Karen Faith on Love & Power

Karen Faith is the CEO of Others Unlimited, an empathy training company she founded in 2021. Karen lives a country mile south of me in Tivoli, and that’s where we first met as neighbors. Her TEDx Talk “How to talk to the worst parts of yourself” has racked up nearly 2M views.

Previously an ethnographer and strategist, I was excited to talk to her about what her path to ethnography, and then to empathy training, and what happens between people.

I start all of my interviews with the same question, which I borrow from Suzanne Snider, who teaches oral history in Hudson. It's a big, beautiful question, but because of that I over-explain it. Before I ask, I want you to know that you're in absolute control and you can answer or not answer in any way that you want. The question is: Where do you come from?

It is a big, beautiful question. I feel like I should have prepared for that one.

You have, you've been preparing all your life.

In a way, I suppose I have. Oh goodness, Peter, how could you stump me immediately? Well, I'm going to go ahead and just go with my first couple of thoughts.

I come from Mississippi, which is a geographical place. I don't know that I'd give that answer if I were to think about the other kinds of ways I might be from, but Mississippi is already a loaded answer because Mississippi is a very unique, rich, deep, complex place. And that might be the other answer.

I feel like I come from a very rich, complex place. I grew up in a very religious and also volatile and violent home, which is a common experience for people like me, which I know can mean a lot of things. But I think that the reason why I would say that I come from that is because I believe that my work is really grounded in the experiences that those things birthed.

So the experience of being a part of a very intense religious community, being a part of a very dysfunctional family, and being from the Deep South are all things which sparked areas of curiosity in my life that are absolutely the roots of the work that I do now. I think I can draw those lines very clearly, but I admit it makes me happy when other people are surprised.

How do you mean?

Well, I mean, I don't want the first impression to be that I am maybe born of brokenness, but I am.

Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Yes, I remember. Specifically, I was in third grade when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. At that time, my family was living in Melbourne, Florida. My stepfather actually worked at the space center, and we saw that happen with our eyes, not on TV. Krista McAuliffe, who was the teacher on the shuttle, was actually in our school district. So because of that, there was this big push for everyone. It was like a "reach for the stars" thing, you know, because of the fun of it, where we were all writing essays about what we wanted to be, our aspirations. And because I have that piece of paper that I wrote, I actually know exactly what I wanted back then. But I do remember dreaming about it as a kid.

I had just started learning to play the violin, and I wanted to play in an orchestra. I wanted to be a teacher. And I just started getting interested in poetry. I wanted to be a writer. But also one thing that's really funny is that I remember as a kid, when I imagined myself as an adult, I always imagined myself being 25, which is hilarious to me now. You know, I was like, yeah, when I'm 25, and I think maybe because my parents were quite young. So I think 25 was about how old they were when I started having those thoughts. So yeah, I was like, when I'm 25, I will play in an orchestra, and I'll be a poet and a teacher. And when I was 25, I was. I played in an orchestra, and I was a teacher and a poet. So, you know, I kind of like dream accomplished. And then there was this moment of like, oh, what's the next one then, you know?

One of my favorite parts of Dune, the David Lynch movie, is when after Paul Atreides is sort of in the desert, having all these prophecies come true, these dreams, these prophecies come true. And he gets to this place where they'd all come true. And he feels lost. And he's like, all the visions of my future have already manifested, like, what is next for me? And I think that that really was a moment, you know, when I was mid-20s. And I was like, well, I did the thing I wanted to do. Now, what are we going to do?

Where were you at that time?

When I was 25, I had actually just stopped playing. I played in the symphony for seven years, and I just stopped doing that and moved to Chicago to go to the School of the Art Institute. So I had already changed the vision, but I wanted to. Then I was going into performance art.

[I'm curious, will you tell me a little bit about what it means to be from the Deep South? I mean, you have these three territories, like the church, the family, and then Deep South. I'm just curious, what does it mean to be? I mean, I've met you in Tivoli, New York, upstate New York. What does it mean to be from the Deep South?

Well, something that might be revealing to say is that it's hard for me to talk about it, and it's important for me to talk about it with respect to the people who I really love who are there. I found since I left Mississippi that everywhere else I've been in the United States finds it easy and fun to ridicule Mississippi for a couple of reasons that have factual basis. Mississippi has for many years been close to the bottom of the list for education and close to the top of the list for poverty and obesity and other kinds of systemic problems that are very interrelated and correlate.

