What Does It Mean to Be Human?

👋 Hi friends,

Big question, isn’t it?

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

I’m not sure if there’s one answer. I’m curious to know what comes to your mind.

What I’ve heard so far is a range of differentiators…

“Humans are capable of hope”

“Humans can stand upright on two legs”

“Humans are aware that someday they will die.”

“Humans are capable of love.”

“Humans have compassion”

Back in the day, I would have ventured that empathy was the thing separating us from other species but scientists have found that many other species exhibit forms of empathy.

This topic has come up from my friend and fellow empathy leader Maria Ross. Maria has written two books on empathy in the workplace and regularly speaks and coaches executives. She also has a podcast, now in its 6^th year, The Empathy Edge. We’ve been looking for ways to collaborate and have decided to create a limited podcast “sub-series” on her Empathy Edge podcast.  We will be going deep into this issue and look at the different aspects of what it means to be human, especially in the age of AI.

It’s in part a follow-up to the last edition of this newsletter and how emotional intelligence isn’t available within AI’s programming. And I’m not really sure it can be. Which raises the question – if something is making decisions for us without feeling the emotional weight of the decision - what does that mean for us?

Whether it’s a quick reaction or a longer paragraph, Maria and I would like to hear your thoughts on “what does it mean to you to be human?”

Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or email me rob@robvolpe.expert.

Thanks in advance, I look forward to hearing from you! (And I’ll be sure to share the podcast mini-series when it drops later this spring!)

My Kind of Town?

I got to spend the week in Chicago for the recent Quirk’s Chicago marketing research conference. It was super awkward and uncomfortable being back at the hotel where the slip and fall happened a year ago, breaking my kneecap. The lobby space seemed a lot smaller on this visit but then I realized the last time I had seen it I was lying flat on my back having just fallen.

What was wonderful was seeing so many friendly, caring faces and getting to catch up. For some reason I rarely take selfies with my colleagues at Dig but I hope to change that at the next show. Here are some of the many faces (some of whom are regular readers of this newsletter – thank you!) I got to spend time with.

Great seeing friendly faces in Chicago, pt 1…

More friendly faces in Chicago, pt 2

Lots of familiar faces in Chicago, pt 3

And Charles joined and we got to spend a couple days with close friends exploring Chicago.

Most of the week felt like a warm hug, which was exactly what I needed.

We got photo bombed by the guy in the third row in the black tee! LOL

I think part of being human is the chosen community we are able to curate. Beyond immediate family, we form bonds with people where we have something in common. Whether professional or personal or that blurry transition from one to the other and the in-between, your chosen family is where you feel safe, secure and seen. And know that they have your back.

The center of The Bean at Millennium Park

The Yawn Felt Around the World

You may have noticed in the last issue my obsession with the Artemis II moon mission. It intensified as the week went on and I left NASA’s You Tube stream up on the TV for all my waking hours. Two days before splashdown, on the return to Earth, I happened to witness Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen yawning in the capsule. 

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen letting out a yawn.

And it made me yawn.

From 175,000 miles away. 

That couldn’t be right.

I backed the stream up and rewatched it.

I yawned again.

A third time and I pulled out my phone to record it, made a short video and posted it to various social media, explaining in the caption how this is an example of an involuntary empathic response. Our mirror neurons are activating. We see someone yawn and it prompts us to yawn. Similar to emotional empathy when we are feeling what someone else is feeling.

On Instagram, my post went viral.

Instagram post

Well, maybe semi-viral, it’s at 212k views, which for me, is a lot.

(and if you aren’t on Instagram, here’s the video on You Tube Shorts)

And then the comments started.

It’s a range of people affirming they yawned too, and others doubting that Artemis II was even happening, claiming it’s a Hollywood green screen.

That got me thinking about self-righteous anger and righteous indignation, what sets people off and how we can react to it (or not). I’ve been doing some research on that so stay tuned for an upcoming edition. And of course I welcome your thoughts and experiences too.

Thursday’s a Milestone

April 30 I have a second surgery on my knee to get the hardware taken out. Hopefully it goes well and they are able to take out the plate, six screws and four pins that were used to hold everything together.

I will admit I’ve been experiencing some anxiety about it. From the coordination of all the pre-op clearance appointments, nested in between business trips and just the usual fear of the unknown.

Someone said to me recently they gained an appreciation of being under for a procedure because it is the one time when no one can really reach you. As the person who sent some work emails in the middle of the night after my first surgery last year (I was in the hospital, couldn’t sleep, was restless and didn’t know what else to do so that seemed like a good idea in the moment), I could relate to that.

What’s probably helped me most with easing my anxiety occurred during a lunch with longtime clients in Seattle. They asked me “what’s new” and the surgery is the biggest thing in my life at the moment, so I shared the journey and my worries.

Then, one of the clients, Laura, pointed out that I was really going into an assembly line at the surgical center and will probably be the 5^th surgery of the day out of 7. It was a good reminder that even though something is new or rare for me, there are experts to be trusted who have done this plenty of times.

What I am looking forward to is having some chocolate pudding once I get home Thursday afternoon!

After surgery April 11, 2025, enjoying some chocolate pudding. Sometimes it’s the little things.

In Chicago, I felt seen by my chosen community; across 175,000 miles of space I felt connected through a yawn; and now, facing surgery, I’m leaning into trust while pondering the big existential question of what it means to be human. It may be exactly all that.

Again, I’d love to hear from you on that or any other empathy-related topic. Drop a comment below or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

And if you know someone who would enjoy Reading Between the Lines or will have an opinion to share on the humanity question, please forward it to them.

Till next time!

Stay curious. Ask good questions. Let empathy follow.

-Rob

🌝 The Moon or the Swamp?

👋 Hi friends,

On Wednesday April 1, 2026, four humans left Earth.

Reid Wiseman. Victor Glover. Christina Koch. Jeremy Hansen.

The first Black astronaut, the first woman, and the first non-American (a Canadian) to travel outside Earth's orbit to the moon nearly fifty-four years after Apollo 17 left the lunar surface.

Watch the Artemis II launch footage and ongoing coverage if you haven't. It moved me to tears.

Four human beings are now hurtling toward the moon thanks to a rocket built by thousands of people across dozens of countries, all of them choosing to do something extraordinary together.

That is us. That is what we are capable of when we choose to work together.

And then there is everything else happening at the same time.

Same Night. Same Planet. Same Species.

As you are probably aware, we in the US and Israel are in a war that’s now well into its second month. Leaders made decisions with apparent certainty that it would be swift and surgical. It has been neither.

Offensive missiles and the resulting retaliatory strikes have struck civilian areas in Iran and neighboring Middle East countries. A US strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab killed more than 170 people, most of them schoolgirls.

The students in Minab who were killed did not vote for this war. They did not lobby for it. They did not have a seat at any table outside of their classroom or their home. But decisions made by people who were certain they knew best often have the most devastating of consequences.

That is also us.

 The Grief of Disillusionment

Meanwhile, the Epstein files continue their slow release into public view. The Navigating to a New Normal research participants, those US adults we have been talking with since the pandemic, revealed something striking and I’d appreciate hearing your perspective on this. (email me: rob@robvolpe.expert).

It is not just outrage they feel. As Ricardo, a Hispanic man in his mid-70s here in Northern California told me: What we've always said for years and years, especially us from the streets and poor poverty communities… behind the rich and famous's closed doors, there's all kinds of secrets.

No one was terribly surprised that there is a different set of rules for the wealthy and powerful. But the disregard for the social contract is cutting deeper than anger.

It’s unveiling the grief of disillusionment.

This form of grief is arriving from different directions for people. One participant, Kelsey, a white woman now living in small town Maine, has built her career on the belief that working hard within the system would be enough. She told me the files made her ask:

Another participant, Dajon, a Black man from Phoenix, who had known for years that the world operated this way, wasn't shocked. He described it as more enraging than anything as it reminded him of the loss of a close friend’s sister to sex trafficking and then his friend’s disappearance six months after that friend began investigating her death. 

All of the participants are experiencing grief. A creeping, disorienting grief about the society they thought they lived in. The realization that the system they believed in has been protecting the wrong people all along.

What This Week Is Asking of Us

Here is something worth pausing on this Easter morning.

Passover began on Wednesday April 1, the same night Artemis II launched. Easter is today, April 5.  

Passover is the story of liberation from bondage. A people being crushed by imperial power, freed through something greater than that power. “You were once strangers in a strange land.”

Easter is the story of a man who healed the sick, defended the condemned, touched the untouchable, and fed the hungry and was then executed by the state. And then rose. In Christian theology, the resurrection is the ultimate reversal: the one the empire humiliated is the one who endures. The powerful were certain they had won. They were wrong.

Both of them, in their different ways, asking the same thing.

What do you do with power? Whose suffering do you allow yourself to see? Who counts as your neighbor?

The Hubris Problem

There is a pattern worth naming.

In June 2023, I wrote about the loss of the Titan submersible. OceanGate's CEO had dismissed safety certifications as obstacles to innovation. Paying passengers became de facto test pilots on a vessel that had never been properly certified. Five people died.

I called it textbook hubris then. The belief that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to you. That the innovation — or the objective, or the ideology — justifies the risk to others. That you already know.

I keep returning to that piece now. Because hubris, it turns out, is not one thing. It has at least three faces. And once you see them, you can’t unsee it.

The first is hubris that destroys the hubristic. The Titan's CEO was certain the safety certifications were unnecessary. He paid for that certainty with his life, alongside the passengers who trusted him. There is a grim, classical logic to it, almost Greek in its shape. The person who believed the rules didn't apply to him was not insulated from the consequences. The fall and the hubristic are the same person. 

The Titan submersible.

The second is hubris that destroys the distant and powerless. A leader who launches a war with confidence it will be swift and surgical and finds himself five weeks in with schoolchildren dead and a global oil crisis, never imagined the schoolgirls of Minab or the masses in his own country. In this hubris, the decision-makers and the consequence-bearers are entirely different populations. The certainty is held at the top. The price is paid at the bottom.

Minab school bombing: how the worst mass casualty event of the Iran war unfolded – a visual guide

A strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school during the US-Israeli bombing campaign killed up to 168 people. The Guardian has pieced together the incident and its aftermath using verified footage and images from the site

the Guardian

The third is the most chilling. It is hubris as deliberate architecture. This is the Epstein model. This is not overreach or miscalculation. It is the systematic construction of impunity: a network built specifically to exploit the powerless, protected by the mutual complicity of other powerful men and women, engineered to last. The predation is not a byproduct of hubris. It is the point. And the disregard for the social contract it represents -- the revelation that the people at the top of our institutions were operating by entirely different rules is producing something the N2NN research participants named clearly. Grief. And outrage.

After the release of the Epstein files, why have there been so few arrests?

Legal experts tell NPR five possible reasons that, despite the accusations made against rich and powerful people in the files, the DOJ has made no additional arrests. The big one? Lack of evidence.

NPR

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner has spent decades documenting what he calls the paradox of power: the qualities that help people rise, including empathy, social attunement, the genuine desire to make a difference for others, are precisely what the experience of holding power erodes. The higher you climb, the more the instrument that got you there degrades.

The question that sits underneath all three faces of hubris for leaders, for institutions, for all of us  is the same one every religious tradition observing something sacred this month is asking in its own way.

Who do you think you are?

And who is paying for that answer?

The Hubris We Are Building Right Now

Hubris has a fourth face and we are cultivating it on server farms across the United States.

There is a documentary in theaters called The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. An apocaloptimist looks at the full range of what's possible, all the promise and all the peril, and chooses to act anyway. That’s the posture this moment requires.

Striking an optimist and pessimist attitude. Somehwere in between is the apocaloptimist.

The promises of the current AI are real and extraordinary, from assisted medical diagnosis, personalized education, collaboration on research to scientific breakthroughs that could extend human life by decades. I believe in that. But that’s not where AI ends.

Here is the thread that runs from OceanGate to Minab to Epstein's island to those data centers humming quietly in cities near you.

The people building Artificial General Intelligence rose to the position of building it through exactly the qualities Keltner describes: curiosity, collaboration, vision, a genuine desire to solve problems for humanity. And now, in the act of holding that power, perhaps the most extraordinary power any humans have ever held, the power to create a new form of intelligence, to make something in our own image, the Paradox of Power kicks in. The project starts to feel more important than the people it is supposedly for. The scale of the ambition crowds out the empathy that inspired it.

Every society humanity has built has a story about this moment. Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. The Tower of Babel reaching toward heaven. The warnings are not against ambition itself. They are against ambition without wisdom. Against the reach for divine power in the absence of divine accountability.

We are attempting to create something in our own image. But we are not logical creations. We are emotional ones. And we do not yet fully understand what that means.

What are we building? This discussion between Kara Swisher and Tristan Harris of The Center for Humane Technology is worth a listen.

What we are building with AI is extraordinary at logic, pattern recognition, and output. What it does not have and what it seems no one is seriously trying to give it is the capacity for genuine compassion. Emotional intelligence is not an upgrade to add later. It is the feature in our own human coding that makes us trustworthy to each other. It is what makes the difference between a doctor who sees a patient and one who only sees a diagnosis. Between justice and mere legal process. Between a leader who feels the weight of sending people to war and one who doesn't.

We are encoding our logic. We are not encoding our lived wisdom and emotions.

And if Keltner's paradox holds — if the very experience of holding this much power degrades the empathy that made the project worth doing in the first place — then the question is not only what we are building. It is whether the people building it can still feel the weight of who they are building it for.

The Titan's CEO skipped the safety certifications. He was certain.

What Empathy Has to Do With All of This

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David French, a conservative Christian wrote about something spreading through American evangelical Christianity: the idea that empathy itself is a sin. That feeling compassion for migrants, for the poor, for the vulnerable, is a form of manipulation Christians must resist.

A great read by David French about the misrepresentation of empathy by cultural conservatives.

The rejection of empathy is not just a theological position. It is, whether its proponents recognize it or not, the permission structure that allows all three faces of hubris to operate without friction.

When Keltner's paradox erodes empathy in those who hold power, that is a tragedy.

When empathy is then reframed as sin for everyone else, that is a system.

The powerful, having lost their own capacity for compassion, are now actively working to eliminate it in others.

French's response, and mine, is that the problem is never too much empathy. The problem is selective empathy. We feel deeply for people like us and almost nothing for people who aren't.

The solution is not less compassion. It is more empathy, applied more consistently, to more people.

The first of my 5 Steps to Empathy is Dismantle Judgment.

It means pausing before you render a verdict, before you decide you already know…and asking what you don't know. What shaped this person? What it might feel like to be them?

Dismantling Judgment is not a passive act. It is a discipline. And in this particular moment, it is also a form of defiance — a refusal to have your compassion managed out of you by people who benefit from your indifference.

Extend it to the disillusioned, who have stopped trusting institutions because the Epstein files confirmed what they feared.

Extend it to the Iranian civilians and the Israeli families and every ordinary person caught in the crossfire of someone else's certainty.

Extend it to yourself. Because people who care may decide that hope is for people who haven’t been paying attention.

Don't keep it bottled up.

The Choice

On Wednesday night, while four astronauts were beginning their journey to the moon, President Trump addressed the nation about the Iran war.

Both things happened. On the same night. On the same planet. By the same species.

The question in front of all of us, not just leaders, all of us, is the same question every religious tradition observing something sacred this month is asking.

Who do we want to be?

I choose the moon. Who’s with me?

Three Things to Carry Into This Week

Ask the harder question. When you find yourself reacting to a person or a situation with quick judgment, about Iran, about the Epstein files, about AI, about the behavior of the person in front of you… pause. Ask what you don't know about how they got here. You don't have to agree. You just have to get curious.

Say something about AI.  Speak up in your company, your community, your elected representatives. Ask what values and safeguards are being built into the systems being developed. Ask who is accountable if they get it wrong. The people in those rooms are making decisions for all of us. We are allowed, we are obligated to have a voice. 

Let this week's convergence mean something. Easter or Passover, if you observe either of these traditions, let this be the year you take seriously and put into action what the traditions are actually asking. If you don't, the message is the same: every society humanity has built, across centuries and cultures, centers compassion as the measure of a life. Not certainty. Not power. Compassion.

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. And to everyone — happy spring.

Stay curious. Ask good questions. Let empathy follow.

-Rob

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 Visit My Website or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

128 Million Stories All Happening at Once

It was this past December, and I was driving through a neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, on my way to an in-home interview.

I was looking at the houses. Just ordinary houses like you find in most ordinary neighborhoods. And I had a thought: “how did this neighborhood handle the pandemic?”

Not just the neighborhood as a community. Each house. Each family or roommate situation or person living alone inside each one. What were their rules? Did they wear masks? Did they see their parents? What social bubbles did they form? Did their kids go to school or stay home? Did that house lose someone?

Every house has similarities and differences to our own lived experiences, and it can be challenging to overcome our cognitive biases to understand that. I wrote about this in my book. In Tell Me More About That, I asked readers to visualize their own home — then the homes of close family members and friends they might visit often. Then zoom out further:

(There are nearly 134 million households now. We keep growing.)

Arriving at the respondent’s house for the interview, I felt the scale of that number all over again. One neighborhood. Dozens of houses. Dozens of different pandemic experiences happening simultaneously, side by side, behind closed doors. Even within households there were stark differences. We may have shared a lived experience but the effect of that experience is playing out differently in each one of us.

Is it any wonder we feel even more fragmented as a society?

Socially distanced, lined up outside a San Francisco Safeway, early April 2020.

The pandemic you had may not be the pandemic I had.

March 2020 brought life as we knew it to a halt. The commute disappeared. The calendar emptied. Time stretched out in ways that were both disorienting and, for some, unexpectedly clarifying. People baked bread. People took walks. People sat with themselves in ways they hadn't in years, if ever.

Not everyone had that pandemic experience. For some, the pandemic accelerated life. Front line workers were asked to continue to show up to support their communities. And corporate America quickly adapted their meetings to virtual platforms. Bedroom corners were the new office cubicles.

My pandemic also looked different. How about yours?

I was leading Ignite 360, a qualitative research firm, and the work didn't stop. It felt like we went into overdrive. I was on Zoom calls from eight in the morning until six at night, meeting with colleagues, clients and counterparts in the industry as we figured out how to keep the company alive, solving the problems of how to do empathy-building deep learning from a remote desk without sacrificing the quality we were known for.

I was getting 1,500 steps in each day, which reflected the repeated trips between my desk and the kitchen and the occasional pit-stop in the mid-point bathroom.

Jennifer, a Navigating to a New Normal participant, showing up — goat and all. 2020.

And I launched Navigating to a New Normal — a longitudinal study in which our team conducted ongoing interviews with everyday Americans throughout the pandemic and beyond, tracking how people were coping, changing, adapting to the world around them. Six years in, that study is still running under Dig Insights, who acquired Ignite 360 in 2024.

