Not too long ago, I was discussing the topic of empathy with a friend. (As designers do.) My friend proudly shared, “I’m an empath.”, and went on to explain how they could feel the emotions of those around them. “I’m very empathetic.”, they told me confidently.

“You don’t mean ‘sympathy’ do you?”, I said.

“No”, they returned. “Sympathy is detached…just caring that someone is struggling but not necessarily knowing why. I mean 'empathy'…like I feel the feelings they have. I’m more sad when others are sad. I’m more happy when they are happy. Isn’t that what empathy is?”

It turns out what my friend was describing IS empathy and is indeed different from sympathy, but it is only part of the empathy required to inspire great design.

In his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Daniel Goleman draws on the work of Paul Ekman and defines two different types of empathy:
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Emotional Empathy refers to an emotional or visceral feeling that aligns with someone else’s feelings. This is what my friend was referring to….feeling what someone else feels. In practice, it might take the form of feeling sad when you witness someone else’s sadness or feeling joy in the presence of someone else’s happiness.

Cognitive Empathy, is a different type of empathy; one that is more based on logic and reasoning. It refers to an intellectual understanding of how a person feels or what they might be thinking. It is often thought of as ‘understanding or taking someone else’s perspective’.

To be human-centered when it comes to innovation and leadership, we need both cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. We need to understand where people are coming from and be stimulated and moved by their emotions.

Relying on one type of empathy only may not work. At its worst, erring heavily toward cognitive empathy can come across as cold and distant, or potentially dismissive. Cognitive empathy may allow you to understand how someone feels, but then what?

Leaning too heavily on emotional empathy is also risky. Are you are caught up in the feelings of others? It can be hard in this situation to step back and be thoughtful about how to move forward. Emotional empathy can be overwhelming.

So the trick is to find a balance and embrace what is known as Compassionate Empathy (also known as ‘empathic concern’ or simply ‘compassion’). Compassionate empathy is a balanced combination of emotional and cognitive empathy. It helps us not only understand a person’s situation, but also be emotionally moved to help them. It is what inspires us to create things that actually help others because we can both see things from their perspective and feel their pain.

We need compassion to design.

The more important part here, though, is that it is not just a matter of building compassion on your own. To create groundbreaking products and services, you need others on board who are equally inspired, informed, and motivated.

When you are sharing research with others, you also need to find ways to build their compassion. This comes through effective storytelling that triggers emotions and helps people clearly understand the situation. You need budget, resources, time to solve problems and the way you get all of that is to generate compassionate empathy for yourself and for those on your team and in your organization. Only when you are aligned in your compassion can you work together to design great solutions.

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