That is not at all what Mississippi means to me. For me, the things that I've carried with me and the things that I really feel, the kind of stereotype of Southern hospitality is 100% true. There is a very urgent sense of responsibility to welcome a visitor, which directly and immediately opposes the idea that Southerners don't like outsiders. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist too. That's in there somewhere too. But the immediate thing is, come on in, let me make you a cup of coffee.

I also carry this very deep sense of hospitality. I love hosting in a very literal way, but I also bring that to the work in a lot of ways too. For me, the experience of facilitating groups of people, which is largely what I do, is a lot about making sure that every person present feels welcome to be present exactly as they are. That takes some doing. That's not easy. It's also, veering into another topic a little bit, it's also not possible for me to carry that responsibility entirely. I cannot make anyone feel any particular way. I can only provide an atmosphere. That's important to me.

Being from the Deep South is also a place where there are cultural values that are so deeply ingrained. Family is one of them, for sure, which is so difficult because of the situation of the religious background, also because of the situation of being in a rural area where people are relatively spread apart. I wouldn't even call it privacy, I would call it isolation. There's an isolation that happens that makes the family dynamic very intense, because it's just you and your people. You don't necessarily see much else. Even growing up the way that I did, many aspects of my childhood and my family life that were untenable and harmful were not things that I recognized because I didn't know that it was uncommon. I didn't know that it was wrong. I didn't know that it was harmful until later. That's a part of it.

That's the part that I would relate to being from the Deep South, is that there's a very intense cognitive dissonance between the values of family is first, honor family, family is the most important thing, and also, wait a minute, this is the most harmful, most scary, most destructive, terrorizing aspect of my life. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure this is where my loyalty belongs? For many people, the answer continues to be yes. I've often felt a kinship when I watch mafia movies, because of the to-the-death loyalty, which no matter how ugly it gets, no matter how scary it gets, it's like the family's the family, and you're either with us or we'll kill you, which is just a kind of like, but there's something about the power of it.

It is sort of seductive is not the right word, but it's like there's an attraction to the safety, or at least the story of safety. It's like, oh, you mean, will you fight to the death for me then too? The answer should be yes. In my family, it was not yes, it was no. And so, in my particular family, loyalty to the family meant loyalty to the secret. And when I wasn't able to keep that, then I was out.

Is this where you wanted to go? I feel like we're going to a really, really intense place right now.

Yeah, wherever we go is fine. I mean, it's all up to you, really, whatever you're comfortable sharing. But yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely, getting to know you better is why I'm here.

So, tell me how you got to where you, tell me where you are now and what you're up to from there. Now you're in Tivoli, and how do you talk about what you're doing these days?

That's a hard shift. Well, I do live in Tivoli. It's a really tiny little 800-person village in upstate New York. It's absolutely beautiful and idyllic. And it's on the Hudson River, looking at the Catskill Mountains. This morning, I took a walk at sunrise and watched the deer and turkeys scouting around. And it's absolutely darling and beautiful and reminds me of the first half of a horror movie, where everything is just so perfect, you can't imagine anything bad could ever happen. And it turns out that this village is made of human beings. So yeah, it has its shadowy parts.

But for the most part, my life is very, very lovely. And I'm very close with my neighbors, and we all have little dinners together. And it's a life that I didn't imagine I would be living. And in every way, I'm a homeowner now, I'm a business owner now. I never in my life wanted to own a home or a business or live in the country. And I spent most of my adult life in Chicago, and then I moved to New York City. And I always imagined that's what my life would be. And I came up here through a series of kind of uncommon circumstances during 2020, as many of our lives were turned upside down and like shaken loose. And I didn't design the plan, but it just sort of happened that way.

And today, I'm grateful that it did. But it would be yeah, I guess I have a sweet contemplative life where I get to write and speak and work with people about some of the things that matter to me the most, which, you know, kind of what we were touching on before is, you know, a lot of my work as an empathy trainer, opens the doors to conversations about emotional intelligence, but all of those things are informed by this interior side of ourselves that a lot of people either don't necessarily dig into, or don't feel allowed to dig into, or don't feel or they do it, but they don't feel allowed to share.

And so there's a special thing that happens, you know, that I really love in my work, where I create spaces, emotional energetic spaces for folks to be able to do that exploration in a way that is both deep and cavernous, and also protected and safe and boundaried. And that is a you know, that's also a that's a balance. And it's it's fun. So, you know, I in general feel very, very lucky that I have managed to create a work product out of my life product, which has been an exploration of what it means to be a person and how to handle having this mind and heart and body in this little short time on the planet.

When did you discover you could do this kind of thing, you could make a living doing this?

I don't know that I do make a living. I'm kidding. I sort of.

I completely identify with you.