Those weekly interviews kept me sane. They gave me perspective on what was happening to people across the country, unfiltered and unedited. Together we processed what was happening to them which in turn helped me process what I was experiencing.

What kept you grounded during those first months of lockdown?

 ---

The word that keeps coming to me is uncertainty.

Not just the uncertainty of those early weeks and months; “is this airborne, how long does it last on surfaces, what exactly is a close contact?” but a deeper, lasting uncertainty that settled into our nervous systems and hasn't fully left.

Life upended in an instant. And then it kept upending. Rules that changed. Guidance that contradicted itself. Leaders who asked us to do things and other leaders who told us those things were overreach. Neighbors who were careful and neighbors who weren't. The definition of “careful” or “risky behavior” during the pandemic were debated.

We were often surprised at the reactions of people we thought we knew, persuaded by content, to act in ways opposite of our own. The familiar became foreign.

And all of that layered on top of a political era of chaos that didn't end when the restrictions did.

Did we ever resolve that sense of uncertainty and the emotions that it brings up? This pandemic-era piece from Greater Good on coping with uncertainty remains relevant.

I am particularly struck and inspired by this line: “The opposite of uncertainty isn’t certainty; it’s presence.”

--

“How did the pandemic change your life?”

I’m fascinated by the answers to this question. There are at least 128 million of them. That’s what happens when an existential crisis is presented to everyone all at once.

We moved forward. But we didn't return to normal. We evolved into something new.

For some, life changed so significantly — new homes, new families, new careers — that the before-times feel unrecognizable. I’ve heard of family rifts that have yet to mend and may never heal. Some took careers in new directions. For others, certain behaviors stuck in ways that still surprise them: heightened awareness of germs, a hesitance to commit to travel plans, a preference for staying home that they didn't have before.

And still others find it hard to point to anything that changed. Their lives look the same on the outside today as they did in 2019.

All of it is valid. All of it is real. For the 128 million households that lived through the pandemic.

So, what changed in your life?

--- 

There is loss here. It deserves to be named.

Some of us lost people. People who were in our lives who are no longer here. That loss of 1.24 million people (and counting) in the US to Covid-19 is woven into this anniversary in ways that don't require elaboration.

But there is another kind of loss that is harder to articulate. The loss of a version of ourselves. Of a past life that existed before March 2020. Of a way of moving through the world that we didn't know we'd miss until it was gone.

You can't grieve what you can't name. So let me try to name it:

We lost the assumption of continuity. The quiet confidence that next month would more or less resemble this month. That plans could be made and kept. That the world was, if not safe, at least reasonably predictable. There was a certain stability to our lives that we could rely on.

And we haven't fully gotten that back. Some of us have made peace with not getting it back. Others are still waiting for the feeling to return.

And still others may not yet realize it was gone in the first place.

There were 128 million households after all.

I am somewhere in the middle. It depends on the day and my mood. And I'm learning that might be okay.

---

On letting go — the second ending.

This month, I began transitioning away from moderating on the Navigating to a New Normal project.

Six years of conversations with everyday Americans about how they were coping. Six years of sitting with their stories, their fears, their resilience, their contradictions. It was, in a very real way, my lifeline during the pandemic — a way of making sense of something enormous by listening to the people living through it alongside me.

I held onto it fiercely. More fiercely than was always rational. When my leadership team would suggest we pull back, I would get emotional. I wasn't just protecting a research program. I was protecting something that protected me.

Now, as part of the transition to Dig Insights, I am letting it go. With complicated feelings. With gratitude. With the recognition that transitions require release.

This, for me, is a second ending of the pandemic. And I’m still figuring out how to honor it.

What might you be holding onto from the pandemic-era that could be released?

 --

It's worth noting that this issue lands near the Spring Equinox. It’s the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, and the start of Aries season for those of you who pay attention to such things. There's something fitting about that.  The dark and light are equal at Spring Equinox, and from here the light grows. The pandemic didn't end cleanly and our healing won't either. But the season is turning. That counts for something.

--

The Guinness that waited.

I want to tell you about a bottle of Guinness.

I first made Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake in February 2025. It was extraordinary. Dense and moist and intensely chocolatey, with a richer depth from the stout and a cream cheese frosting that Nigella decorated in her cookbook photography to look like the pale head on a freshly poured pint. I wanted to make it again almost immediately.

Then, a couple months later, I broke my kneecap. My niece was visiting to help with my recovery and more than ready to help in the kitchen. We bought some Guinness, tucking it downstairs waiting for its purpose. But I couldn't muster the energy to be in the kitchen and coach her through the recipe. So, the Guinness stayed downstairs. Waiting.

This past week, I finally made the cake again.

St. Patrick's Day. My yoga instructor Katy came to the house. She and my husband Charles and I sat together after yoga and each had a slice. There were "oh my god that's good" reactions. There may have even been a second slice for some of us. The cake is dense and rich enough that a little goes a long way but the “musty” must-have-some-more feeling is hard to resist.

Baking is one of the pleasures of my life. Not just the outcome, the warm thing that comes out of the oven and makes the people you love say oh my god, but the process. When I bake, my brain settles into a kind of focused presence. Thoughts float through. I'm not actively solving anything. I'm just making something. Researchers would call it a flow state. The part of the brain that ruminates gets quiet. New ideas surface. It's more reflective than analytical.

I didn't get to bake sourdough bread in 2020 like everyone else. I finally made a crusty artisan bread in fall 2023, when I stepped back from the CEO role at Ignite 360 and gave myself time to exhale. By then, three years had passed. I didn't have FOMO exactly. I just knew I had missed something.

Domino had opinions about the frosting. And the photography.

The Chocolate Guinness Cake, on St. Patrick's Day 2026, was not about catching up. It was about presence. It was about finally having the energy and the space and the right moment to connect. It was about the Guinness that waited patiently in the garage, the friend coming over, and the pleasure of making something beautiful with your hands and sharing it with people you love.

My pandemic may not be completely over in a psychological sense. But that bottle of Guinness with some sugar, flour, chocolate and a warm oven are a pretty good place to start.

(Want to make it yourself? Here's Nigella's recipe: Chocolate Guinness Cake

---

Before we close — two quick things.

If the uncertainty of this pandemic reflection feels familiar in other parts of your life, I'd point you back to our recent issue on coping with the news cycle. The tools in that piece apply here too.

How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind, or Your Empathy

A guide for Highly Sensitive People — and honestly, for all of us right now

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-stay-informed-without-losing-your-mind

And I keep hearing from people about the micromanager having empathy piece in the last issue. Private messages. Quiet acknowledgments. One person, when I suggested they share it with someone who might need it, replied — jokingly, but not — "To all of corporate America?"

Exactly.

Do Micromanagers Have Empathy? And Other Things Keeping Me Up at Night

News addiction, micro-managers, International Women's Day, and the radical act of basic human decency. A lot to carry. Let's do it together.

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/do-micromanagers-have-empathy-and-other-things-keeping-me-up-at-night

---

A reflection for you — six questions to sit with:

You don't have to answer these out loud. You don't have to share them. But sit with them. That's where the healing starts.

1. What word would you use to describe what you're still carrying from the pandemic?

2. What did you lose? A person, habit, assumption, maybe a version of yourself, that you haven't fully grieved?

3. What behavior changed for you during that time that you're glad stuck?

4. What is something like a small pleasure, a ritual, a thing you've been meaning to do, that's been waiting patiently, like that bottle of Guinness?

5. Think of something that you’ve been holding onto. What would it mean for you to let it go?

6. What is one small thing, entirely within your control, that you could do this week that would feel like an act of presence rather than catching up on a to do list?

And then, do the thing.

Uncertainty thrives in the abstract. It lives in the space between what we know and what we can't predict, and it grows when we stay in our heads. One of the most reliable ways to quiet it, even briefly, is to do something tangible. Something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Bake something. Plant something. Write one page. Call someone you've been meaning to call. Take a walk somewhere you've never been. Make the thing you've been putting off until the perfect moment. That right moment is now.

The nervous system responds to completion. Give it one this week. 

Until next time — Stay curious. Ask good questions. Let empathy follow.

--- 

Want more?

- 📖 Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time — the book, wherever you buy books, in all the formats, including author-narrated audio!

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Reading Between the Lines is published biweekly. You're receiving this because you signed up at readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com.

 Visit My Website or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

👋 Hi friends!

Lots to cover this week. Please take a moment to click on 1440 Media’s ad up above. There’s no obligation to buy but the more clicks I get on the ad, the more it helps this “new revenue stream” as my friend Elizabeth recently called it. No obligation to do anything but you may find the “just the facts” approach refreshing in this opinion-heavy news world.

(the video version, complete with my congested voice thanks to a slight head cold)

Happy International Women's Day!

This year's United Nations theme is "Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls." And while the world has a long way to go on that front, today I want to pause and acknowledge something a little more personal.

Looking back at my early career, I was shaped almost entirely by women.

All the managers I’ve had in my career, sorted by gender. I learned something different from each of them but noticed a theme early on.

Nancy, Kathy, Nati, and Candy were four of my earliest managers, in office jobs I had in high school and college. Each of them, in her own way, taught me the same essential lesson: take the work seriously, but don't take it all so seriously. That balance, between caring deeply and not losing yourself in the process, turns out to be one of the most useful things anyone ever taught me about working with other people.

It showed up later in London, at CNN, when a producer named Helen told a colleague that I was good to work with because I "didn't get my knickers in a twist." Coming from a seasoned news producer, that felt like the highest possible praise.

These women modeled empathy in action long before I had a name for it.

So, here is my question for you today: who are the women who shaped how you work, lead, or show up for others? I would love to hear a name and one thing they gave you. Hit reply and tell me.

And if you have daughters, nieces, students, or young women in your orbit today, tell them about someone who shaped you. Pass it forward this International Women’s Day!

A Radical Act?

A few weeks ago I saw a post from my friend Minette Norman featuring an awesome hat that said “Radicalized by Basic Human Decency.” Maria Ross and I instantly responded “where did you get that?”

It was produced by Sharon McMahon. Maria and I each ordered one and we put this photo collage together.

l to r: Maria, Minette and Rob show off their “radical” hats

It also got us thinking. When did treating people with basic human decency become a radical act?

Here is a small challenge for this week. Next time you are out shopping or with any service provider, ask them how their day is going. Then ask one follow-up question.

Try it with a colleague you do not know well. Get curious about the answer.

That is it. That is the whole ask. 🙏🏽

Seeing and hearing the people in front of us, regardless of race, gender, political affiliation, class, or any of the other ways we get divided into us and them, is not radical. It is just human. And it is where empathy starts.

If that makes us radicals, we are good with it. 

Confessions of a News Addict

As the current war in Iran began, I found myself turning once again to the news, hunting for the latest developments. Nearly every day this has happened. After 10 minutes, I would realize there’s no breaking development that I don’t already know about, yet the stress that I feel building up inside me isn’t doing me any good. Time to turn it off and put the phone away.

Hi, my name is Rob, and I’m a news addict.

Since I was a kid, I’ve always tried to stay informed of current events.  The morning newspaper was fodder for breakfast conversation. I studied journalism at Syracuse’s Newhouse School and was a news reporter for one of the local student-run stations, including during the aftermath of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. There I was, a journalism student reporting on a terror attack that involved my own school. It was my first experience with news-as-trauma. (I wrote about it in more detail in Tell Me More About That if you want the full story.)

A year later, I interned at CNN’s London bureau during college (which set the stage for one of my biggest regrets and missed opportunities – a story for another time), and today, some of my friends work in local and national news. Even my career in marketing research I think of as part journalism part consultant/advisor since I was going out to uncover how people think, feel and behave and report back to my clients about it and what they should do as a result.

It’s like the news is in my blood. I want to stay up to date and stay informed.

But even the most serious news addict has limits. Living in NYC during 9/11, I ended up an eyewitness to more than I was comfortable with. When it’s happening live in front of you, you can’t turn it off. In my search for knowledge about why this happened, who did this and what were we going to do about it in the weeks that followed, rewatching that morning’s events felt like living it all over again.

Twenty-five years later, I find I’m less able to engage with current events the way I used to. It turns out there is a name for what I’m experiencing. The cumulative effect of watching traumatic events in the media (social, traditional or otherwise) and in particular watching the news can heighten the impact of a trauma event, according to landmark research led by E. Alison Holman at UC-Irvine.

This is recognized as Secondary Traumatic Stress and it’s in the DSM-5 as a contributor to PTSD. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who’s experiencing this as the research shows.

I probably first started feeling STS in 2017. The first Trump administration was in power and I started to feel the information overload and had to make some changes to protect my nervous system.

Like many, I kept finding I would get distracted with the “what now?” thoughts at every (unbelievable to me) news alert that year, which led me into a stress spiral searching for more and more crumbs of information.

If knowledge is power, then staying informed meant staying in control. And if I was in control, everything would be ok. Right?

This thirst for facts definitely got in the way of my work productivity and also being able to keep feelings of anxiety under control.

I had to toggle the news notifications on my devices to “off”.  But I didn’t cut the cord. I kept my subscriptions and dedicated time to reading multiple news outlets and watching the news on TV until I couldn’t take it anymore. Soon even the TV had to be limited to 30 minutes of World News.

‘Stay informed without becoming overwhelmed’ has been my mantra.

It has helped me through the pandemic, January 6, California wildfires and many other breaking news crises. (Although if I see that “breaking news” banner on CNN one more time… If everything is breaking news, is anything really breaking news?)

Here’s what I’m realizing…

No matter where you score on the Highly Sensitive Person self-assessment test, repeated exposure to harrowing news builds up like a toxin in your nervous system.

The coping skills I suggested recently, notably, to “Think Colander” and keep only the information you really need while letting the excess energy wash away, are even more useful in these times of crisis as well as every day.

I know I’ve been repeating “Think Colander” to myself this past week.

Here’s the link to that edition in case you missed it the first time.

How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind, or Your Empathy

A guide for Highly Sensitive People — and honestly, for all of us right now

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-stay-informed-without-losing-your-mind

I also realize that I’ve written about other aspects of this that may be useful. We all play different roles in our lives. For when you are a leader, of a team, an organization or a household, you may find these tips useful in helping your people navigate. It’s inevitable that some people bring the news into work or around the dinner table. Helping them navigate and making space for that is a sign of a good 21^st -century leader.

When the World Feels Like Too Much to Bring to Work

How leaders can support their teams after violence, fear, and deeply unsettling news.

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/world-feels-like-too-much

And for those struggling with where to direct their empathy when a conflict involves complicated history and no clear heroes, this piece I wrote after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel may help.

How Empathy Works in Times of War and Terror

Reading Between the Lines is designed to deliver of-the-moment insights into human behavior and empathy, drawn from the world of marketing research.

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/empathy-works-times-war-terror

I’ve been working on this newsletter for several hours now. As I’ve gained momentum in the researching, thinking and writing, I’m spending less time on my phone looking for those kernels of news. I think that’s progress. 

Please let me know how it’s going for you and share this with anyone who might need it today. Email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

Do Micro-Managers Have Empathy?

At a recent talk I gave to the Alumni Learning Consortium, an audience member asked a question that has stayed with me ever since. After my presentation on using empathy to build better workplace culture, they typed into the chat: do micro-managers actually have empathy with the people they manage?

I promised I would look into it. And I have.

I’ve been fortunate in my career where I don’t think I’ve been micro-managed often. I can think of my first job in PR where my manager, Andrew, would hand back my drafts of press releases and pitches to journalists filled with red ink. I would bristle at times, feeling like I was back in high school getting a paper handed back covered in corrections. But I never really felt like I was being micro-managed as it was all in service of strengthening my writing and pitching skills. Two lessons from Andrew I still practice to this day: 1) never use the word unique, because nothing is truly unique, and 2) there are many words in English so don’t repeat the same words in adjacent paragraphs.

I can think of another manager of mine at a big multi-national company who was probably “in my shorts” more than I wanted however we got along well and I was, again, learning as I went so it didn’t feel like being micro-managed. Looking back, I think what made the difference in both cases was intent. I could feel they were invested in me and my growth, not just the outcome of the assignment.

Before we dive into the research, I want to pause and ask you something. Is it possible that you recognize some of these tendencies in yourself? If so, stay with me. There is something useful here for you too.

When I went looking for research on micro-management and empathy specifically, I found something telling: nobody has studied that exact question. A 2025 systematic review of 94 micromanagement papers found that while the field has grown considerably, micromanagement still lacks a clear formal definition and a validated measurement scale. Researchers are actively working to distinguish it from related but different behaviors like abusive supervision, which is defined as sustained hostile verbal and nonverbal behavior toward employees. Micro-management and bullying can overlap, but they are not the same thing, and the research treats them separately.

What the research does tell us is revealing. Studies from researchers at UC Riverside, Stanford, and George Washington University found that micro-managers are typically not people who feel powerful. They are people who feel powerless despite holding a position of authority. Their grip on every small decision is not a sign of confidence. It is a sign of anxiety. They consolidate control because letting go feels genuinely dangerous to them.

Here is my take on what that means for empathy. I do not believe micro-managers are generally people who lack the capacity for empathy. They are human beings, which means they were born with it. But in the stressed and insecure state that drives micro-managing behavior, their empathy is misdirected. It flows inward, toward their own fear of failure, rather than outward, toward the person sitting across from them. They over-empathize with their own anxiety and under-empathize with their employee's experience of being watched, second-guessed, and not trusted. The impact on the employee does not match the manager's intent, and that gap is a classic empathy failure.

A comprehensive 2024 analysis confirmed that 91% of micro-managers are unaware that employees actually resign because of them. That number points to a profound absence of perspective-taking. Not cruelty. Blindness.

So what can you do if you are on the receiving end of a micro-manager?

1) Try having empathy with the manager. 

This is not about excusing behavior that is hurting you. It is about understanding what is driving it, because that understanding gives you options. If your manager's micro-managing is rooted in insecurity, consider what you might do to reduce that insecurity. Proactively share updates before they ask. Be transparent about your process and progress. Over-communication, done on your terms, can sometimes ease the anxiety that is fueling the over-control. You are not doing this for them. You are doing it to give yourself more room to work.

2) Ask them to see it from your perspective. 

This takes some courage, but it is worth trying. Request a conversation and frame it around your shared goal of doing good work. Something like: "I want to do my best work for you and for the team. Can I share how I work best, and hear what you need from me, so we can figure out how to get there together?" You are not accusing. You are inviting them to use their own empathy. The research on abusive supervision notes that employees who speak up constructively can sometimes shift the dynamic, particularly when the behavior stems from insecurity rather than intent to harm. I leaned into this during the transition period of Ignite 360’s sale to Dig Insights. Suddenly I had managers and we needed to find ways of working together successfully. During updates, I would provide context to my work style and what has succeeded in the past and, just as importantly, remain open to the new agency’s process and style.

3) Build your own psychological safety net. 

