Empathy, Action and Power

Note: This is Part 26 of the Ruminations for Aspiring Designers series.

Power structure defines if empathy is possible and how much of it can be acted upon accordingly.

Empathy is utterly useless when people don’t have the right to act accordingly: the right to decide, the right to intervene, the right to resolve conflict, and the right to suggest.

Empathy is merely the prologue of taking action. Through empathy, we gain insight to inform our actions. It’s the resulting action that legitimizes the power of empathy.

Having empathy without taking action is the same as paying lip service.

That’s why most talks about empathy in the context of organization are bullshit at best. It’s the resulting action that counts.

There is a political gap between empathy and its resulting action.

Proponents of user experience or human-centred design love to talk about the power of empathy, but few loves to talk about the politics of it.

Yet, power and politics are two sides of the same coin.

All conversations about empathy are friendly and constructive until “politics” is mentioned.

When taking action becomes a conversation-ending topic, sticking to praising empathy seems redundant at best.

Imagine we only talk about, without taking action on:

• Stopping a war
• Winning a game
• Respecting each other
• Keeping our families safe
• Improving democratic oversight
• Empowering working level employees

Are we okay to live with that?

This is not a call to activism, but a call to an activist mind, which acknowledges that:

• design is coupled with politics
• workplace is and has always been political
• empathy is the means to the ends of taking action
• taking action on empathy is much harder than talking about it
• no expertise can bridge the political gap between empathy and actions

Are you ready for the real work on empathy?

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