I am grateful for what I have, and I am not in a desperate situation. However, as many business owners in the beginning experience, my income is extraordinarily unstable. It is absolutely like, you know, feast or famine over here. And that's because I'm not a good business person, honestly. And I even though I know I want to be responsible and be better at it, I also don't. I think that I believe in leaning into my strengths and then finding other people or that to help me. And and I am looking for them. So that's good. But I, I am at least a little bit proud of not being good at business because I think it's the result of being, you know, at the risk of alienating some listeners, perhaps.

I believe that what I'm doing is is a spiritual practice. And it's very much, um, you know, I'm not a public servant. I do it for money. But what I'm doing is for me, the purpose of what I'm doing is to open really expansive spaces for folks to deal with their humanity in a way that also transcends their humanity.

Yeah. And I mean, I understand enough about your story. You kind of came in into this through ethnography. And I feel like I connect with you as a as somebody who, you know, has that practice. And so how do you how did how did ethnography lead you into this space of to where you are now? How do you what was the transition like? Or how did it how did empathy training evolve out of your experience as an ethnographer? And I don't want to ask. Yeah, that's it there.

There's an answer I would give you, Peter, which is different from the answer that I would giveThere's an answer I would give you, Peter, which is different from the answer that I would give whoever might be listening. The answer I would give you, Peter, is this: When you're sitting with someone and practicing presence, practicing just being with this person, the practice of ethnography is one where I don't erase myself, but I resist myself to allow the other person to take up as much space as they can or want to. That practice of being entirely present, while being contained enough to let someone else be open, has consistently provided me with mind-bending experiences of transcendence.

I said once to an intern that if you don't fall in love with every research subject, you're not doing it right. Of course, we have to contain that and be boundaried. But when I'm really present with someone, when I'm really seeing them, when I'm allowing them to be seen, and they're allowing themselves to be seen, I haven't had a research subject that I didn't love in a way that felt so infinite, it felt like it destroyed me. Maybe that might be a diagnosis I haven't gotten into yet.

But for me, it has always felt like it feeds me, it nourishes me. It's something that made me want to go, "Oh, what the hell is that?" I need to know what that is and why it happens. I believe it happens for a very deep and beautiful reason, which is that the part of us which can be present, whatever consciousness is, is infinite, and may even be identical. The part of me that can get there and the part of you that I'd like to get to is actually made of the same thing. I don't teach that, but that's kind of scooting over into the spiritual aspect of the practice.

The reason why I got into this work is because I kept finding that it was touching something that was so much bigger than me and bigger than work and bigger than a brand or a mission. For me, it's kind of an everything practice. The way that ethnography turned into empathy training is a story I love.

It happened because I was training an intern how to do it, and accidentally developed an empathy training curriculum. I had been giving portfolio reviews at a college in Chicago. This sophomore industrial design student got really excited about ethnography. He said he wanted to learn this from me. Because of where I was in my life and my career, I didn't have the confidence to be like, "Oh, come, let me teach you."

So I said, "Oh, we don't really have an internship." But he was persistent. He kept emailing me, asking if he could come to the studio, sit in on a thing, watch. He was really curious and persistent. I was a little annoyed by him, but I was also intrigued. I wondered, what does he see in me that I'm not seeing?

I asked my mentor at the time about it. She said, more or less, that the credential you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need to have whatever degree; he's asked you. He's given you the credential that it takes to teach him. I'm actually writing a talk about that right now, because I think it's such a profound and beautiful way of going about it - just to be what it means to be asked.

Because he asked me, I quickly pulled together an eight-week curriculum. I decided if I were to teach this kid everything I know, what would that look like? He was living in Illinois, in Wheaton, I think, and would take the train into Chicago once a week. This kid had just the most irritating case of ADHD. He was so annoying, with no attention span.

I was young and easily irritated. I realized I needed to teach him how to sit still, how to shut up. I thought I was going to teach him about how to design research approaches to address particular design problems. But I realized, "Oh, I need to teach him how to just sit and listen to somebody." So we went all the way back to basics, even to the level of "Take a breath, watch the inhale, watch the exhale, and then see who's watching it. What happens when you don't watch it?" Really basic mindfulness practice. It was a beautiful summer.