Document your work clearly. Keep records of decisions and their outcomes. Find allies inside the organization who can see your contributions. This is not paranoia. It is protecting yourself so that the micro-managing does not become the only story being told about you. And if the situation is not improving, give yourself permission to honestly assess whether this is a temporary pattern or a permanent one. The data is clear that long-term micro-management leads to burnout, reduced creativity, and high turnover. You are not immune to those effects just because you understand what is driving the behavior.

If any of this is landing a little close to home, you might be wondering whether you have some micro-managing tendencies yourself. Psychology Today has a free self-assessment that takes just a few minutes and might give you some useful perspective: take it here.

I scored a 24 out of 100, which apparently means I have a little micromanaging tendency. Though I suspect the people who worked for me over the years might have some notes. 😉

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 Visit My Website www.robvolpe.expert or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

Hello! Lots to cover and an anniversary to celebrate, let’s dive in.

You’ll notice another ad up above, this time for Morning Brew, which I’m subscribed to. It provides digestible business news with less editorializing. Sometimes reading news that’s not as politicized can give our nervous system a break, as we explored last time.

I get a little money for every click, no obligation to subscribe although it’s free. I’d be grateful for the clicks. This support helps offset the cost of producing this newsletter and keeping it free.

And it’s the 4^th anniversary (2/22/22) of the publication of the book! More on that below but a request up front to please help spread the word – buy a copy for a Little Library or a friend, forward this URL www.robvolpe.expert/books for more information.

I continue to hear inspiring stories of people who have changed relationships with others using the stories in the book. Let’s keep that going! 

The video version of this newsletter…

Reminder: Empathy Week is Coming Soon

Empathy Week is a global event that has been growing with each successive year. The goal is to help students develop the skills and understanding to use empathy in their lives. This year’s event is March 9-13. It’s not too late to a) sign up if you are an educator, or b) to share with educators and PTA members in your life.

Forward this newsletter and/or ask them to visit www.empathyweek.org

And over on You Tube, visit their channel EMPATHY STUDIOS

Empathy Studios

We develop the skill of empathy through the power of film, storytelling and education. On a mission to make everyone be seen, heard and understood 🚀🌎❤️

www.youtube.com/@Empathy-Studios

Disco Divas and Quad Gods: Lessons from Olympic Skating

Did you see Alysa Liu’s gold medal winning free-skate?  In 2022, at 16-years old, Liu retired after the Winter Olympics and went on a journey to figure herself out. Through that journey she was able to put competitive skating in perspective, identifying what brought her joy about the sport. That fueled her return in 2024 which culminated in this week’s gold medal.

If you watch the performance and listen to the commentary – it’s remarkable how free she seems and it elevates her performance.

While I would have given her a medal just for her music selection of MacArthur Park by Donna Summer, she came across to me, and other observers, as an artist performing on a stage who happened to be getting judged.

I think that shift in attitude, the perspective she was able to get during her “retirement” journey, let her look at this in a whole new way.

By comparison, Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God” fell from the heavens in the individual competition, finishing 8^th after being heavily favored to win.

Malinin, in his debut Olympics, did come through during the Team Skate competition where Team USA did win gold, so he didn’t go home empty handed but the glory for this god was surely tied up in the Men’s individual gold.

In interviews, even during the Team Skate where his short program was wobbly, he acknowledged the incredible pressure of performing on the biggest stage. Over the course of that week, it got to him and he ended up with a result that did not live up to the great expectations placed on him.

That’s the lesson to me from this. Find the joy in your work and be in that headspace. It truly changes your perspective and can give you the confidence to lean into your performance.

I love this photo of Alysa Liu during her Free Skate - the joy radiates. And the spirals cut into the ice beneath her is so cool!

I think about the times in my youth when I choked during a swim meet or psyched myself out in a work task.  Instead of trusting in my abilities, knowing my content at work or feeling confident in my own ability to move forcefully through the water, I let voices of doubt and pressure to succeed get in the way. As a result, I turned in an underwhelming performance.

Today, I still feel the nerves before I’m about to speak before an audience. What’s different is that I not only have command of my content so I can handle more curveballs than I used to, I have found joy in seeing people’s eyes light up when they get one of the concepts I’m sharing. That interaction fuels my performance and the confidence in knowing my material gives me the leeway to get more creative, try new things, take some risks.

Age and experience has certainly given me perspective, however if you are aware of it, then you can start to work on it.

When you focus on the pressure, it causes the pressure to intensify.

If you focus on what matters, giving a performance the audience will love, that’s worthy of gold.

Can Christianity Exist without Empathy?

Toxic empathy has been a growing topic of conversation. I wrote about it last summer and recently returned to Good Things Utah for a segment about it.

Toxic empathy is a construct of cultural conservatives to justify one-sided thinking and cruel decisions against others.

(Sidebar: It was so great to return to the show after a year off. I got to be on set with all 3 hosts and it felt like going home, they were so welcoming and happy to see me. Please give it a watch if you haven’t already.)

And recently, David French at The New York Times more directly took to task the religious right who have weaponized empathy in the name of Christianity. He points out, correctly, that empathy is at the basis of the teachings of Christ and so it’s hypocritical of people to be selective in who they have empathy with.

As I shared on Bluesky, in order to gain access to power and wealth (see the 7 Deadly Sins), they have sold their souls to their own devil.

Please don’t ever believe anyone who tells you empathy is toxic or is something we shouldn’t embrace. It’s a feature of being human, not a flaw or bug to be fixed.

An Unwanted Inheritance

Moving on to all things books, I recently finished The Inherited Mind by James Longman, ABC News’ Chief International Correspondent.

Longman chronicles the mental illness that has plagued members of his family and taken the life of several, including his father, who died by suicide when James was 9 years old. In the book he takes us inside his personal journey, his memories of his father and his own struggles with depression and the ultimate question of the book: is this something inherited and am I consigned to the same fate?

As you’d expect from a journalist, there is reporting on the studies of the neuroscience which confirms that there are hereditary links although it seems that there’s more research to be done in order to help find improved treatments and cures.

I’m a storyteller and wanna-be journalist at heart, so any book that goes even remotely behind the scenes of network news has my attention. The Inherited Mind doesn’t fail to deliver on this account as Longman takes us on assignment with him to Syria and other destinations. 

The personal stories resonated with me and is what I enjoyed most in the book. Losing his father at a young age and living full time with his mom after his parents separation, his father was something of an enigma. This book is a look at piecing together who his father was as a person and exploring what they have in common beyond a striking physical resemblance.

Longman shares the heartbreaking, raw emotions he felt after his father’s death, the drama of having a challenging relationship with his mother, and the touching engagements he had with his father’s caretakers and nurses as well as close friends from his dad’s young adulthood when his mental health crisis was first revealing itself. 

Considering how much I struggled with Intro to BioPsychology while at Syracuse, having to take the class twice and still only mustering a C grade, the pages that look into the studies were harder for me to digest. Fortunately, it’s balanced with the majority of the pages, in my perception, focused on the human stories and so I never felt like giving up.

And a surprise for me at the very end, reading the acknowledgments of the book, I found that the person who gave James his first job in journalism, John Jelley, is a friend of ours from his time living in San Francisco more than ten years ago. That prompted me to reach out on Facebook and John and I are now back in touch after a way too long hiatus. Small world!

The Inherited Mind is worth a look, particularly if mental illness runs in your family or you have a natural interest in the topic. Fans of ABC News should check it out too. :)

Cooking for Small Households

It’s a challenge with many recipes that make enough to feed 4-6 to either down-size them or deal with leftovers for the week. Fortunately, a new cookbook Around Our Table for Two, tackles this problem. I’ve known the author, Pam Werley, since about 2008 as she used to work in marketing and insights and was a client. Several years ago, on becoming an empty-nester, she realized there was a need for good recipes that don’t waste food, taste great and, where possible, utilize local and fresh ingredients.

She started the Our Table 4 2 website and is building a community on Substack. She also has a weekly newsletter with recipes and video tutorials. This cookbook is her latest and I’ve just begun to cook from it.

Yum! Fudgy Brownies recipe from Around Our Table 4 2

I can report that the Fudgy Brownies recipe is as promised. OMG good. That’s no “Moldy Pancake” Midwest nicety. It’s all chocolate and would be amazing with vanilla ice cream to cut the sweetness. (It did take a lot longer to bake than the directions indicated so, as always, keep your oven and cooktop predilections in mind.)

Next up, I was inspired by Pam’s Croque Monsieur recipe so I’m adding eggs to the top of it for Croque Madame for tonight’s dinner!

Croque Monsieur about to transition to become Croque Madame with the addition of egg on top. Another winner recipe!

Let’s Celebrate - Has It Really Been 4 Years???

February 22 marks the anniversary of the publication of Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time.

Where has the time gone?

My publisher, Jesse Finkelstein at Page Two, told me when we started working together that my book would have a ‘long tail’ – meaning it would remain relevant and applicable to audiences for years to come.

I’ve found her words to be true.

I recently was on the podcast Over a Pint Marketing Podcast with Pat McGovern.

What was so fun about this interview was that he read the book cover to cover and so we had a genuine conversation about the content, including some of the people in the book where I had to work to build empathy or one of the 5 Steps was identified.  Please give it a listen on the usual podcast platforms or directly on the show website.

It’s been fascinating to hear which stories and “characters” resonate with readers and why. I’d love to hear from you, if you’ve read the book, which stories have stuck with you and what you took away from it. 

Please comment below or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert.

I’ll do some follow-up about your favorites and some of the ‘story behind the story’ in an upcoming issue.

The Time I Almost Fell Off My Bike

In my long recovery from the slip and fall break of my kneecap, I started to get back on the Peloton bike to help strengthen the muscles in my legs and get a little cardio going. It’s been a challenging year and while I’m nowhere back to normal, I’m making steady progress.

On Peloton, milestones like rides that cross 100s and birthdays are sometimes recognized by the instructors if you are on a live ride. I paused my cycling at 898 rides back in April and when I returned to actual workouts, I chose to do my 900^th ride with my favorite instructor, Christine D’Ercole. It was a 45-minute ride back on November 15, which meant more time for shout outs during the recovery periods.

I had my hopes up that I’d get a little recognition for a little extra boost of emotional energy to keep going in my recovery.

We were down to the last 6 minutes of class. Nothing yet. And then, this happened (please watch this short video…)

She not only acknowledged my ride but she suggested people go find my book!

When it happened, I nearly fell over I was so surprised and delighted. 

What a gift!

Of course, I didn’t have my phone recording the class so two days later, I did the entire ride all over again so I could record it for posterity.

And now, on the anniversary of the book publication, I thought it was a good time to share it.

I sent Christine a copy of my book shortly after publication. She had acknowledged receipt but I had no idea she had read it, let alone liked it! That’s what led to the surprise on this ride. It was like a seed planted years ago breaking through the ground.

Her work, aside from being an instructor and world-class competitive cyclist (she has more than a dozen medals), she leads WordShops that help people change their self-talk to more positive messages. Her mantra, I Am, I Can, I Will, I Do, is simple yet powerful. I hope you check out her website or her Instagram @iamicaniwillido. She’s also sharing her journey with menopause to help women talk more openly about that mid-life experience.

If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading my book, please send them this link www.robvolpe.expert/books or maybe buy a copy for them if you are in the position to do so? Together we can plant more seeds with our own communities so it grows and makes a difference in the world. I just need your help in doing that.

Here’s to the next four years!

Thank you!

Visit My Website or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

💪🏼 Building Empathy Muscles for the Next Generation

Before we dive into protecting our own empathy reserves, I want to share something that gives me hope: Empathy Week 2026 is happening March 9-13.

Educators around the world are building empathy skills in the next generation. Empathy Week provides free, research-based tools to help teachers cultivate compassion, perspective-taking, and emotional literacy in their students. These are the same skills we're working to preserve in ourselves.

If you know of educators, parents, or PTA members, please forward this newsletter to them or the URL https://www.empathyweek.org/home. Teaching kids how to build and maintain empathy now means they'll be better equipped to navigate the world. 🙏🏽

And speaking of navigating the world...

When Staying Informed Starts to Cost You

Thanks for all the outreach after the last edition on how leaders can help their teams navigate the overlap of work and personal life. I’m glad so many found it helpful.

Recently, in conversations, what I’ve been hearing is a difficulty in processing current events and as a result, people are struggling to manage a feeling of being overwhelmed. It may come as no surprise that nearly all therapists (99.6%) said news consumption has some type of negative affect on their patients according to a 2023 study by GrowTherapy.  And that’s news consumption. When the news is happening in your town, it can be even more stress-inducing.

Finding the balance of staying informed without being overloaded is not dissimilar to what empaths and highly sensitive people (“HSP”) deal with every day in their lives. They’re constantly taking in information, processing it and feeling it deeply. It can weigh you down. (If you are wondering if you are an HSP, there’s a quiz on Elaine Aron’s site to help you out - I tested as a low tendency toward high sensitivity which I think means “sorta"? Let me know how you type.)

A healthy detachment may seem impossible in the midst of a deluge of information. And even if you could detach, perhaps you don’t want to look away because you feel connected to the severity (of the news) or the authenticity of another person’s feelings.  This keeps the flood barriers down, letting the information and emotion wash in. It can quickly lead to the overwhelm or short-circuiting of our nervous system.

I’ve been asked about this balancing act repeatedly over the years by people who identify as empaths and HSPs. Now, given current events, it seems like more of us are having our empathy receptors activated and are trying to figure out what to do about it.

How do you bear witness or build empathy with someone without letting it consume you?

Your Brain Doesn’t Know You’re Just Watching

Our brains light up in the same pain-processing regions when we experience emotional pain (as opposed to the physical sensations) and when we witness the pain of others (emotional empathy). This means our nervous systems can't distinguish between reading about a crisis and experiencing it ourselves.

Typically, when people encounter distressing news in the media, they might feel concerned or upset, then move on with their day. If you are an HSP or empath, and that's about 1 in 5 adults in the population, the sensory information is processed differently. It’s not that the person is being dramatic or over-reacting, it’s that they’re feeling it more deeply and carrying it.

When the news gets to be too much for us to process, it’s similar to what the HSP/empath experiences regularly. It’s a feeling of overwhelm and even helplessness.

One time I experienced this sensation as a result of the news was during the January 6 riots. Even though I was thousands of miles away from the riot, I felt like I was there and was helpless to do anything about it. After 20 minutes, I couldn’t watch any longer. It was that disturbing to me. The only thing I could do was turn off the TV. 

This was in reaction to my nervous system getting overwhelmed.  I had to protect myself so I could keep my wits about me. From that safer distance and reading updates online from traditional print media, I was better able to process what was happening.

For the empath/HSP the antennae are always on, picking up and feeling emotions from the people around them and the stories they encounter. While it isn’t always sensing the emotions of distress like I had during that January 6 experience, it is similar in the idea that it is always on, always coming in and it’s imperative to find ways to manage that in order not to be overwhelmed.

Whether we are HSP/empaths or another type of decent human being, the overwhelm we feel can sometimes be described as empathic distress and compassion fatigue which I wrote about here two years ago. We feel deeply and want to take action, but how to do that when we feel so burdened?

Draining Away the Overwhelm

The analogy I use to explain why it’s important to establish boundaries to prevent the overwhelm is about making pasta.  When the pasta is ready, you dump the pot out into a colander so the water strains away while you hold onto the good stuff: the pasta.

Where we run into trouble, in either the news intake scenario or if you are an empath/HSP, is instead of pouring the water and pasta into a colander, we pour it into another pot. The result? The pot gets filled with the weight of the news and the emotions we are sensing. It can become so heavy we are unable to think clearly or make rational decisions. As the pot fills, our nervous-system gets overwhelmed.

What’s wrong with this picture? I couldn’t find a single stock photo of people pouring pasta into another pot - because it’s not what you are supposed to do! So why would you hold onto all the emotions and energy you are picking up from other people? That doesn’t serve you. I generated this image with ChatGPT to help make the point. Also, notice the woman’s right hand placement.

My solution to this is to visualize the colander and all the hot water and steam passing through while the pasta, the information and emotions that are relevant and that I need, are retained.

Think colander: Keep what you need and let the rest drain away. 

The Paradox of Setting Limits in Order to Care More

The solution lies in the boundaries that we set and the self-care that we practice.  This is where a paradox exists. The more we structure (and perhaps limit) our news consumption, the more we are able to process our feelings, moving from empathy into compassion and allowing that to spark action.

It doesn’t mean we don’t care. It does mean we have to take care of ourselves first so we can care more for others.

What does this look like?  It’s different for everyone but here are some suggestions.

Practical Ways to Reclaim Your Emotional Bandwidth

⏰ Give the News a Time Slot

The News Sprint – Set a timer for 15 minutes, consume news intentionally, then stop when it goes off. This prevents the endless scroll that leaves you depleted hours later wondering where the time went.  If you are a news junkie like me, maybe set a few sprints a day to keep up to date

Save for Later – Do you absolutely have to watch that video or read that article right now? How about saving it for later. Then when you come back, you have perspective on whether that topic was really worth your investment of time. I find this true with my non-work emails. All the news and industry digests that I get, the stories are highly relevant at publication but a day later the story has evolved or deflated completely.

Find the Right Time - Your brain is most vulnerable first thing in the morning and in the evening before you sleep. Why get thrown off kilter in these critical moments. Start your day with something that centers you. End your day with something that lets you actually sleep.

Day Planner the News – This one is personally hard for me but choose 2-3 times per week to check in on current events, rather than constant daily exposure. For HSPs, this intermittent engagement (10-15 minutes, 2-3 times weekly) can be more sustainable than daily 10-minute News Sprint sessions.

And for non-news situations, still think in terms of time limits and exposure that you have to people who you find drain your energy or have stories that are particularly weighing on you.

✋ Take Back Your Feed

While many social media platforms are designed to keep you scrolling and are engineered to trigger the same reward pathways as addictive behaviors, you might try to wrest back control where you can.

Go Text First - Choose articles and analysis over video clips. Video triggers a more visceral emotional response as your brain processes images of suffering differently than reading about it.

Turn Off Autoplay - This one's simple but crucial. Don't let the algorithm decide what trauma you consume next. This doesn’t work for every platform but it does for some. Here’s a handy guide from TechCrunch.

Seek Objective Sources - Find news outlets that present information without trying to provoke outrage. They exist, but you have to look for them. And if you don’t think your news source is biased, just spend an hour looking at one that’s aligned with a political affiliation that’s different from yours. The difference becomes clear quickly.

You may have noticed the ad for 1440 at the top of this newsletter. I’ve been subscribed to 1440 for about a year and find it refreshing to see news presented as information, absent of opinion. It’s kinda like “just the facts”.

