mind. The wider is the experience gap, the less useful is empathy as a tool to feel and think like another person.
Things get even more complicated when we have to learn about another person through indirect methods or third parties.
And, there is another possibility: We think we share exactly the same experience or a very big chunk of it. We think we can apply empathy to help. But in fact, things and circumstances are different…
Detached (Un-)Awareness
Mr L started a sales consulting and agency firm when he was 28.
Just a few years later, he also owned a chemicals manufacturing company, and partly owned a trading company as a major shareholder very close to the majority, but not quite.
At consecutive GDPs of 12%+ for years among significant technological advances and government policy, most highly skilled young professionals at the time opted to start their own businesses. Loyalty and stability was no match to the lure of wealth and social status that came with enterprise ownership.
Even the less gifted were dreaming big. The urge to succeed pushed some of these pretentious to take extreme measures. When the law significantly lagged behind economic and social progressions, the need for leadership and management skills became even more acute.
Soon, Mr L found himself having to spend more and more time managing shareholder dynamics at the trading company. He was bearing much greater financial and legal risks and naturally preferred organic growths, while the minorities pushed for faster expansion and profitability. Things got worse when knowledge and skills gap widened between management and employees. Communications became more and more difficult.
Then, as the macroeconomic conditions went into a period of correction, bad debts and supply chain management became all consuming.
A great leader, influencer and visionary he was, employees at the trading company initiated a voluntary pay cut. That provided Mr L with the necessary liquidity and leverage to refinance and renegotiate contracts with buyers and suppliers. People came together better in crisis.
His trading company survived, better than most. In less than a year, he was able to repay his employees lost income with bonuses. Profitability and market share both peaked.
Then one day, a strange feeling got him to gatecrash his chemicals manufacturing company. He just visited a nearby customer of his sales consulting and agency firm.
To his horror, the account books were all messed up. After working through the night, he was certain his management team stole funds from the company and borrowed money elsewhere without his knowledge, all while Mr L’s younger brother was working as a junior employee there.
Here Mr L made a calculated decision detached from his own feeling.
Rather than sticking his foot in legal battles for months or years trying to recover those funds from the perpetrators without any guarantee of success, he paid creditors with his own money and dissolved the company. Except for his shares in the trading company, he was back to zero.
The decision was made easier when he talked to his wife. A calm and short reply that she could sell noodles on the street to support their three sons was enough.
In the next few years, he worked like crazy, and completely missed his sons’ growth. And, he developed type-B diabetes and chronic stomach problems that made him throw up every morning.
After resecuring his finance and reflecting on the past, he finally sold all of his stake in the trading company and focused on just the sales consulting and agency firm. Though still a workaholic in popular standard, at least he was getting the sort of work-life balance that made him happy.
The timing was a smart one. The market correction this time was a tsunami. The wise, the brave, and the desperate went outbound. He was one of the firsts to set foot on Mainland China.
Attached Empathy
Fast forward 12 years, Mr L’s eldest son Mr K just graduated with a PhD.
“So what is your career plan?” asked Mr L.
“I’m going to travel first, and take it one step at a time after that,” replied Mr K.
He had published 7 academic papers during the candidature and just declined a post-doctorate position. He wanted to backpack the world using the scholarship he saved. He felt a huge disconnect with his friends and was in a hurry to close that gap. His PhD experience was in some way similar to serving a 3-year sentence, facing four walls in another universe. Materials chemistry wasn’t the best socialising topic, even among academics.
Without knowing his son’s true mental state, Mr L offered him a “free” trip to Indonesia.
Mr K reluctantly complied. He’d never truly disobeyed his father.
Not long after, the free trip became a business trip. He was visiting his father’s sales agency customers with the principal’s local employees. He started to receive work emails, and finally a salary. Without ever applying for an employment.
Perhaps the biggest problem was, he couldn’t bear to hear or imagine that he had to rely on his dad as a grown man. But equally, he couldn’t bear to hurt his dad’s feelings. So, he got stuck in a job he didn’t apply for 15 years.
Those 15 years, however, were highly successful, business-wise (follow Mr K’s story at Chapter 2 – Spontaneous Reactions (brainzmagazine.com) & Chapter 7 - Shine Too Bright (brainzmagazine.com)). Mr K had learnt to detach himself from his own emotions ever since 14 – he was moved to another country to live and study against his will. But, tears flowed occasionally, when there was private time and space to do so.
After a successful business transfer, Mr L and his son were finally able to sit down together and talk like friends, well almost.
Mr K could now fully appreciate his father’s life and work experience and the arrangement thrown at him. But he’s also quite confident that he would have survived fine walking on his own path.
Likewise, Mr L had also realised that his son would do fine by himself. He could pick himself up after each fall.
When a working mechanism that connects different Wheels of Fortune is found, that’s freedom beyond words.
Detached awareness or attached empathy, or whatever combinations. As long as we use both our heart and mind to feel, think, process, memorise and act on anything we do (see Chapter 1 – Born With It All (brainzmagazine.com)), we’ll be just fine.
William Lee, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
William Lee, a business coach and expert in connecting people’s wheels of fortune together, excels at producing positive results in complex multi-stakeholder engagement, end-to-end customer experience satisfaction, and remote team management. Frustrated by years of conflicts and external negativities, William dug deep to understand how our minds work, how we interact with one another, and how good faith can improve our connected world together. Through a process called CentriFusion, William’s methodology and system provide an easy first step to vastly improve team empathetic capability. With increased presence and engagement, as a result, fertile mental grounds are sown to enable organic and spontaneous growth, aligned to a shared common purpose. William provides the way to attain TRUE and SUSTAINABLE COMFORT in your businesses. Enjoy life without complacency!