Darren and I are still really close friends. I officiated his wedding recently. He's just so dear to me. Because of his persistence, and because of all of the trouble that he gave me as a student, what we did is the foundation of what I do now. Others Unlimited is based on an empathy training curriculum that I built for Darren. whoever might be listening. It's just you the answer I would give you, Peter is, you know, like, you know, you know, how, when you're sitting with someone and practicing presence, practicing just being with this person, the practice of ethnography, being one where I I don't erase myself, but I resist myself to allow the other person to take up as much space as they can or want to. And that practice of being entirely present, while being contained enough to let someone else be, like open, is, has, has consistently provided me with mind bending experiences of transcendence, like just, I mean, I have, I said once to an intern that if you don't fall in love with every research subject, you're not doing it right.

You know, it's really, and of course, we have to contain that and be boundaried. But but when I when I'm really present with someone, when I'm really seeing them, when I'm allowing them to be when they're allowing themselves to be seen, and I'm really seeing them, I haven't, I have not had a research subject that I didn't love in an in a way that felt so infinite, it felt like it destroyed me. And, you know, and maybe I don't know, that might be a diagnosis I haven't gotten into yet.

But, but I but for me, it has always felt like it feeds me, it nourishes me. It's like, it's something that made me want to go, Oh, what the hell is that? You know, I need to know what that is. And why it is, why does that happen? And I believe it happens for a very, very deep and beautiful reason, which is that the part of us which can be present the part of us that that part, whatever consciousness is, is infinite, and, and may even be identical. Like the part of me that can get there. And the part of you that I'd like to get to is actually made of the same thing. And this is sort of, I don't teach that. But, but that's like, that's kind of scooting over into the spiritual aspect of the practice.

You know, the reason why I got into this work is because I kept finding that it was touching something that was so much bigger than, than me and bigger than, than work and bigger than, you know, a brand or a mission. For me, it's kind of it's an everything practice. The way that it turned the way that ethnography turned into empathy training is that God, and I love this story.

I, it happened because I was training an intern how to do it, and accidentally developed an empathy training curriculum. But the story of how that happened, I had been giving portfolio reviews at a college in when I was in Chicago. And this little sophomore industrial design student got really excited about ethnography. And he said, you know, I want to learn this from you. And I didn't, because of where I was in my life. And in my career, like, I didn't have the confidence to be like, Oh, come, you know, let me teach you.

And, and so I was like, Oh, we don't really have an internship. And, and he was persistent. And he kept, he kept emailing me, I was like, Well, can I just come to the studio and can I sit in on a thing? Can I watch? He was really curious. He was really persistent. And, and I was I was a little annoyed by him. But also, I was really annoyed by him. But I also was intrigued, like, what does he see in me that I'm not seeing, you know?

And I asked my mentor at the time, I told her about it. And she said, in in more or less, she said, the, the credential that you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need toHere's the continuation of the cleaned-up transcript:

And I asked my mentor at the time, I told her about it. And she said, in more or less, she said, the credential that you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need to have whatever degree he's asked to you. He's given you the credential that it takes to teach him. And so, which honestly, I'm actually writing a talk about that right now, because I think it's such a profound and beautiful kind of way of going about it, you know, just to be what it means to be asked.

And so, because he asked me, I, you know, just real quick pulled right out of myself an eight-week curriculum, I decided if I were to teach this kid everything I know, what does that look like? And I put together an eight-week curriculum teaching him. And he, you know, he was living in Illinois, in Wheaton, I think, and would take the train into Chicago once a week. And this kid had just the most irritating case of ADHD. I mean, absolutely. He was so annoying. No attention span.

And he was just, it was and I was, you know, I was also young and easily irritated. And I realized I needed to teach him how to sit still. I needed to teach him how to shut up. I needed like, I was just like, Darren, listen to me. And because of that, I thought I was going to teach him about how to design research approaches in order to address particular design problems. And I was like, Oh, I need to teach him how to just sit and listen to somebody, you know, and so we went all the way back like to basic, basic, basic, and even to the level of take a breath, watch the inhale, watch the exhale, what and then see who's watching it. What happens when you don't watch it? Like really basic mindfulness practice. And it was a beautiful summer.

Darren and I are still really close friends. I officiated his wedding recently. And we're he's just so dear to me. Like, he, he because of his persistence, and because of all of the trouble that he gave me as a student, what we did is the foundation of what I do now. Others Unlimited is based on an empathy training curriculum that I built for Darren.

Yeah.

And I'm, you know, I'm so grateful to him, you know, we've given each other a lot. So that is the behind the scenes answer to how it happened.

Yeah. And how do you think about empathy? How do you talk about empathy? I mean, this is an annoying definitional question. But I'm just curious how you talk about it.

I usually talk about it in a way that starts with, you're probably thinking of it wrong. I mean, I don't say those words. But most people when they're talking about empathy, they're actually talking about compassion. And I'm not talking about that. So compassion is really compassion is a is a byproduct of empathy practice. And it's a cool thing. I'm not against compassion. But I don't teach compassion for a couple of reasons.