And, in fact, as I was polishing this newsletter I got the offer to host an ad from 1440 through our shared use of Beehiiv. In full disclosure, this Seek Objective Sources tip was in this newsletter copy before I got the ad offer however I will get compensated a small amount from every click that the ad receives.  (This is my first foray into being ad-supported, so please click with no obligation to buy!)

🏃🏻 Turn Feelings Into Action

The "One-Action" Rule – This is my term for what to do when something in the news genuinely moves you to want to help. Do one concrete thing (donate, volunteer, contact a representative), then shift your attention to something else. Action without becoming absorbed. You may return to this topic repeatedly but take it one-action at a time.

White-Space Weekends - Take full weekends off from news consumption. Get outside of the usual four walls you reside in. “Touch grass” if its available (being outdoors helps generally). Notice how your body feels. Notice how your stress levels improve. Notice whether you're actually less informed on Monday (spoiler: you probably won't be).

Bring in the Joy – What recharges your batteries? For some it’s exercising. Yoga, staring at a candle, playing with your kids or your pets, cooking, baking, escaping into a good book, whatever does it for you, make time for it each day. Allow the space so you can come back together again.

🧘🏻 Check-In With Your Body

Body Check-ins - Before consuming news, ask yourself: How does my body feel right now? Am I already depleted? Then check again after 5-10 minutes. If you notice tension, shallow breathing, or that pit in your stomach, it's time to stop.

Scheduled "Worry Time" - This sounds counterintuitive, but it works. Set aside 15-20 minutes to fully engage with news and process your concerns. Post on social media, call a friend to vent, get it out. Outside that window, actively redirect your attention when news anxiety creeps in.

The Mini-Meditation – Not unlike the Body Check-Ins, quiet your mind through eyes-closed deep breathing using long inhales and exhales, lengthening the duration with each cycle. Examine what comes up. What are the things you might be carrying that isn’t serving you. Pour it into the colander to keep the good stuff and let the rest drain away.

You Don’t Have to Be an HSP to Feel This Way

There’s nothing wrong with what we are experiencing but the overstimulation can be uncomfortable and lead to mental health issues like burnout, depression and feelings of loneliness.

Something hopeful: research shows that compassion training significantly reduces burnout risks among medical professionals. The same is most likely true for the rest of us.  When we actively cultivate compassion practices, not just empathy building but intentional, structured compassion for ourselves and others, we build resilience.

For more on HSPs, check out Elaine Aron’s groundbreaking work.

Not Walled Off, Just Boundaried

I want to be clear about something: I'm not advocating for becoming uninformed or disengaged. The goal isn't to build walls so high that nothing gets through.

The goal is to be strategic about what you consume, when you consume it, and how you engage with it. To use that pasta colander effectively. Drain what overwhelms you while keeping what nourishes and informs you.

Because here's the truth: the world needs your empathy. Your workplace needs it. Your family needs it. Your community needs it.

But they need you present, not depleted. They need you engaged, not burned out. They need you able to show up when it actually matters.

That's what boundaries give you. Not detachment. Presence.

Your Turn

I'm curious: What's one boundary you're going to experiment with this week?

Reply to this email (or email rob@robvolpe.expert) and let me know. I read every response, and I'm genuinely interested in what resonates with you and what you're willing to try.

And if this edition helped you, please share it with someone who might need permission to protect their empathy reserves. You can share on the socials at the icons at the top or just forward the email.

Sometimes we all need a reminder that caring for ourselves isn't selfish, it's sustainable.

Until next time, 

Rob

 P.S. Remember to check out Empathy Week and share it with educators in your life. Let's build those empathy muscles in the next generation while we protect our own.

Ugh. Not Again.

This is not what I had been planning to write about in this edition of Reading Between the Lines.

I had intended to answer a question posed by a member of the audience in a recent talk. The question was about whether micro-managers have empathy. It’s a good question with a nuanced answer.

It will have to wait till next time.

Over the past week I’ve been reaching out to friends, clients and colleagues in the Twin Cities. My intention was to check in, see how they are dealing with all of the activities of ICE and offer support or at least a supportive ear. Everyone has been unsettled and concerned, looking for what they can do to get involved while staying safe. The murder of Renee Good, the treatment of 5-year old Liam, and the general abusive behavior of ICE agents weighs heavily.

Work, I heard, is a welcome distraction and also hard to focus on.

And then on Saturday, Alex Pretti was murdered. There are no words to adequately describe the feelings on watching the video captured by bystanders. Analysis of the videos by CNN and other outlets is showing that Pretti was unarmed when he was shot (9+ times?) by ICE agents.

But in today’s world of fragmented media, this is not the story that everyone is hearing. This article in the New York Times reports on how Fox News was supporting the administration’s “official” account of what happened.

Like the death of Renee Good, this video of Alex Pretti being shot has been seen far and wide.

As we return to work on Monday, leaders in organizations will be faced with a team needing to be met where they are. This will require listening and a willingness to be vulnerable in person and in communication to both understand where and how to show up.

Something to keep in mind: While nearly 2/3 of US adults disapprove of how ICE is doing its job, that still leaves 1/3 approving. This means that not everyone in your office may feel it was unjustified violence, some will believe what Fox News and the administration is saying.

Additionally, not everyone will want to engage in a discussion, because they don’t want to bring current events into the workplace

But a majority are feeling it, so here are 3 suggestions to consider.

1 – Do what feels right. 
Last week, I was having a conversation with a c-suite executive at a national retail chain. They had experienced ICE raiding one of their stores and a couple of their employees were detained as a result. Leadership decided they “had to do what was right”, which included engaging lawyers to help the employees regain their freedom; communicate support to the rest of the employees at the affected stores and explain the actions that were being taken as well as reaffirm their commitment to a diverse workforce and customer base.  Apparently these messages and actions were very well received. This retailer just enhanced the dedication and loyalty of their workforce, simply because they did what felt like the right thing to do – aid their employees in crisis and inform the rest of the team of their actions to reassure them and help people feel safe and secure in their workplace.

As you face talking with your team this week, listen to your heart and follow your instinct for what feels like the right thing to do or say. This isn’t over-empathizing; this is just being human.  

Potential openers to might be: “How are you doing with the shooting in Minneapolis this weekend?” or “It was a pretty intense weekend with the news out of Minneapolis and dealing with the storm. How are you holding up?” 

2 – Create space for people to step in if they so desire.
Not everyone will want to participate but this moment feels very similar to late spring 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, when protests erupted around the country and many white people were made aware of the racism that persists in the US.

When I was leading Ignite 360 at this time, we started a virtual coffee talk. Thirty minutes, once a week, for those who wanted to and were available to get together and talk about what was going on. Those sessions continued for three years as we came to appreciate the together time that wasn’t dominated by talk about deadlines and fire drills.

3 – Be vulnerable. 
We are all humans, reacting to horrible acts against other humans, and it’s natural that this would affect you too. It’s ok to share how you are feeling with your team. Use words that feel honest for you: if you are frustrated, angry, sad, fearful, that’s ok. Say it out loud.

People on your team may also benefit from sharing coping mechanisms. How do you put bad news behind you and get the work done? Recognize that everyone is different and has different ways to cope, but can be inspired by what works for other people. Opening up and having that conversation can go a long way to helping others.

A final thought:

Explain why our widget matters.

As you are talking to your team, hold space by letting them share and feel safe in contributing your own thoughts and feelings. Then, try to bring them back together and up and out of that space. Transition to something positive or at least lighter. And then, tell them what they mean to you and to the organization and that you appreciate their showing up as well as their sharing. Perhaps also remind them of why the widget your company makes matters (whatever your business is), the people you are serving, the problem you are solving, the hill that you are striving to climb as a team. This can help people refocus and move on with their day.

Also, keep your proverbial door open.

As you start the new work week, I hope this is useful to you.

Considering this is my own safe space to share my thoughts with you, I’ll be honest, I was deeply troubled by what I saw of Alex’ murder. I can only call it that as, from everything that I’ve seen, he was over-powered and then someone pulled out a gun and shot him repeatedly. It felt like I was witnessing an execution. And that’s on top of the cruelty shown to 5-year old Liam, and all the peaceful protesters and people being detained seemingly on a whim. The lack of training is evident. This isn’t a video game but it appears that these agents are acting out a first person shooter game.

I lost sleep on Saturday night as I put a prayer out to the universe for love and light for all those that are struggling right now. It’s a mighty large group of people and I could feel the heft of it all. And it was in that time of reflection that I realized what was coming with this week ahead and that a few thoughts might help someone.

Please let me know how you are doing. Comment or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

And please, share this with someone you know who could use this right now.

With much love,

Rob

PS – if you have experienced a micro-manager with or without empathy, I’d love to hear from you – rob@robvolpe.expert

It’s my first time…

Welcome to my first ever Naughty and Nice List for empathetic actions in 2025.

This is a combination of my personal experiences as well as what is happening out in society.

Some of these I’ve shared over the course of the year, others I’m raising for the first time.

And I appear on both lists – both naughty and nice.

Surprised? Don’t be. We’re all human and subject to missteps.

As I discuss in my presentations and trainings, half the battle is having the self-awareness to recognize how we are showing up, the courage to choose a different path, and the grace to forgive ourselves when we mess up.

This is why I usually give myself a 3.5 to 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 for my own empathy skills. Like everyone, I’m a work in progress.

In fact, the appearance on the ‘nice’ list isn’t about something I did, instead, it is about what happened to me.

Before we unveil the list, I want to remind you of 3 fundamentals…

1 – Empathy is about Connecting and Understanding – at its heart, that’s what empathy is all about – being able to see or feel the feelings and point of view of another.

2 – Having Empathy Does Not Imply Acceptance – you can still disagree with someone that you have empathy with although it’s harder to outright reject them or treat someone as ‘other’

3 – Empathy Empowers the Skills We Use to Be The People We Are – when you have empathy, it enables better communication, collaboration, persuasion, decision-making, establishing trust, reaching forgiveness, having compassion and so much more. Empathy is the starting point, it’s like the spark that starts the ignition to the action you’re going to take.

Empathy is the spark that ignites the skills we use every day.

I will caveat that there are political issues here and, as I am on the left, I have my own bias in putting this together. I’d love to hear from you if you have a different perspective on these or other actions you’d add to the list.

Now, without further ado, here is the list. I’ll start with Naughty, counting down from 5 to 1 and then repeat with Nice, so we end on a “nice” note.

The Naughty List

Note: There’s so much that the current administration is doing that is devoid of empathy, from ICE raids and deportations to the bombings off the coast of Venezuela, defunding USAID, stepping away from Ukraine, allowing health insurance subsidies to lapse, DOGE-ing the federal workforce, allowing SNAP benefits to expire during the shutdown, inflicting the pain of unaffordability on everyday Americans and more. It could be its own list of bad behavior. I chose to leave these out. Not because they aren’t naughty, but because it’s covered by so many people, I wanted to bring attention to other actions by other people.

And, perhaps you agree with the policies however I hope you can see how the way this is being carried out is lacking in empathy or even sympathy for the people who are suffering.

5. People Mischaracterizing Empathy as Toxic – Just because you don’t understand something, it doesn’t make it wrong or evil or toxic. Several authors and influencers took the work of Paul Bloom and twisted it to suit their needs. Bloom argues that we need a balance of empathetic compassion and rational thinking to temper our decision making. I agree with him. If you are overly rational, you overlook the humanity of the person you are interacting with and too much empathy and you risk making decisions that might be one sided and don’t help the common good. In fact, that’s exactly what people at the extremes of the political spectrum do. They over-empathize with a community or demographic and will fail to empathize with people on the other side. That is what’s toxic.

For more, see this edition of the newsletter from August.

Empathy's Dark Side: A Field Guide to Missing the Point

Exposing Toxic Empathy and Why Paul Bloom Might be Facepalming

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/empathy-s-dark-side-a-field-guide-to-missing-the-point-5dd6

4. Corporate Caving on DEI – This isn’t just about company leaders who kissed the ring of the administration, turning their backs on employees and customers. I have heard some cringe-worthy stories of DEI training where white people were shamed for the sins of their forefathers and others where schools of teen boys were made to feel guilty for all sexist behavior toward girls. Those situations are not right and blaming others does not advance the cause of helping everyone have the chance to advance. I’m all for hiring the best candidate and at the same time, support methods that cast the net wide so that we find those candidates and review their qualifications in a way that bias is minimized.

As the new administration took over and some companies suddenly rolled back their diversity efforts, the communication was so lacking in empathy that it drove a wedge between them and the consumer. Target is the poster child for this behavior and it resulted in a consumer boycott that’s still ongoing, has cost the company billions in revenue and contributed to a recent change in leadership.

This issue made the Naughty list because of insensitivity. A lack of empathy in the way the change was communicated and perspective on how it would make other constituents feel.

The inverse of Target is Costco, who stood up to shareholders and pressure from the far right to continue to stand by their values.

I haven’t joined Costco but I have dramatically cut back my shopping at Target as a result of their behavior. Boycotts really do work so please vote with your wallet.

3. That Time I Lost My Cool… - The stress of current events gets to all of us, and we have to balance it with whatever stress we have in our personal and work lives. In my case, a confluence of events led to me speaking out in a very out of character way at the hair salon to correct a patron who had some ‘alternate facts’ about the war in Ukraine.

The full encounter and my lessons learned can be found here…

I believe I’ve been good and kept my cool ever since, choosing to have conversations and asking good questions but, in my opinion, this outburst belonged on the naughty list.

The Time I Lost My Cool and Went Full Julia Sugarbaker on an Innocent

Plus: Going Full Julia Sugarbaker and Elon Weaponizing Empathy

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/julia-sugarbaker

2. Politicians Using Fear to Manipulate Us – Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. One of the oldest tricks in the book, knowing what scares an audience and using it to manipulate in order to gain votes and support. Look who gets villainized by our politicians and before you go to a place of fearing the ‘other’, ask yourself what you know about them, how you might listen and learn in order to build empathy and use that understanding to reach a better outcome.

This also capitalizes on how we are hard-wired by evolution to detect threats and stay on guard. Most of humanity has evolved beyond worrying about threats from wild animals and competing tribes. If that’s true, then why do we continue to cast each other as the enemy? What will it take to bring us together? 

Here's more of my thinking on this topic.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear... Is the Story Fear Tells Us

Empathy shines a light to guide us out of the darkness of fear generated by the Fear Industrial Complex

readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-story-fear-tells-us

And on a semi-related note, if anyone wants to discuss Pluribus, I’m here for it! Reach out.

1. People Cheering the Murder of Others – Facing insurance premiums and deductibles that will top $51,000 in 2026 for my household of 2 adults, I have even more empathy for people disgusted by our current healthcare system because I’m now one of them. That does not mean that last year’s murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare is something to be cheered. Nor was the assassination of State Senator Melissa Hortmann in Minnesota this past June (check out this moving profile of her life in Rolling Stone), nor the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September.  We not only lose the moral high ground, I believe we lose our humanity when we celebrate the murder of another human. Even cheering the natural death of someone is incredulous to me. There will always be someone left behind who is mourning. Perhaps they have a different relationship with the deceased. They deserve our compassion and decency.

So yes, I was deeply disturbed by the president’s message on social media about Rob and Michelle Reiner’s recent murder being due to Trump Derangement Syndrome, implying that they brought it on themselves. It’s so lacking in compassion, empathy and decency that it’s revolting.

We’ve come to a place where we don’t respect our ability to disagree, where outrage is being ginned up, we are led to imagine the worst of people with opposing viewpoints (even calling them ‘the enemy’) and we feel somehow safe on social media to broadcast our dark thoughts to the world. Whether you are the president or a private citizen, it’s cruel.

I always think about how I’d feel if people were to do that to me. Cheer the death of a loved one or someone I admired?  That doesn’t feel good on many levels.

We are supposed to be intelligent, evolved creatures, filled with agency to make choices, including the choice of the words we use to convey sentiment and empathy. Should we be cheering the death of another person in public forums, no matter how much we may dislike them?  What does that say about us?

And here’s the thing. He is going to die at some point. Maybe soon. How are we going to respond to that news? That is a choice we will have to make at that time.

But for now, the President of the United States is at the top of my Naughty List for his unempathetic behavior in this entry as well as his manipulative tendencies in Naughty #2.

Pausing for a Curious Breath

Let’s pause for a moment and take a Curious Breath while we transition to the Nice List.

As we deeply inhale and exhale, let go of any stress or tension that built up reading the Naughty List.

One more time, just like that. Inhale thru the nose. Exhale out the mouth.

Good job. 

The Nice List

 5. The Co-Hosts on The View – The word ‘empathy’ is used on-air by the hosts at least once a week on this daytime talk show. I think what’s drawn me to this show since its inception is the openness to express views of women of different generations and backgrounds. It’s a produced TV show so I do recognize that there is a bit of opposing viewpoints that are encouraged however I think the co-hosts do a better job at listening to each other and being respectful than any of the opinion shows on the cable news channels. As a View-er, I respect the opinions of the hosts and find myself learning about how different people think and feel. This is particularly true with Alyssa Farah-Griffin, the current conservative co-host. I don’t agree with all of her positions but hearing her rationale and even giving her the chance to disagree with conservative positions helps me have empathy with a conservative perspective. While the show leans left, they generally respect opposing perspectives. A recent interview with Marjorie Taylor Green left me rethinking my bias against the congresswoman (and she’s back on January 7 apparently). Not all opinion shows need to be scorched earth, winner takes all.

4. People Fighting for Healthy Relationships with Tech – This isn’t just about social media anymore. As AI moves into building relationships with users, we are at risk for more isolation, loneliness and disconnection (i.e. empathy) with each other. It’s a growing problem that the tech companies seem unwilling to deal with in an honest, direct fashion, and the US government is, well, not doing their job to help keep people safe.

Fortunately, there are growing numbers of people speaking out and proposing solutions. I have included a range of people in this category, from Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (and his new book for kids with Catherine Price The Amazing Generation), the government of Australia which just implemented banned social media for kids under 16, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher (listen to their Pivot podcasts), and the Center for Humane Technology. 

3. People Supporting Food Banks During the Shutdown – When SNAP benefits were cut during the recent government shutdown, it left more than 40 million Americans without resources to sufficient amounts of food. Imagine living in the United States today and not being able to properly feed yourself and your family. That’s the issue many are facing, not just with “food stamps” being cut, but also with high prices for food that haven’t come down since inflation began several years ago. This is leaving people with less resources for basic needs. Again, this is America in 2025?

Fortunately, empathy with the suffering of others triggers compassionate action, like donating to food banks and volunteering to assist those in need.

Empathy also mobilizes people to respond and take action, like protesting, calling their elected representatives, boycotting, letting their voices be heard. 

2. Stepping into Harm’s Way to Help Others – There were many examples of people stepping in to help others. The clearest example I have is of Ahmed al-Ahmed, a fruit shop owner in Australia, who stepped in to disarm one of the shooters at the recent Bondi Beach Hannukah shooting. This fusion of bravery and compassion deserves to be recognized, as do the first responders and concerned citizens who helped at countless natural disasters including the wildfires in LA at the start of the year.

