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Four years ago, I published my first book, “Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life.” The third chapter of the book deals with the concept of empathy. Half the chapter remarks upon my college experience and growth required of me in order to deal with a challenging situation. The other half of the chapter had to do with politics and the importance of not demonizing other people for having differing opinions.
My book went through several revisions and a lot of people helped with proof-reading. I was encouraged by some people to remove the pieces of the chapter dealing with politics entirely. Of course, I wanted the book to appeal to a wide audience. But I felt that removing the content would have been a bad idea for two reasons. First, the book was about authenticity. It’s not authentic to want to share something with the world and kowtow to others for fear of retribution. But the second and more important reason was quite simple: anyone who read that chapter – which took a complete middle-ground politically and sought to understand motivations of individuals on either side with positive intent – and came away from it feeling “hurt” or “offended” probably lacked empathy themselves. And perhaps by experiencing those emotions firsthand, they might actually come away learning the lesson I sought to impart much more meaningfully.
In any event, about a month after the book was published, I sat down to do an interview for one of the many sales communities that are out there. During the interview, we delved into the content of the chapter about empathy. January 6th was fresh on peoples’ minds and somewhere over the course of the interview I made some sort of comment that people who condemn political violence would be taken much more seriously if they also condemned political violence coming from their own proverbial “team.” The remark was not an attempt to minimize the circumstances of January 6th. In fact, I has very clearly stated that what had happened that day was horrible and unprecedented. It was simply a reminder that intellectual honesty and consistency is the best way to earn peoples’ respect. It is very hard to take others seriously when they are hypocrites.
After the interview was over, the organizer of the interview wrote me a lengthy email because one individual had complained to them. This individual said that I was a racist (mind you, there was nothing in the conversation about race) because I am a straight, white male who went to Princeton for college. The person who wrote me the email (who I think was operating based on their own personal beliefs and not on behalf of the organization they represent) subsequently sent me four or five articles to read so that I could “educate myself on racism.”
Please consider the absurdity of all of this. First and foremost, the person accusing me of these very serious charges essentially told on themself. The epitome of not having empathy for another person is to make wild assumptions and conclusions about them based on immutable traits. Rather than seeking to understand anything I had said during the interview, the person in question had jumped to a conclusion that it was only on account of some privilege that I had that I would be able to come to my conclusions. It seems lost on this individual that there are people of all sizes, genders, shapes, and colors who share my perspective, which instantly (and obviously) refutes their point entirely. To go a step further, it’s asinine to assume that on account of someone’s immutable traits or where they go to school that they do not suffer or that they are poor.
But what’s more bothersome to me (even still) is that the organizer of the event even cared enough about this one person’s feedback to write me a lengthy diatribe lecturing me on bettering myself. To this day, I will not apologize for anything I said and I will never apologize for speaking the truth. I value and uphold basic principles, even when it is inconvenient for me to do so. I am the first one to raise my hand and acknowledge when people I like do bad things. My hope is that by doing so, people will see me as a trustworthy individual. This is the way I carry myself in my relationships and it is the way I carry myself with my customers in my sales career. It’s why I bothered to write a book about authenticity in the first place.
Empathy is so crucial in human conversations right now. Emotions are running high and I have already seen some people gloating in other peoples’ faces about their preferred candidate winning the election and other people saying you are evil and to never talk to them again. As I watch this unfold, I am not sure I find it to be very productive. And yet, the fact that I am scared to publish this blog – which frankly has a pretty simple and positive message – is a testament to how fraught our shared understanding is of one another.
Every time something negative has happened to me in my life, I have had to figure out why it happened and forge a path ahead. The other part of that chapter in my book was about some social ostracization I experienced in college. To be sure, it is definitely messed up what happened to me and there are a lot of people to blame for it. But it was not until I saw myself as sharing in the responsibility that I was able to move ahead in a positive way. By that, I mean that my behavior had contributed to my problems. When I came to that understanding, I began to have more empathy for the people I had demonized.
All this to say, we are much better served looking inward in dire straits. Sure, it is easy to point a finger at other people and to blame them. The problem is, you cannot control other people or your external circumstances. I talk a lot about this idea of “locus of control.” In the end, we are really at our best when we focus on the aspects of our lives we can actually control.
To this end, I was at a dinner the other night for a different sales community I belong to and I got to chatting with a couple people around me about all the bad things going on in the world. The person sitting next to me asked me my advice on how to handle it. I am not sure why she cared or felt I was equipped to give anyone advice, but I gave her my honest answer:
“I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’ve decided that the best thing I can do is try to live my life with my values to the fullest extent possible and to help my daughter to do the same.”
I want to be clear about something: I do not always live by my values. Over the last year, I can point to dozens of examples of mistakes I have made professionally or personally, in relationships or otherwise. It is not a matter of living life perfectly. It is a matter of seeing my role in things. It is a matter of apologizing to others when I figure out I was wrong and did not abide by my values. It is a matter of leveraging what I learned about the experience to make progress moving forward. That is the best we can ask of ourselves. If we see ourselves and our ideas as perfect, then we never have the capacity to reconcile our differences with others.
Jeff Kirchick 