Number one, compassion is almost always offered and inspired by suffering. And practicing empathy can be done with anyone, whether or not they are suffering. Compassion is primarily directed toward pain. Empathy doesn't require anyone to be hurt, which is great. The other thing is that compassion is often an emotional experience. And many people that I teach, for all kinds of reasons, including neurodiversity, do not necessarily feel that that is the easiest door to walk through. And so, for people who don't feel warm and fuzzy, or for people who don't feel or for people who don't even understand what you mean by feel, it's more accessible to teach it as a cognitive practice.

The other reason I don't teach compassion is because it can have moral implications, which, which then get into who deserves my compassion? Where should my compassion be directed? And frankly, f**k that. So I teach cognitive empathy practice, which is simply the practice of non-judgmental curiosity. This is and this is what ethnographic research is, non-judgmental curiosity and perspective taking. And those cognitive practices can be entered into by any person with any kind of mind.

They can also be offered to any person with any kind of mind. They don't require agreement with someone, I don't have to like you, I don't have to, I don't even have to wish you out of pain. I don't have to agree with you or even want to agree with you. But if I practice non-judgmental curious perspective taking, then I can at least understand you better, which may actually empower me to influence you, negotiate with you, manipulate you. Empathy practice as I teach it can be used for evil if you wish. It is, it is entirely amoral.

And most people that I speak to and most writing and speaking that I see about empathy does not approach it that way.

It approaches it more as compassion is what you're saying.

Yes.

And what, I mean, that's so much you said that I'm interested in following up on. I'm gonna, the first thing that comes to mind is that perspective taking, which reminded me of a paper I think I read by Nicholas Epley about perspective mistaking, you know, and he was making the case for getting perspective, right? As opposed to the practice, because I feel like, I guess I'm wondering the degree, like when people reach out to you, what are they asking? What problem are they asking you to solve? Like who comes to you and who do you want to help? And just in his, his, he was studying the difference, I guess, in a lot of organizations, I'm talking about the use of personas and I've heard for empathy, the empathy I've heard and read about empathy as being something one can do alone in thinking about somebody else. So you can have a persona, right? And you can just sort of imagine the experience of another person versus I think he goes, he, I think he called it perspective getting, you know what I mean? It was like, go ask them. You're going to be, you're going to get better. You're going to get better input if you ask the person as opposed to use this, this, this idea that empathy is, is imaginative and can be done all alone. And so I guess my question now that I've discovered what it actually is, is, is empathy something that one can do alone? And, or what do we call that? What is empathy in when you're actually interacting with another person?

Yeah. I just had to take a couple notes while you're talking. Cause you said like 15 trigger words to me, but I, I want to I think perspective getting is a really great reframe because it's active.

Yeah.

Perspective taking. Yeah. It, it, it, yeah. It's just, it's such a shuttle subtle shift, but it's really, that's really, really good. I love perspective getting and I like perspective of mistaking. So one of my, one of my little pet peeves is the concept of the empath, which is typically understood as a person with some kind of innate ability to perceive the feelings of other people, which is b******t. You can bleed that if you need to bleed that. It's, I understand the concept of someone who is energetically sensitive. I am energetically sensitive myself, but when the moment that I decide or believe that what I'm feeling is what you're feeling, I have completely erased you. I'm defining you in terms of me and I'm, I'm shutting down curiosity. And this is why, you know, a lot of us, the very common common attempt to empathize is that feeling when in a story, someone tells you something that you recognize and you say, me too, me too. Like I've had the same experience and, and, and, and that's also criticized highly. And I'm saying there's nothing wrong with doing that. But my thing that I say is if you think, you know, ask more questions till you don't just keep asking until you find how it's different. You're like, Oh yeah, your father died and you felt this way. My father died and I felt that way. Okay. Don't go. Yes, I know. And then stop, ask more questions until you find out how it's different. How is their experience unique from yours? That's what, that's what real perspective getting is when you, when you can acknowledge other other person's singularity, because it's not, yes, we have shared things and it's nice to share things, but when we just assume what I feel is what you feel, there's no curiosity and there's no real understanding.

Yeah. My, uh, I did, I interviewed this guy, Michael Lipson. And I remember he described that phenomenon as collapsing into oneself and that thing where you just sort of, and it's a closing. I really, really connect with your description of that. I am curious about what were the trigger words? What trigger words did I use then?

Oh, personas was a big one.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk, tell me about personas.