It's in times of crisis and disaster that we are able to put aside our differences and come together to help one another. It’s a beautiful reminder of our shared humanity and how empathy can lead to great things.

1. People Supporting Me in My Kneecap Injury – I chose to put this in first because it most directly affected me and made such a difference in my ongoing recovery. Again, this is empathy transforming into compassionate action, all of these people understood that someone is in need and putting personal needs aside to help support someone else. 

From my Dig Insights colleague Frank who came right to my side after I fell, coaching me to breathe through it, then dashing off to find our colleague Kevin, who could let my client know I’d be missing the call. And this was all 15 minutes before Frank was giving a presentation at the conference we were attending.

To Paul, Dig’s CEO, who hopped on the phone to connect with Charles and snapped photos of the scene including the puddle of water.

My friend and industry colleague, Cynthia, who gave up her afternoon at a conference she paid for, to come with me to the hospital and make sure I was ok.

Jess, Dig’s CRO, volunteered to pick up my meds after hours and grab dinner for me. She also hoisted my suitcases on to the bed so I could more easily pack for my trip home.

Other Dig colleagues there that day, Kelly, Sarah and Megan all helped make sure I had what I needed – from food to Advil and more.

And then, our niece Ashleigh, who dropped everything and flew to SF to help me navigate my house and doctor’s visits until Charles could get home.

So many people also reached out – sending care packages, flowers, phone calls and texts, it made me feel truly supported and helped keep a positive outlook instead of feeling sorry for myself. It’s still a long road but this made such a difference. I’m grateful.

Appreciating the flowers…

 How About Your List?

What naughty and nice empathetic actions would you add to this list? Or do you have thoughts to add to what I chose here?

Put your thoughts in the comments or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

Rob Spotting Update

My calendar is starting to fill up for the new year!

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

I’ve got two events immediately after the holidays…

I’m back on Good Things Utah on Wednesday, January 7 to discuss avoiding the toxic empathy trap. Looking forward to seeing all my Salt Lake City friends.

I’ll be presenting to the Alumnit Learning Consortium on How to Enhance Workplace Culture, Relationships and Retention. Quite a crowd has signed up so I hope you can join us – January 8 at Noon ET, 9am PT.

If you know anyone attending any of these events or that should be attending, I’d appreciate it if you passed these on. And if you might be there - please let me know!

🍪 The Cookie That Made Me Pause

Every family has its signature holiday treats. Mine includes three-generation butter cookies (we call them Tomasinos) and the popular Peanut Butter Blossoms although I’ve also become known for Buckeyes - peanut butter confections dipped in dark chocolate for a true melt-in-your-mouth delight.

Making these recipes year after year brings back some of my happiest memories from childhood and young adult years, baking alongside beloved family members and gifting cookies to friends and family. I’ve learned that these memories release the chemical super team D.O.S.E. in my brain (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Seratonin, Endorphins) which is what helps bring such warm feelings associated with these treats.

(The video for this edition is below and watch to the end for some funny outtakes.)

One thing I’ve learned as an ethnographic researcher is that everyone is different. The choices we make and our own standards for dress, decorating, cleanliness and, yes, what tastes good. But regardless, everyone brings out their best at the holidays including the family favorite recipes.

So when I was hired to research holiday baking and attend cookie exchanges years ago, I expected a dazzling spread of culinary heirlooms.

Instead, I got…a lot of chocolate chip cookies. Some from family recipes, others from mixes and refrigerated dough. I’m there to learn, not judge, so I kept an open mind.

And then one cookie was presented that looked perfect, smelled perfect but when I bit into it, tasted unmistakably of salt.
Not sea salt. Not “salted caramel” salt.
Iodized salt.

There I was, mid-bite, trying to smile and stay curious as I figured out what was happening on my tongue.

And how to respond.

You can read the excerpt from Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time here…

Read the excerpt from the chapter: The Moldy Pancake, which is all about how to dismantle your judgment when tasting “strange” foods in a stranger’s home.

What I’ve come to realize from that experience, countless more like it and reflecting on my own holiday baking is that it wasn’t about the cookie. It was about the meaning behind the cookie. The story and the person offering it.

🧂 Food Is a Shortcut to Connection

What I learned in that salty-cookie moment echoes a core truth from The Moldy Pancake chapter:

Food is one of the fastest ways we reveal who we are. Our heritage, our nostalgia, our pride, our quirks all come out. As I discovered again and again in my fieldwork, including the now-famous “moldy pancake” morning, food also exposes our assumptions and our blind spots.

When someone hands you something they made:

• They’re offering a piece of their history.

• They’re hoping you’ll see them with generosity.

• They’re vulnerable, even if they don’t show it.

And that’s exactly where empathy comes in.

🛠 The Bridge-Building Trio

Three empathy steps matter most during the holidays although you are welcome to practice all of The 5 Steps to Empathy™:

Step 1: Dismantle Judgment

Your snap reaction (“Salty? Really??”) is about your expectations — not theirs.
Judgment closes the door before the story has a chance to walk in.

Recognize those biases and put them to the side.

Step 3: Actively Listen

Listen with your eyes, your nod, your presence.
Notice how proud they are. Ask what makes this recipe special. People light up when they share food memories.

Listening to someone gives them the gift of being seen.

Step 5: Use Solution Imagination

This is where connection happens.
Instead of critiquing the dish, imagine a path forward that keeps the relationship intact — curiosity, appreciation, a follow-up question.
Engagement without performance.

Holiday tables are empathy incubators. They test us. They stretch us. And if we’re paying attention, they remind us of the generous, imperfect humanity sitting all around us.

🎁 What To Do Now: Your Holiday Potluck Survival Kit

Here are four simple ways to stay gracious, warm, and connected when trying other people’s beloved recipes:

✔️ Respond to the person, not the flavor

“I love how much care you put into this.”
You’re acknowledging the effort, not the taste.

✔️ If you don’t love it, keep curiosity open

I don’t advocate lying but embracing kindness instead.

Get curious about the recipe and the family history.

“Where did this recipe come from?”
Most dishes have a lineage — a grandmother, a tradition, a memory.

And if you find out its a new recipe they are trying out, ask them questions about it. “How did it turn out to what you expected?” That can be an invitation to share your observations and maybe each offers ways to improve it.

✔️ If you really can’t eat it, set a kind boundary

“That looks wonderful however I’m pacing myself tonight. Tell me about the story behind it.”
Boundary + Curiosity = Connection

✔️ Share your own imperfect dish

It lowers the stakes for everyone at the table.

The goal isn’t to love everything you try.
It’s to love the people offering it.

🌉 Closing Thought

Food brings us together while empathy is what keeps us together.

Empathy won’t erase our differences.
But it will remind us why they matter — especially when those differences are baked into a holiday cookie.

🔗 Watch + Read + React

• Watch: The YouTube reading of the Moldy Pancake excerpt

• Read: The website excerpt from the chapter

• Share: Forward this to a friend who hosts a holiday cookie exchange — or someone who always has opinions about family recipes.

• Tell: What holiday food horror story have you experienced? How did you handle it? Let me know in the comments or email me: rob@robvolpe.expert

Tomasino butter cookies (some call them Spritz cookies but I think the recipe is different), drying after being iced and covered in colored sugar.

Rob Spotting Update

My calendar is starting to fill up for the new year!

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

Coming up in early January, I’ll be returning to Good Things Utah on January 7 to talk about toxic empathy, inspired by n of the newsletter.

And on January 8 at noon ET, I’ll be speaking virtually to the Alumni Learning Consortium on How to Enhance Workplace Culture, Relationships and Retention.

If you know anyone attending any of these events or that should be attending, I’d appreciate it if you passed these on. And if you might be there - please let me know!

What Should I Say Now?

The holiday table is one of my favorite places. It’s a gathering made great by the people, the plates filled with favorites and heaping portions of love and fellowship.

But it only takes one unexpected comment for all that warmth to evaporate into silence.

One of my most uncomfortable moments at Thanksgiving happened when I was a kid. We were eating at the restaurant in the residence facility where my great-grandfather and step-great-grandmother lived. It was a home affiliated with the Methodist church. My great-grandfather was a minister with the church and my step-great-grandmother took her role as the wife of a minister seriously.

The waiter came by our party of 11, wine bottles in hand, to ask what we wanted to drink. My step-great-grandmother proudly turned over her wine glass and announced on behalf of all of us at the table “we won’t be drinking any wine, we’re Christians.”

It wasn’t on my mind that, at 10 or 11 I would have any wine, but I knew the adults might want some. My step-great-grandmother’s tone of voice felt insulting to the waiter. It was so abrupt. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just say ‘no thank you'.

It definitely put a damper on the mood at the table. My teenage cousin, sister and I all looked at each other. My cousin snickered and distracted us and our dinner proceeded.

These needle-scratch moments that interrupt dinner and make it awkward for people, happen more often than we think. I continue to hear from people who are figuring out how to navigate the holidays.

While it might feel safe in the moment to dodge our families and go “no contact”, that’s not necessarily the most effective solution long term, as Bill Maher argued in a recent New Rules segment.

I agree that we need to make efforts to come together and remain connected. Both in the every day as well as the holidays.

As I wrote in the last edition of this newsletter, we live in an age of being manipulated by politicians and leaders as well as a Fear Industrial Complex fueled by algorithms and technology focused on engagement rather than connection.

It’s up to us to break the spell and re-connect.

To help, I’m sharing a revised version of this newsletter from November 2024. It features an updated set of Lifeology questions and practical tips on engaging in those awkward times.

Now, if we do choose to get together with family, we have to prepare to navigate conversations, including a range of issues.

Rather than sidestepping the conversations, using empathy-building tools can help you navigate the discussion without it devolving into the equivalent of a food fight. Plus, Lifeology is back - a conversation game the whole family can play to bring both lightness and deeper connection at any gathering.

Let me know how these tips work for you. In the YouTube video above, I share three additional actions that you can take so please check that out.

Tip #1: Self-Awareness is Key

Start by tuning in to yourself. When someone makes a comment that triggers you, ask: What’s happening in my mind? Are old patterns or reactions showing up? Recognizing these tendencies can help you modify your own behavior. Remember, you always have a choice.

Tip #2: Take a “Curious Breath”

Meet the curious breath, a grounding technique that can be a game-changer. When someone says something that raises your hackles, take a deep breath and focus on creating space in your mind. This breath is your mental “pause button,” allowing you to settle into a place of curiosity and think, “What’s my best next step here?”

Tip #3: Respond, Don’t React

Now that you’ve created some mental space, aim to respond rather than react. Quick, knee-jerk reactions are what usually send holiday conversations down a rough path. Whether the discussion is IRL (in real life) or URL (online), a thoughtful response can make all the difference between a civil chat and a food fight. Remember: respond, don’t react.

Tip #4: Ask for Empathy

Don’t hesitate to ask the person you are speaking to if they can see the topic from your perspective. This approach can be useful to move the conversation from an entrenched position of opposition to one where the personal concern is in the open and can be addressed.

Tip #5: Don’t Ask ‘Why’; Use “Tell Me More About That”

The question ‘why’ puts us on the defensive. It has ever since we were little and it followed us like some dark shadow into adult life. Reframe questions by using “who” “what” “where” “when” and “how”.

And if you need to get more information, “tell me more about that” is a simple follow-up question that creates space for people to share more. That helps you better understand where they are coming from.

Tip #6: Integrate into Understanding

Just because your cousin loves stuffing instead of dressing doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Integrating into understanding is all about making room for different ways of seeing the world. Empathy is about openness, not winning points. Be curious about their perspective, and you may just learn something new—about them, or even about yourself.

Use phrases like, “I can see your point of view,” or “I imagine that felt…” to help the other person feel acknowledged and that you do indeed, understand where they are coming from.

And for a laugh, there might still be time to call in Leslie Jones, as suggested in this Daily Show segment from 2023.

Q&A: For all the time it takes to prepare, everyone eats so fast and then its over. I’d like us to talk more and extend the holiday dinner. How can I improve the conversation at the holiday table?

Great question! One way to slow the meal down and increase the conversation is to play a game.

In fact, the need for a fun way for people to build connections was the impetus for the creation of Lifeology - a game that Ignite 360 and now Dig Insights uses to bring marketers close to their consumers. People really enjoy playing and we regularly get asked if there’s an “at-home” version available. Not quite, but it prompted us to develop a holiday edition.

And now that’s been updated with more questions for the group to chew on and digest at any gathering - friends or family!

The Lifeology Holiday Edition is especially great for getting everyone at the table involved in a way that’s fun, open, and encourages a little self-reflection which is where we really find the connection points.

Download the game and print it out.

Here’s how to play:

Step 1: Set Up the Game
After you’ve downloaded the game, take the print out and cut out the questions. Feel free to add more questions if you’d like. Keep it light and fun, but feel free to include questions that nudge people to share meaningful thoughts and reflections.

Step 2: Ask a Question, Everyone Answers
Take turns drawing a question from the pile. One person asks the question and gives their answer. Then, everyone answers that same question. Be sure to listen to the answers and ask whatever natural follow-up questions come to you if you’d like to know more. Remember, “tell me more about that” is a great phrase to make that happen.

Step 3: Keep Going
After everyone answers, another person draws a new question and everyone answers that question. Keep going until either the dessert or the questions are gone!

JUST IN CASE: Dealing with Tough Topics
While the questions in the game are not intended to provoke confrontation, you never know what might come up. If a delicate or complex topic arises, remind people to respect everyone’s right to have an opinion. Then give a spin to the discussion - ask everyone to share their view and then, here’s the twist—ask them to share one thing they appreciate or respect about another person’s perspective that is different from their own. Sometimes, just taking a moment to consider someone else’s side and articulate it helps people feel heard, which paves the way for more productive conversation.

If you happen to share any photos or video of the gameplay on social media, please tag me - @Empathy_Activist on IG and @EmpathyActivist on TikTok and BlueSky.

Now, let’s pass the potatoes, defuse the conversations and may the only curious breathing be about how to fit in another slice of pie. Happy Thanksgiving!

I was recently having a conversation…

…with a participant in the Navigating to a New Normal study about politics and, in particular, the increasing healthcare premiums and expiring subsidies. She commented, playing back all the conservative talking points, how illegal immigrants were buying health insurance on the exchanges and it was driving up all of our health insurance premiums. In earlier conversations she had talked about immigrants being responsible for rising crime rates and how they’ve taken jobs away. All of these points have been proven false by various studies, but there she was, repeating these fear-based talking points.

And then it struck me: fear today isn’t just a response in our bodies and brains. It’s in our feeds, our conversations, our algorithms, our politics. It’s not simply that we fear one another — it’s that we’re being encouraged to. Nudged. Rewarded. Repeatedly told to fear the “other.”

“The only thing we have to fear…” is usually quoted as optimism. But what if we re-read it this way:
The only thing we have to fear is letting fear tell the story for us.

Why Fear Hits Us So Hard (and So Fast)

Fear isn’t moral. It’s biological. It’s ancient.

Neuroscientists like Joseph LeDoux remind us that our amygdala acts as the threat detector and fires before we consciously understand what’s happening. The body floods with cortisol while the heart rate spikes and muscles tense. We interpret difference, uncertainty, and conflict as danger.

Neuroscientists go further: humans evolved what researchers call the Survival Optimization System — an adaptive, threat-detection operating system focused on managing predators, scarcity, and social danger.

But…

Our brains evolved for lions and rival tribes, not misinformation, not algorithmic outrage, not political manipulation, not social media reward loops.

Modern stimuli trigger the same ancient circuits. As a result, we feel unsafe, even when the threat is abstract or manufactured, like when politicians or leaders tell us to be afraid of a group of people.

And then?
We retreat. We defend. We dehumanize. We divide.

(the video version…)

Weaponizing Fear (and Why It Works So Well)

Politicians have long understood that fear is a mobilizing force. Look at political history and we can see how fear has been utilized throughout time. But digital culture has multiplied its power.

👁 The Political Lever

A recent political science study shows fear + anger are intentionally invoked to create “in-groups” and “out-groups”.

Fear breeds loyalty. Loyalty feeds power. Power rewards with more fear.

📱 The Algorithmic Amplifier

Social media platforms optimize for engagement — and fear, outrage, and anxiety are highly engaging. Just notice how you keep swiping and liking and sharing and what those things are.

INSS’s report “Social Media, Messaging, and the Influencing of Public Emotions” explains how platforms amplify emotional triggers to shape public opinion. Disinformation studies show polarization grows fastest where fear is the emotional fuel.

The result?
We are more “connected” than any generation in history — and simultaneously more afraid of each other.

Something feels wrong about that, doesn’t it?

🧩 The Shadow Side of Empathy

You named it perfectly:
The same neural machinery that lets us feel someone else’s emotions can be distorted to make us fear someone else’s being.

Politicians and leaders are often like the tagline from the classic movie, Poltergeist. “It knows what scares you.”

Poltergeist or Politigeist?

They can intuitively understand what might motivate their base. Often that is fear of the other, whether it is immigrants, people with guns, trans kids or people from the other political party.

Social media does it too, particularly with political content where there is a “confrontation effect” which means we react with anger (often rooted in fear) to content from opposing viewpoints.
Politicians call it “protecting our people.”
Algorithms call it “recommended for you.”
Our bodies call it “danger.”

Fear foments disconnection.
That disconnection becomes the norm.

And suddenly we’re staring across a chasm, wondering ‘how in the world did we get here?” and “what do we do now?”

It’s all courtesy of the Fear Industrial Complex. Keeping you in some state of fear keeps you under control and prevents you from connecting with your neighbors to choose an alternate path.

Empathy as the Antidote to Fear

Here’s the good news: empathy works on the same circuitry that fear hijacks.
A 2021 study on perspective-taking to reduce affective polarization showed empathy-based prompts decreased anger and increased openness to political opponents.

Empathy is not soft. It has the ability to do some neurological rewiring. It interrupts automatic threat responses and opens cognitive space.

Without knowing what was happening neurologically, I put this to use way back when I was living in Los Angeles and had just come out. This was back in the early-mid 90s, pre-Ellen, before Will & Grace, when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a thing and the AIDS epidemic was continuing to decimate the community. We were feared as a community.

I attended a reading by the gay author Paul Monette promoting his book Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story. There we were, sitting outside under a big tree in a park for this reading, Monette told the audience how we needed to show the other side how we are no different than they are, that we are who they are; their family, their friends, their co-workers, their neighbors.

His words struck me deeply. In fact, they inspired me. I had started volunteering with GLAAD’s LA chapter and proposed that what we needed to do was combat homophobia with increased awareness and one way to do that is through a visibility campaign.

That’s how the Bus Bench Campaign was born. Featuring a group of LGBTQ+ individuals (I put my money where my mouth was and volunteered to represent white gays), we placed the benches in more conservative parts of LA County where people might need the reminder that “We Are Who YOU Are: Your Family, Your Friends, Your Co-Workers, Your Neighbors”.