Oh, but also I wanted to get back to like, who comes to me and why they come to me because that's, well, that's related to personas actually. So can I start there?

Wherever you want to be.

Um, a lot of different kinds of people come to me. Uh, and so the answer to who comes to me and the answer to who I want to come to me are different, but, um, when let's, let's go ahead and start with like when an ideal client comes to me, that person is usually there, there are basically two different tracks of work that I do. One is on understanding customers, how, how a brand or a business can understand their audience. The other is internal. So how can our team collaborate, communicate better? So there's an external focused empathy and there's an internal focused empathy for a company.

And I can, um, I like to work in both ways. The, you know, secret spoilers that it's the exact same skillset. It's just like applied differently, but, um, and you can do one thing and actually get the side benefit of getting more, getting better at the other. So you can go in through either door and it kind of, they influence each other. It's really great. Uh, the, the truer, more honest and funny answer is that usually when someone comes to me, it's because a specific person in their company is, um, shitty and they're like, can you fix this person? And the answer is always no.

So someone comes to me because they're like, we have someone on our team who has the way that they say it is has no empathy. And, and I also don't like that. This is another trigger word for me is has no empathy. Like empathy is an object, like a noun that you have, or you don't have. And I, I insist that it's a, that a practice, that it's an active thing. It's something that you do or don't do. It's not something that you have or don't have. And when people say there's someone on our team or whatever that has no empathy. So we want you to come and fix it.

And, uh, and when I, when I'm feeling, you know, cheeky and confident, I usually kind of spend some time with that person to get them to realize that, um, if you think that someone refuses to empathize with you, you probably are also refusing to empathize with them. Probably because it's, if you did, if you were really practicing that you wouldn't, first of all, be as irritated by it because you'd understand more about what that person, why that person is behaving in the way that they're behaving. But the other thing is that, I mean, there's just very, this like really universal, universal to the degree of being cliche truth that you can't change anybody else. The only person that you can change is yourself. The only person who can practice is yourself.

I can't make anyone practice. And I, and I do say in the workshop too, that, you know, when we start to talk about the practice and I ask people to, to imagine, you know, if there, if there is, is there somebody in the room who you kind of hope is really paying attention right now? Because that person probably hopes you're paying attention. It's so real. It's like, you know, it's why AA and Al-Anon are almost the same program, you know, because the person who wants the person to change needs to do the same work.

I'm curious about how I feel like what you're doing is really making the invisible visible. And I guess you've talked about this in a way, like my experience is that when, at least I feel like that when it's done well, right, it becomes invisible, right? So I feel like clients have seen me work and they just think I'm super nice. You know what I mean? It just becomes like, I'm just a good guy who lets people talk about themselves. And so any kind of, any kind of skill set kind of just disappears and it becomes, gosh, that Peter, he's just an empathetic guy. He's got, he's so empathetic. You know what I mean? And so, but I feel like that causes real problems for organizations that want to learn because it's not something that seems real or that you can teach or that you can train or that you can turn into sort of a formal practice. And so I guess, how do you feel about, about that?

Yeah, there is the thing of, I think about that, that phrase, good design is invisible. It's like when it's done really well, it's, you know, when it's really frictionless, you don't notice it. And I think that sounds like a lot of what you're experiencing when, when you're doing the work, people just kind of assume that you're a wonderful person. Though, I will tell you that I did get a little gender bias resentment because I'm like, oh yeah, men always get praised when they don't act like total dicks. They're like, oh, you must be enlightened or amazing or really, really kind. Where no one says that about me. They just assume I'm a woman.

It's true. I benefit from a low bar.

Yeah, that's correct. But wait, what was the question?

I guess I was asking if you feel how, to what degree does the organization value empathy as a practice? And do you, is it difficult to make this kind of thing visible as a practice?

How do it's it's awkward, like making it visible has the clunkiness of, you know, frameworks with names and, and diagrams. And like, this is what that is called and we're doing this now. And even though that all those words are unnecessary constructs, they help a team to have a shared vocabulary for like, oh, I know what we're doing now because Karen taught us this tool. And that's what this is. That's what we're doing. And so giving the, giving the practice names and frameworks and, and, and that stuff is the way that it sort of makes it a little more concrete.

However, you know, for some, and I've gotten the comment a lot like, well, yeah, we can practice this right now. But in real life, you know, when we really have these conflicts or when, when the, when the real argument happens, that's not how it goes. And, or just because like, I'm practicing, but that person isn't responding the way that you, that you taught us to respond. So like, what do I, and, and so, you know, what I say about that is you don't practice like you play. And in the same way that a, that an athlete trains with all these other, other machinery and different, you know, different resistance bands and weights and like all the kinds of stuff that, that that's not on the field, you know, that's not in the game that we practice with very clunky tools.

And we're like, yeah, we're going to do it in an awkward way first, where we're going to go through step by step and do this in a, in a kind of way that feels unnatural and that feels, you know, inauthentic, but it's a practice. So we're going to practice through it. But then when you're in the game, who knows what's going to happen? You know, that someone could fly off the handle, someone could break down into tears. That's not a, you know, we didn't write that in the script. And so it's like, how do you handle this? And it's just the more practice you have, the more ability you, you gain to be able to improvise those tough moments.

Yeah. And what, what is happening? What, how do you know when your work is done? That's sort of a, sort of a two grand construction.

It is not done. It is never done.

Right.

I mean, that's bad news.

So, and I guess I'm, I'm selfishly laying on top of this conversation and your work, some of my own sort of questions about what is the actual value of qualitative? You know what I mean? Like the kinds of learned, what?

How dare you?

I know I'm, I'm just, I'm self-interested, but I'm, I'm curious, like what, how do you think about the value that you bring to an organization? I mean, this is in the context of, you know, big data, you know what I mean? LLMs, like everybody's just, they're just drink, they're drinking at the fire hose of quant data, right? And there's no, there isn't a framework for, for valuing, generally speaking, qualitative research or the kinds of understanding that it brings. And so I wonder how do you, what would you say? What's your sense of the difference between the kind of team or understanding that gets created when a team is, has empathy or has a practice of empathy versus a team that doesn't have a practice of empathy, that hasn't gone through a process of trying to learn how to understand or communicate with each other better?

This question really illuminates my, the conflict I have around being a business person with a, with a spiritual practice, because while I wouldn't really want my clients to hear me say this, I don't care what the value is monetarily. I know they do, and I can measure it for them sometimes. You know, I can tell you that if, if only one of your employees doesn't quit this year because of cultural problems or conflict, you will save probably $160,000 to $180,000, which is more than I charge. So, you know, so I'm like, I can tell you for the culture, just the attrition management benefit is very valuable.

For the, for the, for the product or the service or the brand or whatever it, whatever it is that you need to connect with your customer about, those benefits are so extremely valued, valuable, they're very difficult to measure because we're talking about developing brand loyalty or a customer really actually feeling cared about or caring about a brand in a way that is very, very difficult to measure over time. But some people do measure it. I just, I truly don't care enough, but there's a, but there's, you know, the other thing of just connecting deeper means making better products and also solving problems from a point of view of in a more integral way.

I give an example a lot. I use this contact lens solution called Clear Care, and it's the best one. If you wear contacts, it's the only contact lens solution that's worth a s**t. It cleans your contacts so well that you can keep the disposables for like six times as long as you're supposed to, because it really gets everything off of them. It does that because it has peroxide in it. You've got to leave it in the solution for six whole hours before you put them back in, or you'll burn the living s**t out of your eyes.

Now, I know this because I have done this. There are other rules too. Like if the case tips over or if something... There are so many different ways that you can make a mistake and burn your eyes very badly. I have done it so many times. I know I'm not the only one because every couple of years, they put another warning label on the bottle or on the box. This box and this bottle are just covered in red warning labels everywhere. The cap is red and everything's red. It's all just like, "This is so dangerous."

It's not working. Now, why is it not working? Well, this is a problem that is multifaceted. Number one, why are you sending this problem to graphic design when contact lens users definitively do not see well without their contacts? That's one thing. The other thing is, when am I doing this? Late at night when I'm really tired. This bottle is shaped exactly like, feels exactly like a bottle of saline, which is perfectly safe to pour directly into your eye.

There are so many design flaws with this solution, and so I ask, when I use this example when I'm teaching, I ask people, "What does this solution tell you about Clear Care's values?" Everyone knows immediately, they're only caring about protecting themselves from liability. They don't give a s**t if I hurt my eyes. They don't care. They just want to make sure that their ass is covered. So I tell people, your customer knows. Your design will rat you out. Your customer knows whether you care about them or whether you even know them.

Clear Care either doesn't know or doesn't care, but I know they know it's still happening because they keep making that bottle more red. For me, knowing your customer, learning about your customer, connecting with your customer, understanding why my customer is even my customer, what they care about, what they value, what they're afraid of, what matters to them, will change - should change - the way you do business, the way you solve problems, the way you market, the way you build solutions.