I kept one of the bus benches as I’m really proud of this work to this day.

By showing human faces and reminding people that we are part of their daily life, it signaled that we aren’t something to be afraid of. The same is true today of those people who we are being told are “other” and should be afraid of them.

For more on this, check out Chapter 8: Fear, in my book (note: Amazon link) . It’s the one about people who have carry/conceal permits and explores gun safety and gun control.

Empathy helped me overcome fear in that situation learning about people who want to carry guns because that’s what empathy does.

Using the 5 Steps to Empathy, here’s the trail to follow:

Step 1: Dismantle Judgment

Notice when you’re activated.
What story did your brain supply?
Is it true, or just ancient circuitry fired by modern triggers?

Can you take a Curious Breath and calm your parasympathetic nervous system? That helps you go from ‘fight or flight’ to considering how to respond and build empathy.

Step 2: Ask Good Questions

“What do I don’t know yet?”
“What might they be afraid of?”
Fear dissolves in curiosity.

Step 3: Actively Listen

Notice tone, pauses, body language.
Sometimes people are not angry — they’re scared.

Let them know you hear them by repeating back what they said.

Then ask them if you got it right, giving them a chance to correct you.

Step 4: Integrate into Understanding

You don’t have to agree.
You only have to understand how another human arrived where they are.

You can use this information to find common ground and collaborate toward a mutually-agreeable solution.

Step 5: Use Solution Imagination

Imagine a next step together:
“What could we build that works for both of us?”
“What’s one thing we both value?”

Keep stepping toward a positive outcome, leaving fear in the dust behind you.

A Strange Yet Needed Reframing

I want to offer a thought experiment…
The day humanity collectively realizes we’re not alone in the universe will be the day we stop seeing fellow humans as the primary threat.

Sociologists call this superordinate identity formation: when faced with a larger external challenge, in-groups and out-groups dissolve. We become “we.”

Think about the elements of your identity and how you identify. Each one nests within the next and there may also be a common threat.

I live in San Francisco. We have a rival in Los Angeles.

But we live in California, so together we are rivals to Texas.

But we all live in the United States, which has rivals in various countries depending on world situations. So we come together as a nation against another nation or external threat.

So what happens when we discover the presence of extra-terrestrial or dimensional intelligence?

Suddenly, we are all the same and it’s the aliens that’s the threat, so it brings humanity together, possibly in the way that Star Trek shows a human utopian future.

We don’t have to wait for aliens to land to practice this kind of perspective shift.
We can choose to see each other as part of the same fragile, astonishing, interdependent species.

Aliens just make the metaphor obvious.

What To Do Now (Practical Moves)

Here are four concrete actions you can take this week:

1. Name the fear

When you feel activated, pause. Label the emotion.
Research shows naming reduces amygdala activity.

2. Replace assumption with inquiry

Before deciding what someone “means,” ask:
“Can you say more about how you see this?”

3. Create one cross-difference conversation

Pick someone you normally avoid talking politics or big topics with.
Ask one curiosity-led question.

4. Audit your algorithm

Notice who you’re being told to fear.
Then seek out a source that brings nuance, context, or connection.

What Are We Waiting For?

Fear may be ancient, but connection is chosen.
Empathy doesn’t erase fear, it simply refuses to let fear write the story.

And if we really are headed toward a future where non-human intelligence becomes part of the picture?
All the more reason to get better at being human to one another now.

• - -

What do you think? About aliens, fear, politicians, any of it.

Comment below or send me a note: rob@robvolpe.expert

MacGyvering an Ironing Board

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

I was recently giving a talk on how to improve marketing efforts by leveraging empathy to a group from the AMA-South Florida chapter. The challenge was that I was in Salt Lake City for another commitment and had to figure out how to set up my hotel room so I can have the camera at eye view, with a good background, etc.

This is where I’ve found ironing boards to be quite handy. In this case, at the LeMeridien hotel, I perched it on the love seat in order to get good light and the right height.

Two laptops so I could see the chat, which Teams doesn’t let you do when you have a PPT in presentation mode. Isn’t business travel glamorous?

Gifts and My Gratitude

I’d also be grateful if you’d consider giving a copy of my book to a friend this year at the holidays, or perhaps buy a copy for the Little Free Library in your neighborhood. Spreading the 5 Steps to Empathy among your community will help us overcome our divides even faster.

Finally, I’ll be back in a few days with some Thanksgiving tips so you aren’t the turkey at the table, including the ever-popular Holiday Lifeology game.

Put Down Your Phone. What Do You See?

🚖 Ten-Minutes to See the World

I was in a cab in New York City, heading up Madison Avenue to facilitate a client workshop, when I made a small but radical choice for a Thursday morning: I put my phone down.

For ten minutes, I just looked out the window. The sidewalks were full of people heading to work wearing the uniforms they chose for the day. New stores had opened next to old. Cafes were serving customers. Billboards flashed the latest ads. Humans worked to keep pace with their dogs. The sun was shining brightly, and I felt myself reset.

In that moment, I wasn’t trying to keep up. I was catching up to what was already around me.

We’re attending an all-you-can-eat buffet designed to steal our focus with an endless rotation of dishes, satisfying but not fulfilling us, keeping us wanting more.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to push back from the table. There’s growing awareness of the damage that’s being done to us from this constant force feeding of our attention. From the movement to help teens and young adults disconnect from phones to increasing dissatisfaction with the infinity of content creating a demand for the finite while there’s also a growing trend among Gen Z to turn off social media. I’m not a big believer in generations being responsible for much of anything, given how broad and diverse that size cohort is. Instead, I believe there are psychographic or attitudinal changes that are taking place which is affecting our behavior.

Empathy begins there — with attention. Are you able to summon the discipline to pause and let the moment in? What do you see when you put your phone down?

Speaking of phones and feasting on technology, right after I recorded the video to this edition, reveling in my newfound connections with the world around me, I stepped into the elevator in my hotel and was greeted with this…

They never once looked up from their phones to acknowledge me. Twenty floors of missed opportunity.

Something I’ve loved this trip is the change in perspective a hotel room on the 20th floor can provide. Outside my room were a countless array of water towers. Like sentinels protecting the buildings in their charge. I loved how the October light would illuminate different ones throughout the day.

Instagram post

🏙 Dear New York — The Human Stories Right in Front of Us

Later that day, I visited Dear New York, a photo exhibit at Grand Central Station from the team behind Humans of New York.

Each of the participating photographers took a different lens on the city: one focused on the stories of women recently out of jail finding freedom again while another built trust with the Hasidic community to gain access to their quiet rituals. I also enjoyed the photographer who documented the latest club scene and what the “cool kids” are doing today. Also stunning were the photos of drivers crossing on the Williamsburg Bridge during the evening rush and the golden light that strikes just so, revealing more than just the driver of a car.

Part of the Dear New York exhibit - the outer 3 walls contained the photos of people nominated by students in New York City. There’s a companion book to this series as well.

The most moving section was the hundreds of photos by New York schoolchildren nominating someone who inspired them. As I looked at them all, I was struck by how these figures of inspiration were the everyday people in our lives. I saw teachers and coaches, parents and grandparents, siblings, cousins and aunties.

The short paragraphs from the students about the people they nominated made it clear to me the role that empathy played. Empathy isn’t an abstract ideal. It’s in how we see and acknowledge one another. Sometimes the most powerful empathy is the simplest: I see you.

💬 From Noticing to Action: How Empathy Shows Up In Friendship

Over the past few weeks I’ve been able to get together with some of the friends that I’ve thought about when taking the Friendship Personality Quiz. I noticed that I was much more aware of how I was showing up for them and what they might be needing in the moment. That gave me a chance to decide if I was going to modify my behavior to better support them, as well as what I need.

With one friend where I typed as The Solicitor, during a chat over dinner, I recalled that I relied on that friendship for providing empathy for me - kind of like that main character energy. I didn’t think I was doing it on this night but I was mindful of it, so I decided to lean in to asking more questions and being supportive. If I had needed more supportive empathy, perhaps if I was in the midst of going through something, then I would have been seeking more support.

Another night and I was with a friend I hadn’t typed against and even in that situation, I found myself reflecting on how I was showing up during our conversation and if I was providing what I thought my friend needed. It seemed like everything was good and so I carried on but I liked having the thought cross my mind to make sure I was showing up for my friends.

So here’s my experiment for you this week:

• Retake the Friendship Personality Test — this time, with one specific person in mind. Try with a person where you’ve had a more challenged relationship - so not your bestie but someone who you maybe have different viewpoints. See how you type compared to people you are better friends with.

• Then, in any engagement with a friend, notice how you are showing up compared to how you typed. Is that how you want it to be? What can you do differently to support them better?

• And then, tell me what you noticed.

🎃 What Your Halloween Candy Says About You

This time last year I shared thoughts on how you approach Halloween candy that you hand out and what it might say about you - are you having empathy with the kids or yourself or something else? I was really moved by the stories you shared with me about what goes into your decision making, so I wanted to share a link to that edition again. Plus, I recorded a video about it. Please share with your friends. I think you’ll have some great discussions about something we may not believe we think much about but has some deep-seated motivations.

If you or your organization are looking for speaker or a workshop on improving workplace culture or improving leadership skills, I’d love to connect and see how I can help.

When the Divide Feels Personal

One of the questions I frequently hear from audiences when I’m giving a keynote or a training is “how can I talk to people on the other side.”

I’m always careful when I answer this question because I’m not sure what “the other side” is. It’s usually safe to assume it’s about politics but I don’t want to assume the person asking shares my political beliefs and so I start my answer with the following:

“Well, they are human, just like you, so it’s important to recognize and respect their humanity. We all have the right to have our own opinion and way of looking at the world. However we need to come together, share our perspectives, understand the perspective of others and collaborate on solutions.”

It shouldn’t be this hard but it feels like we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other. Not yell, not post, but actually talk.

And according to new data, we’re all feeling it.

In Ignite 360’s 2022 “Navigating to a New Normal” study, Americans told us they were deeply worried about our growing divisions. Right after pocketbook concerns like food (71%), gas (64%), and home energy prices (63%), 62% said they were “fairly or extremely worried” about our inability to overcome differences — ranking it #4 out of 25 national issues.

Fast forward to September 2025: a New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters finds that 64% now believe the U.S. is too politically divided to solve its problems — up from 42% in 2020.

Two different studies. Different audiences. Different questions. Three years apart.
Same signal: we’re losing faith in our ability to bridge divides.

THE VIDEO VERSION

Pocketbooks and Polarization: The Twin Pillars of American Worry

Here’s what the data tells us — from two entirely different lenses:

• In the Ignite 360 data (adults 18+ in the general US population), people’s top concerns were all about what hits home: the prices of food, gas, and energy.

• Yet, right behind those, people named our inability to overcome differences and political polarization.

• In the Times/Siena poll (a survey of registered voters), the same pattern appeared through a political lens: the economy (16%) and polarization/division (13%) emerged as the top two issues — above crime, immigration, or healthcare.

Economic stress and social division now sit side by side in Americans’ hierarchy of concern — one threatens our livelihood, the other our ability to live together

The insight is simple but powerful:
We worry first about our wallets — but right after that, we worry about the walls between us.

It’s expanding concentric circles of concern - our home; our community; the world around us.

It makes sense when you stop to think about it. Of course we will prioritize what effects us most directly. From there, we worry about what is immediately around us. And then the world at large.

And here’s something quietly hopeful:
Even in this era of division, most Americans don’t see the other side as “the enemy.”
Only 10% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans said that in the Times/Siena poll.

That means the majority still sees people on the other side. Not monsters.
That’s what I see as our empathy opportunity.

The Missing Infrastructure

We can’t rebuild connection with outrage.
We can’t rebuild it relying on algorithms, either.
We rebuild connection through conversation.

Even if it means that it’s messy and uncomfortable.

That means it will be human and real.

Empathy gives us a blueprint to rebuild the bridges.

Regular readers know there are The 5 Steps to Empathy which I explore in my book, Tell Me More About That. Each of these steps plays a vital role in building bridges but depending on the situation, the person and where you are in your own day, some of the steps will be more applicable than others.

Here are the 3 that I’m thinking about for these situations…

Step 1: Dismantle judgment.
Notice the snap judgments you make — about who someone voted for, what media they trust, what sticker is on their bumper. Catch the story you’re telling yourself. Consider your biases, prejudice and stereotypes that might be getting in the way. Then pause and ask, “What else might be true if I look at this from a different perspective?”

Step 4: Integrate into understanding.
Make space in your head for the possibility that there’s more than one valid experience. You don’t have to agree — just recognize that it’s there. Get curious, ask the questions and get ready to understand.

Step 5: Use solution imagination.
Once we’ve listened and understood, we can create together — not in spite of our differences, but through them. This step is about taking what you’ve heard and applying it to inform the next question, identifying ways to collaborate and generally seeing the path forward.

Here’s the important thing to remember. And many people get this confused: empathy isn’t agreement.
It’s acknowledgment.
It’s saying, “I see you,” before we try to change each other’s minds. When we stretch into new ways of connecting, we not only become better friends, we become better humans.

What We Can Do Now — Four Human Ways to Bridge the Divide

✅ Talk to people, not posts.
Algorithms are designed to amplify outrage, not understanding. Real conversations build bridges algorithms can’t. Pick up the phone. Make a date. Start a conversation.

✅ Ask the next question.
When you feel defensive, curious, or confused — take a Curious Breath and then ask one more question. Curiosity helps connection rebuild.

✅ Spot your judgments.
You can’t dismantle what you don’t notice. Watch for those small moments of “us vs. them” thinking. Ask yourself where those come from. It will help you dismantle those snap judgments that get in our way.

✅ Start small.
Empathy is a muscle. Practice it at your dinner table, your team meeting, your local coffee shop. The big change starts small and close to home.

A Closing Thought

Empathy won’t erase our differences.
They will always be there.
I’m glad we do have differences.
Life would be boring if we were all the same.

But a well-functioning society requires that we resolve our differences.

We have to build bridges so that we can debate, collaborate and reach compromise.

That is how we will solve the problems that we all face.

Let’s practice seeing one another again.
Building bridges that connect.
Working together to understand and resolve differences.
It’s the only way forward.

Additional Steps You Can Take

• 📊 Take the Friendship Empathy Archetype Quiz thinking of someone you know on the other side. See which empathy style you bring to that relationship and how you might adapt in order to bridge your differences.

• 🎥 Watch the companion video: “Building Bridges”

• 💬 Share your story: when was the last time you changed your mind in conversation?

• 🔗 Post your reflections on LinkedIn or Bluesky — tag a friend who sees the world differently and invite them to start a live conversation

Rob Spotting Update

What an amazing month of keynotes and workshops!

I’ve recently leaned into the idea of the “old tapes” that are playing and inform how we are showing up at work. Audiences have really related to that, particularly because I use familiar bosses from pop culture. So many of them leave a lot to be desired when it comes to being empathetic. I believe that’s part of why they are the villains of their movies and TV shows.

The tapes come from many places - media, family, friends, old and current managers, places of work, social media and AI

At the end of a conference, the attendees were asked to share what they learned via an app. I was really moved at what came up as the most common refrain…

Wow! What a complement. So happy to have made an impression. And so many of the other things people learned came from my keynote.

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

From Archetypes to Assassinations to Accountability:

Can We Stay Connected to Our Humanity?

👋 Hi friends,

Sometimes, the stories we tell about friendship and connection echo out into the public square. The ways we show up for each other — or don’t — are the same ways we show up in civic life, in politics, and in our responses to people we may not understand or even like.

This week, I want to weave together three threads:

1. What the Friendship Empathy Archetype Quiz is revealing so far,

2. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and what it shows us about how the humanity of everyone must be respected,

3. Jillian Michaels’ public pivot and what it teaches us about trying, failing, and staying open to using empathy.

Together, these stories ask the same question: when empathy is tested, how do we choose to react?

Here’s the video version…

The Friendship Empathy Archetypes — What the Results Reveal

A few weeks ago, I launched the Friendship Empathy Archetype Quiz — and hundreds of you have already taken it. The results are fascinating, not because they put anyone in a box, but because they hold up a mirror to how we’re showing up in our closest relationships.

I shared last time that I typed as a Solicitor in one friendship, and as a Therapist in another — which surprised me, and also made me curious to try the quiz again with other friends in mind which I invite you do to as well.

👉 Take the Friendship Empathy Personality Archetype Quiz here

Here’s the breakdown so far (and if you want to dig in further, I go into more detail about each archetype in the video version of this edition):

• The Nourisher (44%)
  Nearly half of you typed here. You’re the friends who make others feel safe, cared for, and seen. It’s a beautiful role. But there’s a cost: sometimes you put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own, and that can quietly drain you.

• The Therapist (24%)
  About a quarter of you typed as the Therapist. You’re the space-holders and listeners, the ones people turn to when they need to talk something through. That’s a gift — but when you’re always processing someone else’s emotions, it can get heavy. Balance is key: who plays Therapist for you?

• The Strategist (12%)
  These are the problem-solvers and planners, the ones who push conversations deeper with structure and insight. Strategists are great at helping others find a way forward, but sometimes they struggle to sit with raw emotion — slipping too quickly into “fix-it” mode.

• The Solicitor (10%)
  This one surprised me personally. I typed as a Solicitor in one of my friendships — the friend I go to when I need support on a big life issue. Solicitors are the empathy-seekers: they want to be deeply seen and understood. It doesn’t mean they’re not also there for others — just that, in certain dynamics, they lean on being cared for.

• The Ghost (7%)
  A smaller group typed as the Ghost — the ones who pull back when things get hard. Sometimes that withdrawal is protective. But it can also create distance. Naming this pattern lets you check in: why am I pulling away? What conversation might help close the gap?

• The Expander (2%)
  Rare but powerful, Expanders are the disruptors. They push us outside our comfort zones, challenging us to grow, to stretch, to face truths we’d rather avoid. They can be uncomfortable — and that’s exactly why we need them.

• The Echo (2%)
  Another rare type, the Echo reflects emotions back so the other person feels deeply understood. It’s a gift, but the risk is losing sight of their own needs in the process.

Taken together, nearly 70% of us cluster around the Nourisher and Therapist. That means a lot of safety and care — but not much stretching or challenging. Only about 14–15% typed as Strategists or Expanders, the archetypes most likely to push growth.

That imbalance raises a big question: are we so focused on comfort that we’re missing opportunities to challenge and be challenged?

👉 Here’s a thought experiment: try the quiz again, but this time, take it with someone you disagree with in mind. Maybe it’s your “crazy uncle” at Thanksgiving, or your Gen Z niece or nephew with totally different political views. Take the quiz while focusing on how you show up in that relationship. Are you still the same archetype? Do you lean into safety, or do you pull back? That’s where the deeper insights live.

How might you show up differently?

👉 Take the Friendship Empathy Personality Archetype Quiz here

When we stretch into new ways of connecting, we not only become better friends, we become better humans.

Choosing Humanity over Cheering Death

Then came the news that jarred me into deep reflection: the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Whatever your politics, this is a moment that demands a reckoning. When someone is killed for their voice, their visibility, their politics, no matter how much we disagree with them, no matter how much they say vile things about our community, we are forced to confront what humanity truly means to us. And that is a reflection of what we truly value.

Several people have approached me with questions about how to reconcile what happened. They express compassion for Kirk’s wife and children. Yet at the same time they see how Kirk’s rhetoric has put their own community, and therefore, themselves at risk and feeling attacked.

My response has been to help them recognize that, in the polarized and enflamed world we live in (thanks algorithm, politics as reality show, social, targeted and mainstream media and the unease built up from years of uncertainty), if we let our polarized passions eclipse our humanity, then we are reducing ourselves to that which we detest.

If we want to change the direction a person, an organization or a political party is taking, the way forward is by using our voices, our votes, and our civic participation. The path forward is not by cheering their death. The future is where empathy becomes not softness, but strength: the strength to stay human in the face of deep division.

To have empathy means we are connected to each other. It does not mean we give up our own point of view, but we see and hear the other person. We acknowledge their existence. Given the disconnectedness of our society, the loneliness crisis and the tiny bubbles we find ourselves in, it is time to make conscious decisions to connect with each other. Start the conversations so we connect, letting us see our collective humanity.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10. The next day was the anniversary of the largest terrorist attacks in the United States to date. One of the remarkable things that happened in the wake of 9/11, especially in New York City where I was living at the time, was how we all came together. The sense of community was so strong. We were all connected because we had lived through a trauma together. A knowing glance and a ‘how are you?’ was freely exchanged with strangers. In New York! The shared experience made empathy easy to feel on deep levels because we shared a common moment in time. We valued the humanity of others and ourselves.

If you choose, please take a moment in silence to remember the lives lost and reflect on how the ripples of 9/11 have affected your life, big or small. How might your life have been different had the attacks never happened?

I do not know where the ripples of the assassination of Charlie Kirk will take us. Those waves are just starting to extend from the event. We live in a world where we divide ourselves with every new event. From masking and social distancing to honoring the more than 1.2M people who died from Covid-19, How we choose to respond to these moments of crisis speaks volumes about us as people and how we value the humanity of others. And if we don’t value the humanity of others, what value does our own humanity hold?

The Messy Work of Trying to Have Empathy

Staying human also means making space for those who are trying, whether clumsily or controversially, to listen and grow.

Take Jillian Michaels. The Biggest Loser trainer turned right-wing commentator, she was embroiled in controversy this summer over remarks on CNN Tonight about slavery which were deeply hurtful and misguided. Amid the “what a nut job” attacks, an in-depth profile of her appeared in The New York Times (gift link). At first I didn’t want to read it, choosing to ‘cancel’ her and ignore her existence. But then I thought it might be interesting to see “what the hell happened” and how she got where she is.

I was struck how, in the article, she spoke about shifting politically, from left to right, beginning in 2020 as she started to question information she felt was being spoon-fed by the left without critical discussion or analysis. As she’s started her new venture, she talked about seeking to have empathy with others who have different viewpoints. Those are the conversations we need to have. Not the talking at the camera on a CNN opinion show, but listening in a meaningful way. I can get behind that because I have empathy with her desire while disagreeing with her tactics.

Jillian Michaels is not a perfect model of empathy. None of us are. But her public wrestling with change reminds us that empathy can be messy. It involves mistakes, accountability, and humility. It asks us to risk being wrong, to repair when we hurt, to keep listening even when it’s uncomfortable.

That’s not a weakness. That’s the work of staying human.

Pulling the Threads Together

So what do these stories — quiz archetypes, assassination, controversy — have in common?

• In our friendships, many of us avoid the archetypes that risk discomfort.

• In our politics, we sometimes forget that disagreement doesn’t erase humanity.

• In our culture, we’re quick to pounce on imperfection — but slower to value accountability and growth.

The throughline? Disconnection is easy. Empathy is hard. But empathy is also where strength, resilience, and possibility live.

An Invitation for You…

Here are a few ways to put this into practice:

1. Notice your archetype. Are you defaulting to safety (Nourisher, Therapist), or leaning into challenge (Solicitor, Expander)? Where are you holding back? Take the quiz again thinking of a person you struggle with. Or share it with a friend and have an honest conversation on where you type with each other. Both of these will fuel personal growth.

2. Practice humanity across disagreement. When you encounter a political figure or friend you strongly disagree with, pause. Take a Curious Breath. Name their humanity before you name your judgment. Ideally, dismantle your judgment so that you can see their humanity.

3. Allow for messy growth. When you or someone else stumbles, resist the urge to cancel. Have grace. Ask: what accountability looks real here? What growth is possible? How can I support these next steps?

4. Unplug. Take an hour, maybe 2 and truly unplug. No social media. No internet. Instead, plug in to the humans around you. After all, they are what’s real and most important.

Because in the end, empathy isn’t about comfort. It’s about choosing connection, again and again, even when it would be easier to turn away.

I’m standing here with you. I know we can all do this.

Let me know how else I can support you.

💡 What feels hardest right now about holding empathy across difference? Email me rob@robvolpe.expert

Rob Spotting Update

I had a great time in Chicago this week speaking on evolving thinking about soundbites to utilizing storyscapes. The 5 Steps to Empathy plays a key role in this process. Once we identify our audience, we need to have awareness of what gets in their way and which of the 5 Steps can help with that. An early start turned into a nearly full house as the hour progressed. The response was very positive - “you took a complex subject and made it relatable” said one attendee while another said it left her feeling inspired. That’s what I was going for!

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

I still have 3 speaking engagements in the coming weeks, including a new one that’s just been announced.

“The Paradox of Leadership: How to Be Nice and Be Respected” at PIHRA Los Angeles monthly meeting, Wednesday, September 17, 7:30-9:30am

“The Missing Link: How Empathy Drives Workplace Culture, Retention and Productivity” at SHRM-Tulare/Kings County Annual Conference, Thursday, September 25, 2025

And on October 1, I’m headlining EJ Gallo’s PRIDE ERG Diversity Summit in Modesto. Stay tuned for more details.

If you know anyone attending any of these events or that should be attending, I’d appreciate it if you passed these on. And if you might be there - please let me know!

What Kind of Friend Are You, Really?

👋 Hi friends,

This is not a column about Sex and the City and the reboot, And Just Like That… although it was inspired by the conclusion/cancellation of the latter series. If you didn’t watch or never watched, that’s ok, I only reference the show in the opening few paragraphs and an occasional mention here or there. It’s not essential knowledge or back story to connect with what I’m sharing this edition. Just wanted to preface all that in case you were ready to tune out at the first mention of content you’d never seen or had no interest in. Here goes…

With the recent wrap of the “love to hate but still love” series And Just Like That…, I’ve been thinking about the original Sex and the City and the friendships of the core four characters. Since I’m roughly the same age as Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha, and lived in New York during the original series run, I identified with the experiences they had. These women liberated us to talk, and act, more openly and positively about sex. I even discuss living through this cultural influence at the start of Chapter 10, Let’s Talk About Sex, in Tell Me More About That.

THE VIDEO VERSION

As a result, the latest series, even though it was despised-with-love by many, felt to me like catching up with old friends. I found in their middle-aged stories many of the emotional situations my middle-age friend group are experiencing as we move through this part of life. [Admittedly without the extreme wealth and not quite as lavish wardrobe.] What I noticed recently while viewing the show was the interactions of the friends and when empathy was and wasn’t present as well as the affects that had on their relationships.

With the show getting so much lovescorn and my connection to this collection of “old friends", I couldn’t help but wonder (#iykyk) how does empathy show up in our real-life adult friendships?

A Lens on Empathy in Friendship

Friendship is where empathy goes to work in its most everyday, unpolished form. Unlike in family or work relationships, friendships are voluntary, more fluid. Some friends come in close and become our chosen family. Some we keep at arms length. We drift in and out of our friendships and they evolve as our lives evolve.

Yet friendships are vital as they produce the connections we need to thrive. Studies have found these connections keep us healthier longer and we are less likely to die young when we have strong friendships as this article in the APA on the Science of Friendships uncovers.

What builds those connections? Empathy. Both cognitive and emotional empathy play a role in forming the foundation for our friendships. How we understand where our friends are coming from or what they are feeling.

How we use empathy in friendship isn’t static. It depends on the person, the situation they are in as well as the situation or head space we are in ourselves. You can’t show up for someone else if you are hurting or in need of more attention personally.

I was intrigued by this recent piece in Psychology Today about when we over do it and the perils of under supporting our friends. We have to be attuned to our friends, what they need when they need it, and what we need for ourselves.

This means that sometimes we’re beautifully dialed-in to what a friend needs while other times, we completely miss the beat. Think of a friend of yours - or on the show, Charlotte, who most often tried to nurture and offer warmth. Contrast that with a friend like Carrie, who (love her or not) often sought empathy for herself, particularly as The Woman navigated the 3rd season. Fictionalized Carrie’s behavior makes sense when you are the “main character” and while we play that role in our individual lives, is that the part we are playing in our friend group? Or are we part of an ensemble of friends. Depending on the answer, the way empathy is showing up in the friend dynamics appears to vary.

And yet, the paradox is that while a person who displays some “all about me” needs may also be there for friends when they really need her. In times of crisis, the empathy of understanding what is happening or the emotion of the moment engages and the friend shows up. Both expressions of empathy can be true and are real dynamics that play out in adult friendship.

As we get older, being a friend in the ways we were present in our youth gets harder. Personal and professional commitments get in the way. The sofa just gets more comfy every night and the energy to get out there on a Friday night for drinks can be harder to summon. In other words, inertia often wins out.

Making friends in middle age? Good luck!, as this writer found out in a moving piece in The Atlantic (gifted). She cites studies that find the average American spends just 41 minutes a day socializing in any capacity while it takes 200 hours for a stranger to become a close friend, and that should happen in a six-week period. How can you possibly make new good friends faced with those time challenges?

So where and how do we show up using empathy with our friends? I’ve mapped out what I see are the behavior expressions of empathy in friendships into 7 personality archetypes. Using that as a basis, I’ve developed this personality quiz, link below, so you can see how you are showing up with empathy in friendships.

Try It Yourself

So, what kind of friend are you, really?

I’ve built this short quiz to help you find your own Friendship Empathy Archetype. It only takes a few minutes, and I promise the results are more fun than the “Which SATC character are you?” quizzes of old.

👉 Take the Friendship Empathy Archetype Quiz here

The quiz is straight-forward, 15 multiple choice questions that should take just a few minutes. I suggest you take the quiz and then come back and read about the different archetypes so you see where you typed and the other personality archetypes. There’s room for open ended feedback at the end as well, I’d like to know if anything feels like it’s missing or off.

One last direction - keep in mind one friend and relationship situation throughout the quiz. Then you can try again with another friend in mind. See if how you type is different

Once you have your result, share it with a friend — or even better, invite them to take it too. It might spark an interesting conversation about how you each show up for one another.

A visual break so you take the quiz rather than jump ahead to the answers. Here’s the characters from Sex and the City: (from left) Charlotte, Carrie, Miranda and Samantha.

The Seven Archetypes of Empathy in Friendship

I’m so curious to know where you ended up typing and how it felt. Did it ring true or feel off? Or maybe a little of both? Any behavioral responses that you think might be missing?

Here’s the 7 different archetypes so you can see a little more about yourself and the other types.

• The Nourisher
  The steady, emotionally attuned friend. In Nourisher situations you’re the one who offers comfort and makes sure everyone feels cared for. The challenge? Remembering you deserve to receive care and support, too.

• The Strategist
  Your empathy comes through clarity and perspective. In Strategist moments, you help friends think things through and make good decisions. When first presented with a friends situation, judgment might get in your way so be sure to dismantle it. The edge for you? Sitting with the feelings or the situation instead of moving too quickly to solutions.

• The Solicitor
  You long to be deeply understood, and that makes you beautifully open-hearted. But connection is a two-way street. Growth comes when, in those Solicitor moments, you turn that same quality of attention outward. Be sure to offer support as surely as you are seeking it.

• The Expander
  You’re the truth-teller, the catalyst, the one who shakes friends out of their ruts. Lightning, not lullaby is the Expander’s situation. The lesson? The message won’t resonate if you push boundaries too far so stay attuned to others’ pace while still being your bold self.

• The Echo
  You reflect people so well that they feel completely seen. But in Echo moments, sometimes you lose sight of yourself. True empathy includes your own emotions, too.

• The Ghost
  You care more than people think — but when emotions get big, you tend to pull back and maybe vanish like a Ghost. Space protects you, but growth comes from gently re-engaging without losing yourself.

• The Therapist
  The wise space-holder. Friends turn to you for your patience and insight just like a Therapist. Just don’t forget: unlike a one-way therapy relationship, you deserve to be supported, too.

These archetypes aren’t meant as judgments. They’re lenses, ways to notice our own defaults and, maybe, shift when needed. Remember, we’re not one-dimensional. We move in and out of these roles depending on the season of life, what our friends need from us and what we need.

How do these resonate with you?

I asked ChatGPT5 to create an illustration of the 7 archetypes personified at a restaurant sharing a meal together. This is its first attempt. Thoughts? Can you identify which type is which? I have some thoughts…

My Own Surprising Result(s)

When I took the quiz, I did it twice, thinking about two different friends and different scenarios. And I got two different answers. I typed as The Therapist and The Solicitor.

Really? The Solicitor? That surprised me at first but then as I reflected on the friend and the situation, I could see where I was soliciting empathy for myself more than maybe I built it with my friend. Right now, given everything that’s happened in my past two years, that maybe isn’t a surprise that I was eliciting more “main character” energy, asking for more than I was giving back.

A friend who already took the quiz also tested as a Solicitor. As we discussed how they typed, there was a realization how, in the situation and friend that they had in mind while taking the quiz, they had an expectation of getting empathetic attention for acts of kindness that they were performing. Being a Solicitor isn’t bad, we just have to make sure we are balancing out those main character tendencies so that we are part of an ensemble when it counts.

And then with another friend, it appears I’m in the Therapist role. Again, not a surprise however the watch out with the Therapist is to make sure that I am getting supported as well. How can I be that and the Solicitor? This is an example of the situational nature - who’s the friend, what’s going on with them, what’s going on with me. And maybe I’m finding support with other friendships and so I’m able to lean into the Therapist role for this friend.

What I need to be mindful of is not letting either of these dominate and strive for balance. The power is in noticing when I’m defaulting — and asking, “Is this what my friend actually needs from me right now?”

A Closing Thought

Friendship is one of the most profound places where empathy gets practiced — imperfectly, inconsistently, but beautifully. We aren’t always Charlotte. Sometimes we’re Carrie or Samantha. And sometimes we’re a mix of all seven archetypes, depending on the day.

But when we pause to notice our defaults and stretch into new ways of connecting, we don’t just become better friends. We also become better humans.

So… what kind of friend are you, really?

P.S. - I’m working on how this translates to how we show up at work with our colleagues. Stay tuned!!!

Rob Spotting Update

September is gearing up to be a busy month. I have 3 speaking engagements and one more booked for early October but I can’t reveal it just yet.

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

In the meantime, I’m speaking at:

“From Soundbites to Storyscapes: What’s Next in Storytelling” at the Insights Association Corporate Researchers Conference, Chicago - Thursday, September 11, 9am-10am.

“The Paradox of Leadership: How to Be Nice and Be Respected” at PIHRA Los Angeles monthly meeting, Wednesday, September 17, 7:30-9:30am

“The Missing Link: How Empathy Drives Workplace Culture, Retention and Productivity” at SHRM-Tulare/Kings County Annual Conference, Thursday, September 25, 2025

If you know anyone attending any of these events or that should be attending, I’d appreciate it if you passed these on. And if you might be there - please let me know!

📅 Whyless Wednesday 

🛑 One day. No “why.”

Every Wednesday, challenge yourself to go completely “why”-free—in conversation and in your own head. Repeat this exercise until it becomes second nature and expands to the other days of the week.

🔄 When you catch yourself about to say “why,” swap it for a “who,” “what", “where,” “when” or “how version of that question:

Here are a few examples

• “Why did this happen?” —> “What happened that led to…”

• “Why did you decide to do that?” —> “How did you decide…”

• “I want to understand why” —> “Tell me more about…” ☺️

💡 Bonus: Try it with a friend or coworker and compare notes at the end of the day. Be their accountability partner. Start a “swear jar” and put a dollar in every time someone uses the word ‘why’. Treat your team to a reward at the end with the collected money.

You’ll be amazed how much more open—and less defensive—people feel when “why” is off the table. The result is more honest answers to your questions. Who doesn’t want that?

🧠 Toxic Empathy or Selective Listening?

What happens when empathy gets political, twisted, or just plain misunderstood?

👋 Hello from New York City!
I'm writing/recording this while wrapping up a business trip that took me to Toronto and New York City in rapid fashion. The Big Apple feels like the perfect place to respond to a pair of New York Times articles from July—both about empathy and revealing about the role empathy plays in our actions and how it can be used for selfish ends.

First off, I’m thrilled to see the Times dedicating more space to empathy, especially its so-called “dark side.” More on that in a moment.

Over two consecutive days in mid-July, the Times published two articles on toxic empathy and how cultural conservatives are now attempting to weaponize it.
(Thanks to everyone who made sure these hit my inbox!)

VIDEO VERSION IS HERE, KEEP SCROLLING TO KEEP READING:

📰 The Rundown

• The first piece to come out was an interview by NYT opinion columnist Ross Douthat with Allie Beth Stuckey, podcast host and author of the bestselling book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. Stuckey argues that the cultural right is being pulled into a progressive belief-system because of empathy and that empathy can lead you to do three things: 1) validate lies; 2) affirm sin; 3) support destructive policies.

• The second was an analysis by NYT non-fiction book critic Jennifer Szalai, titled How Empathy Became a Threat. Szalai explores Stuckey’s book as well as The Sin of Empathy by Joe Rigney and compares it to Paul Bloom’s landmark (imo) Against Empathy.

What I saw in both pieces is the exposure of a calculated twisting of empathy. Rather than recognizing their own selective use of it, Stuckey and Rigney label empathy itself as the problem. Au contraire!

I’ll explain how I think about this in a moment. First, let’s pause for an empathy refresher:

🔍 A Quick Empathy Refresher

There are two types of empathy:

• Cognitive empathy: Seeing someone else’s perspective.

• Emotional empathy: Feeling someone else’s emotions as they feel them.