If and when you do that, the rewards, the loyalty from that, and the greater good of that are absolutely immeasurable. If you don't care about that, then honestly, I don't want to work with you anyway. I'm not here to measure that stuff. My clients are people that already know that it matters. For me, the value is not monetary. The value is unnameable, unutterable. That's why it scoots into the spiritual lane for me, because I do feel that what I'm teaching, practicing, and trying to share is truly unconditional love. I never say that to a client because usually it makes them sweaty. But that's what it is.

In what way is it unconditional love?

Well, I think that's what... They say that, what is it, 78% of atoms are space, right? It's like mostly space. We're mostly made of things that are mostly space. What's in that space? What's in there? I think it is the energy that makes things alive. And I think the energy that makes things alive is love. I do not believe that love is necessarily good or soft. I think that love can be quite harsh and brutal, like nature requires some violence, requires some decay. But for me, the life force and the love force are the same force.

And that force is, I think, what I feel kind of surge through me when I'm just in presence with someone. And that force is very powerful and very creative. And when you allow that force to come through, what you get is creative power. That's good for business. You know what I mean? And so, I know that when I speak about this, and I'm only speaking about this with you because you're you. And I might even, when you share this with people, I might get crossed off some lists, but I have to be honest about where I'm coming from.

I mean, some people want to solve symptoms. I want to go all the way. Some people want to build better products or make money better. I want to go all the way. I'm not interested in surface symptoms. I'm interested in what I do taps into an infinite source of power and creativity. And if you're interested in that, come on over. If not, do whatever f*****g s**t you're doing. I don't care.

This is like a hundred percent the reason why I wanted to talk to you. And I mean, I love that. I mean, that's just beautiful. And I agree and, and co-sign a hundred and a hundred percent on the idea and everything you've just said in particular, the idea of, I mean, creative power is really, really staggering. I mean, so much of this conversation series for me is, you know, trying to have other people tell me why, what I do is, is useful. Do you know what I mean? And because it is such a strange time and there are so many other easier ways that organizations can go about trying to get creative or be creative or learn or understand. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's a beautiful articulation and I totally agree. It's wonderful.

Thanks. I wish I had the, I remember long ago, like hearing some kind of, I don't even know if it's true, but some like kind of business lore stories about people kind of offering their services for free and just being like, you know what, in a year pay me what it was worth to you.

Right.

And, and I, you know, the story, the legends that I hear are like, oh, and then it was worth $5 million or whatever. And I would love to have the confidence and financial flexibility to be able to do that. And maybe one day I will, but I would love to just tell a client, let me do what I do. And then, then you tell me because I promise you it won't be unnoticeable.

Yeah. That's interesting.

But I don't, I don't like math a lot, so.

I mean, I think we both sort of got lost in the pause of the, of the, the non-mathematic trying to imagine a contract that would make that real. I'm trying to think what else I want to talk to you about. What do you love about the work? I feel like it's all you've been talking about, but where's the joy in it for you?

Where isn't it? I mean, the joy is my kind of standard Empathy 101 workshop that I start everybody with. It involves putting people in pairs and giving them some techniques to sort of interview one another. It's not the right word, but it's a little bit shorthand. And when they practice this with each other, I ring the little bell when it's time to stop and they look back at me and their faces are open and bright. Some of them have tears in their eyes and some of them are grinning and some of them are laughing and some of them are just stunned and that's it.

When I'm like, "Oh, they did it," that's what it looks like when you look someone in the eye and you connect with them. And it's not, I don't do it in a weird, spooky way where there's forced eye contact. It's not that. I just have them listen to each other. Just pay attention, pay attention to someone for a few minutes without interjecting yourself and really just open yourself to receiving whatever they might have to offer. And then also reverse that and get the experience of that happening.

And then they look back at me and it's even more profound when I do it on Zoom. Because we come back out of the breakout rooms and I have a whole screen full of faces that are all just like, "Oh, it just happened." And I'm like, "Yeah." I'm not allowed to say so in my professional life, but that's love. They just experienced love. And for me, that's what it is.

And unconditional love is really cool because so many people celebrate romantic love, which is honestly the shittiest kind. It's super conditional. Unconditional is so great because it's limitless and able to exchange with anyone, and so surprising. Everyone's always stunned because they're like, "I don't even, I'm not attracted to this person. I don't like this person. I have nothing to gain from this person. And I kind of would die for them right now." You know, it's just like, "What?" It's like, "Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is."

Cool. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. And, uh, I really appreciate you accepting the invitation. It's been a lot of fun. So thank you. Yeah.

Thanks for being willing to hear all of this.

Oh, absolutely. Oh my gosh. It's great.

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