🧠 Neuroscientists like Helen Riess and Jamil Zaki have shown we’re wired for both.
🧒 According to child development studies, empathy begins showing up around 18 months old.

As adults, in most situations, cognitive empathy is what we access most easily. That’s because of how we’re socialized to think about displays of emotion. Those endless tapes from media, mentors and our individual influencers (caregivers, teachers etc) have created barriers in our heads about showing emotion, particularly in the workplace. Plus, emotional empathy is more readily accessed with people we know well—friends, family, those with shared experiences who are “just like us.” Once we are outside of that circle many of us use cognitive empathy.

(And yes, there are HSPs and Empaths who are more perceptive and intuitive, able to pick up on others feelings empathetically so they are operating with their emotional empathy more highly attuned and face different challenges. More on that below…)

Let’s also distinguish how we have empathy for individuals and groups. It’s often the story of a person within a group that sparks an empathetic connection and then action.

Recall any natural disaster you are familiar with - for example, the flash floods in Texas on July 4 that claimed at least 135 lives. One hundred thirty-five people, lost. It can be hard to wrap our heads around the tragedy and know what to do about it because the number becomes overwhelming. But when you hear the story of one of the Camp Mystic campers who was unable to escape the waters swamping her cabin, it suddenly connects us to the tragedy. We can imagine what it might be like to have been in that cabin in the dark amid rising and rushing water. The story of the one person can help you have empathy with them - and then expand that out to all the other campers as well as the other victims of the flash floods.

The story of one sits at the core of our inspiration to act with compassion such as making a donation. It is empathy that helps drive a desire to more deeply understand the tragedy or call for the need for better safeguards and warning systems. The Story of One is a powerful tool to get people inspired to take action.

Which brings me back to Allie Beth Stuckey…

🤔 Selective Empathy Isn’t Empathy. Is It?

In her interview, Stuckey argues that people are “over-empathizing” with one side and that is causing people to make decisions that are skewing their beliefs and leading them to support cruel behavior. Allie Beth identifies as a conservative Christian and so she’s concerned that fellow evangelical Christians like her are being moved to what she’d consider more ‘progressive’ viewpoints.

In the interview (and the transcript is in the article if you don’t want to watch/listen), she starts by sharing a story about how she has empathy when traveling with moms navigating strollers and children on the jet bridge boarding a plane. This is because she had been in situations like this and knew the mother needed help. So yes, in this situation she’s having empathy with her fellow mom and that’s generating a compassionate action in response.

Then, she goes on to describe a scenario from the debate on abortion. She presents the story of a woman named Samantha, as reported on NPR, in mid-term pregnancy discovering that the fetus she’s carrying is not viable outside of the womb. Stuckey says that the left focuses on the mom’s suffering while she chooses to focus on the baby that will be born and to provide it with end-of-life rituals.

She doesn’t make any further reference to the mom or express understanding of what the mom is going through or showing that she can imagine what anguish the mom would be going through emotionally. Instead, she’s all about the unborn baby.

But here’s the thing: She’s choosing sides.

That’s not an indictment of empathy.
That’s just being selective.

💡 You can empathize with both the mother and the fetus.

When I read her comments about the end-of-life rituals, I found myself saying, “I get that.” I had cognitive empathy with her view.
And I also have empathy for the woman carrying the pregnancy—and the trauma she’ll endure.

Empathy lets us hold multiple truths. And when we do, we can explore an issue from different perspectives, forming decisions based on our values, experience, and facts — as well as empathy.

That’s not toxic.
That’s human.

Having empathy doesn’t mean you give up your own belief, it means you have made room in your head or heart to understand and connect to what someone else is experiencing.

In this case, looking at the three behaviors which she says makes empathy toxic - there are no lies being validated, the affirmation of sin would be subjective based on what behavior you define as sinful and the destructive policies again depends on your point of view on the issue.

While Stuckey is expressing empathy with her side, she would make a more compelling case if she expressed understanding both sides of an argument. If she had said “this is a horrible tragedy affecting three lives, the pregnant mother, the father and the baby. As a mom myself, I can imagine the distress of discovering your baby isn’t going to survive the pregnancy. I choose to give that poor child a proper burial in recognition of it’s humanity, and here’s why…” Then, she could build out her case for the decision.

When you take this approach, it can increase the acceptance of the other party to the decision or perspective being offered. That’s because you are validating that you see the other side’s perspective - helping them feel seen and heard - while then going on to disagree and offering your perspective which, hopefully, the other side will be able to have cognitive empathy with.

❄️ Empathy Gets ICE’d

Stuckey goes on to do the same selective empathy thing on the topic of immigration and deportation.

She supports aggressive ICE deportation tactics but doesn’t acknowledge the trauma caused when masked agents sweep people into detention centers with little to no legal contact or support. She focuses on the importance of having a strong border and cracking down on criminals to make society safer.

Again: it’s not that she’s devoid of empathy herself. She feels that progressives over-empathize with what they see as the victim (people who immigrate) and then develop policies that are actually cruel and destructive (sanctuary cities, lax enforcement of immigration laws) because of this over-identification with the victim.

She admits that she has empathy with people who want to have a better life and decide to immigrate but she chooses to override it with her Christian beliefs, and what she can find in the Bible.

(And if you happen to listen or read her interview with Ross Douthat, I’d love to hear your thoughts on her tone when she mentions Laken Riley and Kate Steinle, both killed by illegal immigrants, and how those are names that New York Times readers may not be familiar with.)

And yet, she’s citing Paul Bloom’s book, Against Empathy, and his recognition of empathy as a neutral state as the starting point for her own arguments. But she takes empathy and feels it gets twisted into this toxic state by progressives and has chosen herself to uncouple compassion and compassionate acts from empathy, which isn’t how that works. It is also in direct contradiction to her opening story about helping moms on the jet bridge with the stroller and unruly kids.

📚 What Paul Bloom Actually Said

This is where Szalai’s piece shines. She shows how Bloom’s work is being misused.
Bloom doesn’t argue against empathy—he says empathy is neutral and must be balanced with rationality.

When I train people on empathy, I always shout out the HSPs—Highly Sensitive Persons. These are the folks whose empathy is turned up to 11. They’re the gold medalists of emotional awareness and perceiving others emotions.

But if they’re not careful, their emotions can tip the scales too far. They risk making decisions without balancing the other data. It can also overwhelm their decision-making so they feel helpless.

That’s Bloom’s actual point.
And what Stuckey and Rigney have twisted.

They are weaponizing the idea of empathy as something that is bad. It’s like how superpowers belong to both heroes and villains. It is the choice of the individual how they use their power. In this case, Stuckey and Rigney are making a case that empathy is bad and toxic. It can, in their opinion, only be good when it supports their world view.

And that feels opportunistic, not empathetic.

🕳️ The True Dark Side of Empathy

For more on how empathy can be perverted, let’s not forget Michael Ventura’s great guest essay in the Times:
🗓️ “The Dark Side of Empathy” (May 4, 2025).

He explores how empathy can be used for harm, especially by narcissists and sociopaths.
Empathy’s not just a feel-good superpower—it’s also a tool that can manipulate.

How you use empathy is based on your own sense of morals and ethics. If empathy is truly neutral, and I believe it is, then how you use it is a choice that only you can make.

So here’s your PSA:
🎯 If you think someone is using your emotions against you, they probably are.

And also: check yourself.
⚠️ Are you using empathy to get your way at someone else’s expense? How might you modify that so you get to a win-win for everyone involved?

I’d like to think most of us aren’t using empathy at the expense of others.
But I wasn’t born yesterday.

🧾 Let’s Recap

✅ There are two types of empathy: cognitive and emotional
✅ Empathy is a neutral state—it’s how you use it that matters
✅ Use empathy to inform your communication, persuasion, and compassion
✅ Balance it with facts, values, and your own lived experience
✅ Empathy can be used to manipulate—watch out
✅ And always: stay curious about others

📣 Let’s Keep Talking

💬 Got thoughts? Seen empathy twisted in your own world?
Reply to this email or leave a comment—I’d love to hear your take.

If you found this helpful, please like, share, and subscribe so you don’t miss future editions.

Until next time,
– Rob

🕊️ May you find a moment today to use that small dose of courage inside you to practice empathy—with intention.

Q&A: What advice do you have for listening to the other side? I’m really struggling!

A: I hear you on the struggling to listen to others. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. And for those Trump supporters or Trump tolerants - before you turn away or skip this piece, there’s relevant tips here for you as well.

And I have to be honest… I have dodged some of these conversations myself. But we can’t avoid it forever and the person I was avoiding I finally spoke with after 6 weeks. It was an interview from Navigating to a New Normal study so the dynamics were a little different than a conversation but I opened my mind to listen and got through it.

Based on that and a conversation during a recent visit from Stephen Shedletzky and Minette Norman while I was recuperating, I’ve come away with the following three tips.

Tip 1: Start in small doses that are not far from your own beliefs.

This article in The New York Times gave me the inspiration for this tip. As I started reading, I wasn’t really looking forward to hearing from Trump voters who had previously voted for Biden or Hillary Clinton. Then, I decided to stop being judgmental (that pesky barrier) and give people a chance.

It was revealing to me and I’d be curious to know your thoughts after you read the piece. Put your thoughts in the comments below or email me and I’ll share mine, but overall it gave me a better understanding of where the Biden then Harris campaign, and Democrats at large, went wrong.

I found this piece to be easy enough to take in without a lot of statements that I’d want to reject out of hand, consider conspiracy, lunacy or worse. Small doses, close to home but just outside your comfort zone.

This means, if you watch Fox News regularly, try CNN or one of the big 3 networks. If you are an MSNBC stalwart, find some of the people who are center right on CNN or have a blog or podcast to dip your toe in the waters. And not the opinion shows, try the actual newscasts.

Tip 2: You do not have to agree.

People often get confused about what it means to have empathy. It does not mean that you agree. It just means that you understand where someone is coming from or how they are feeling. If you find that you aren’t, then something is blocking you from getting there. Most often it is our own judgmental thoughts.

When you think about The 5 Steps to Empathy, there’s a reason the 4th and 5th step come where they are. Even though these aren’t always linear, it depends on the persons involved and the topic, but if you don’t dismantle judgment, ask good questions and actively listen, it will be next to impossible to integrate into your own understanding another person’s perspective.

Think of empathy as that rocket fuel enabling your ability to communicate and collaborate. It doesn’t mean agreement. In my research and in experience working with teams and coaching individuals, I’ve found judgment is the big barrier here. So be aware when judgment is coming up, get curious, ask more questions and put your beliefs to the side while you listen. Then, bring them together and compare, contrast and decide on the next step forward.

Tip 3: Find the nuance and explore that space.

Nuance has become a lost art in public communication. We are polarized into either being for or against. You are either with us or against us. That has led to purity tests, on both sides if we are being honest. Look at cancel culture on the left and MAGA-purists like Laura Loomer on the far right. There are times to walk away from or stop supporting people if their values don’t line up, but if we don’t expand what is reasonable and acceptable, we will be living a very lonely existence.

That NYTimes piece I referenced was challenging for me at first. And other writing that reflected affirming views of the current administration’s behavior is also difficult to ingest. But that’s when I realized, I’m not trying to make sense of Steven Miller, Karoline Leavitt or the sentiment behind the Executive Orders. I’m trying to understand how my fellow, ordinary Americans are viewing what’s going on, and what’s behind their opinions. They do feel left behind, that government isn’t working so why not disrupt it and reshape it. Or they just aren’t that engaged because it hasn’t affected them directly, yet.

I encourage you to take these baby steps with me. Find the neighbor or church member who might be in the middle or leaning right rather than full-blown MAGA. Or vice versa depending on which side of the aisle you sit. Ask open, accusatory questions. And listen to the answers.

Once you understand the other person’s point of view, try having a constructive conversation. Share your own concerns. Don’t insult or talk down but share how you feel. When you see it coming from an emotional place, it can change the tone.

Let me know how it goes!

Minette Norman and Stephen Shedletzky make a house call.

When I Recently Went Full Julia Sugarbaker

I’ll be honest. I cracked. I couldn’t take what I was hearing and I had to say something.

No taking a curious breath to give me space to respond.

I was overcome with being judgmental about the ignorance I was hearing.

The location was the hair salon last Saturday afternoon.

The topic was the recent Oval Office press event with Ukrainian president Volodymyrr Zelenskyy, President Trump, VP Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others. A customer in the chair next to me was telling his stylist how “that was no way to behave when you come into the Oval Office". At first I thought this person was like-minded to my way of thinking. I found myself in shock at the behavior of the grown men in the Oval Office. This was conduct unbecoming for the United States.

“…and you are looking for a deal.” He was talking about Zelenskyy and his behavior, picking up the Republican talking points that it was the Ukrainian leader who was out of line.

‘He’s taking Trump’s side,’ I thought to myself. ‘How is this possible? I’m in the middle of San Francisco!’

Steven, my stylist, had asked me a question about my husband, Charles, who’s on an extended yet temporary assignment back East helping his recently widowed mom. I started to answer Steven but when I heard the man next to me say he read on X that millions of people had died in the war, I had to stop my conversation so I could listen in.

“And they don’t know where any of the money we donated actually went,” he continued.

I couldn’t believe it. I was twisting up in knots. How could this guy believe something he read on X without citing a source? Does he just believe everything that he reads?

I felt compelled to say something. The misinformation was getting to me. I believe in truth and I couldn’t sit there and let him spout out bad information.

And that’s when I turned in his direction and went full Julia Sugarbaker…

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about the war in Ukraine and there are a couple of facts I’d like to clarify.”

I may not have scaled the heights of Dixie Carter’s performance on Designing Women as Julia Sugarbaker in one of her iconic monologues (or rants if you were on the receiving end), but I did clarify the number of dead Ukrainian and Russian soldiers which I had happened to read earlier that day in a media outlet that I believed to be reliable.

And I elaborated that the aid money the US supplied went to buy munitions that needed to be replaced soon in the US arsenal. That means the money really went to US weapons manufacturers. It was hardly misplaced.

“Well that may be true in the beginning but it’s not clear now,” he countered.

“No, the money is with the US military-industrial complex,” I retorted, sure of myself.

I wanted to make a wise comment about how he was right, that this wasn’t behavior that was appropriate in the Oval Office… especially when you are the leader of the free world, but I was losing my nerve. This whole exchange was out of character so I stopped and turned back to the mirror so Steven could continue shaping my locks.

I moved on to talk about Charles, my recent business travels and the latest season of White Lotus (which I’m loving). The conversation next to me had moved on to the border.

As I’ve reflected on this unRob outburst, I realize that it was fueled partly by the accumulated stress of current political events plus what I perceived as the lunacy of what was being said and I can’t ignore the off kilter feeling I have from Charles being away from home for so long.

All of that created judgment blinders that kept me from observing the conversation or, better yet, being present in my own conversation and experience with Steven.

Even if the other guy was open to having a conversation and hearing a different point of view, the way I handled it was more lecturing than from a place of inquiry and presenting a different point of view. Kinda like that lecturing academic elite stereotype the right has painted the left with.

When I find myself in this or a similar situation again, I’ll try harder to take my own advice. Take a curious breath and, if I feel the need to engage, approach with curiosity and intent to understand.

We get the opportunity to practice developing empathy every conversation that we have. This one didn’t go well but the good news is that the next conversation is never far behind. And that’s how we can make the world a better place, one conversation at a time.

Weaponizing Empathy? Not So Fast, Elon.

I talk a lot about empathy. I write about it, speak about it, train people on how to practice it in their personal and professional lives. But every so often, someone comes along and tries to twist empathy into something dangerous—something that needs to be reined in or, worse, eradicated. Enter Elon Musk.

In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Musk claimed that empathy is the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization,” suggesting that it’s being exploited to the detriment of society. He called it “civilizational suicidal empathy.” Let’s pause there for a moment.

There is, in fact, such a thing as empathic distress—when we take on so much of another’s suffering that we become overwhelmed and unable to act constructively. (which I wrote about last year here). But that’s not what Musk is talking about. His argument is essentially this: Caring for others—especially those who are struggling—is a bug in the system. That somehow, helping people who are in need weakens us as a society.

This is a complete misunderstanding of what empathy actually does. Empathy isn’t about sacrificing the collective for the individual; it’s about strengthening the collective by recognizing the humanity of the individuals. Empathy is what allows businesses to thrive by understanding their customers. It’s what helps leaders inspire and motivate their teams. It’s what builds resilient communities, fosters innovation, and yes, drives economic progress.

Musk himself would have used cognitive empathy at some points while building his business empire, whether its motivating employees or understanding what his customers need. But somewhere along the journey he’s gone astray. It’s been said that power corrupts and it’s also true that power corrodes empathy, which is what we are seeing here. Read any of the stories of his handling of Twitter or how his DOGE organization is behaving and you’ll see a profound lack of empathy in practice.

How could he take any position on empathy other than a negative one since he’s appearing to lack it in ways that are reflective of behavior on the anti-social disorder spectrum.

There’s another piece here that can’t be ignored: Musk’s comments aren’t just about empathy; they’re a dog whistle. When he decries “suicidal empathy,” he’s really targeting policies that help marginalized groups—immigrants, low-income individuals, the elderly. He’s arguing that we should prioritize efficiency over compassion as though we were robots ready to optimize production and output. But what he fails to recognize is that a society without empathy isn’t efficient—it’s fractured.

If we want to move forward as a country, as organizations, as individuals, we need more empathy, not less. But here’s the key: We need effective empathy—the kind that doesn’t just feel, but acts. The kind that leads to smart policies, better leadership, and stronger relationships.

Musk is right about one thing: Empathy is powerful. But it’s not a weapon to be used against us. It’s a tool we must wield wisely.

Let’s keep using it.

Coming Up…

A client earlier this week told me that I seem to have a genuine interest in the outcome of the sessions I facilitate with teams, whether it’s strategic planning, organizational change or skill-building. I was surprised at the inference that others don’t come across as invested in the outcome. Isn’t it what I’m there for? To help bring a group to a positive outcome?

Getting ready before my presentation at B2BMX. I like to scope out the room to think about how I’ll use the space, check the audio, and get myself in the right headspace.

I’d love to facilitate a session or speak at your next company meeting, group or organization event or retreat. I have openings in my calendar through the fall. Email me rob@robvolpe.expert to get the discussion started.

Here’s where I’m headed next…

March 12 - The Conference Board Strategic PMO Executives Council - I’ll be discussing how to improve workplace culture

April 16 - AMA Houston Academy - the Houston chapter of the American Marketing Association, bringing together marketing professionals from various industries for a virtual session on improving relationships with customers and consumers to unlock growth.

April 23 - Texas Association of Community College Marketers - I’m excited to speak with this group dedicated to marketing professionals and students in the collegiate space, particularly given the changing edicts on diversity, equity and inclusion among other “sensitive” words. How do you still leverage empathy when you have effectively been told you can’t? It should be a great discussion!