Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does reflection foster our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes? Dr. Yasemin Yazan explores empathy with Jürgen, Marc and Sabine — from the difference between recognizing, understanding and truly empathizing, to why an EU banker had to relearn empathy for every new posting, to whether pity is really a sibling of empathy or something else entirely…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you. Today we’re talking about reflection and empathy, and we want to engage with the question of how reflection actually fosters our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes. And today too, we want to shape a reflection room by entering into a dialogue. So you’re all really, really warmly invited to join in and bring your first thoughts, impulses, experiences, examples, that we can use as a thread to follow, and see together which direction the room develops in today. Together. And against that backdrop, feel free to join in and share your first impulses. And yes, gladly a reminder again, the room is recorded, and accordingly, anyone who joins automatically agrees that it will be published too. We have three small rules: a profile picture where you’re recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. And anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason can of course also use the chat, to bring in one thought or another and contribute, so to speak. I’ll gladly repeat, reflection and empathy is today’s room topic. How does reflection foster our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes, is the question we want to engage with today. And accordingly I’m curious now who’d like to bring in and share the first thoughts on the topic this morning. A very good morning, dear Jürgen. What are your first thoughts on the topic?
A very good morning. My first thought is to come down a bit, out of the desert so to speak. But I think the brain is still running reasonably normally, especially with this topic. Warm welcome and good day, good morning, greetings to everyone in the room too. Reflection and empathy, special focus now with regard to empathy. We’ve had this topic quite often too, both as a main topic and as a side topic. And yes, let me try to set a first spark. I caught with half an ear your introduction, where you said, quite aptly, empathy means putting yourself in others’ shoes. And if I try to bring that into connection now, to say, I reflect, meaning I go within and check myself. Am I even capable, or how do I get to the point of then being capable of putting myself in others’ shoes? That would basically be the topic for me. Check yourself with regard to your empathic intelligence, so to speak, namely putting yourself in others’ shoes. So, and now as possible starting points, or as a structure for how I’d approach this, I’d start by asking, putting yourself in others’ shoes — in my view this has two essential preconditions. Or connecting points for reflection is maybe even better. So not focusing too much on this being-able-to-empathize, but as a first step for me would be, am I even capable, with other people, of first recognizing at all whether my empathic intelligence with regard to that person — meaning, to empathize with someone, I first have to recognize them and their feelings. Are they doing well right now? Are they doing badly? If they’re a very good friend and their posture is slumped, or I ask myself, is that maybe true, my god, or is that just how it is, or do I sense, something happened there? So first, being able to notice that at all, being able to pick up these vibrations. Here’s someone who’s longing to be supported by you, to be empathized with. And maybe this sounds a bit too philosophical now, in quotation marks, but between recognizing and empathizing there’s also understanding. So this being-able-to-classify. Exactly what I just spoke about — if I notice, something’s not right with Yasemin, but I can’t quite classify it yet in the moment. You could also say, in my view, you could also call it evaluating in this case. Because I also have to classify it according to my own canon of development. And only once I’ve recognized it — there’s someone, and something’s not right — and I know, and I can classify what’s not right, only then, I think, can I empathize. And now comes — but with this I’m probably already opening the door quite wide — a really big question mark for me, dear Yasemin. Does my empathy kick in from the moment I’ve recognized and understood? Like a sound thumb rule where it says, recognize and understand, then be empathetic. Or is it not something that’s in us from the start, and we just need to classify and understand this feeling for ourselves? That’s my first thought on this for now. Now I need to take a deep breath again. Thank you for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Now you also have a brief chance to catch your breath again, so to speak. Yes, nice opening. Thank you so much, dear Jürgen. And above all, I actually have direct questions that arise from this for me too. Because you said it’s important that I recognize it and empathize, and that understanding is in between. And I’d like to, and maybe this already provides some first pointers toward the question you formulated, that we can follow along here, I’d like to bring in an example from coaching, where recognizing and empathizing aren’t necessarily in the foreground. Meaning, the following: in coaching it’s relatively common that people come because they find themselves in a conflict situation, for example. And it’s often the case that they’re then upset, that they’re angry about something, that they have no understanding for the other person, and so on. And it’s also not about them somehow communicating that they’ve realized something’s wrong with the other person, but that they basically come from their own perspective to, I’ll just call it, vent and blow off steam first, that there’s something conflict-related in the room and that they can’t understand it. And only through the questions and through the perspective shift that’s undertaken, so various methods and techniques that are used to get into a perspective shift, does it become possible, so to speak, to first arrive at aha-moments. Namely, because the person, through the methods that are applied, is put in a position to look through the other person’s glasses and empathize with the other person, in order to then realize, oh wait, there are other perspectives I can open up here too. And through this approach, so to speak, and only then do we get into this understanding process and so on, then suddenly a neutralization of the emotions also takes place, and accordingly then also, yes, so through this understanding, so to speak, they’re only then put in a position. But that doesn’t mean they already have the feeling from the start that something’s wrong with the other person, meaning that empathy is in the foreground, but quite the opposite — through the methods applied, they only arrive at empathy, so to speak, through the perspective shift. Jürgen, what do you say to that? Maybe that helps us here too, to address your question.
Thumbs up, I fully agree, to cross the boundary now with regard to methodology. And I think, or I really believe, that there are two kinds of empathy. And whatever you want to call it, maybe even methodical empathy or reason-based empathy, competence-based empathy counts toward that, and I think it’s a prerequisite, this toolbox of methods. That might sound a bit lofty now for someone who isn’t a coach or a trainer. Me the coach, me the trainer, I say that because every one of us, through the experiences we make in our lives, has a certain toolbox of methods available, not just with regard to empathy, but also to master our lives. Every one of us has approaches, norms we hold ourselves to, and processes we follow, and I think that’s also true, quite explicitly of course, for a trainer and coach, or rather for a trainer, with regard to empathy. So this distinction between methodical empathy, or competence empathy, versus real emotional empathy. And let me add one more thing. This toolbox of methods was also a really essential aspect yesterday at the literature hour, again and again. How do I approach this? How do I do this? You also named a really essential point, I think, dear Yasemin. To determine or to get to the bottom of what kind of empathy is needed right now, I have to ask the right questions. So that’s again the specific form of communication now in reflection, and specifically on two levels — namely, we’re talking about reflection, we’re not talking about training, emotion training between Yasemin and Jürgen, but about the emotion that first has to reach you as the trainer. And you said yourself, you have to get to the bottom of it, you have to figure it out, what it is, and then understand it, in order to be able to find it. And for that you have to ask the right questions. And for that, I think, you have to ask the right questions on two levels. Namely, first, which question is now appropriate for me in my position toward Jürgen, how do I ask this question, and then, in the external relationship, the formulation, and essentially then the reception of the feedback and the answer. Only then do we arrive at understanding. So I think that’s the addition purely to the methodology. How do I do this, in the sense of, through questions and communication? How do I even get to the point of understanding it? Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much. And here it’s necessary, so to speak, to concretize this with examples too, and also make clear that there are different aspects here that we’re allowed to look at too. And yes, in that sense I’d like to warmly invite the others too, to join in with various thoughts, impulses, examples too, so we can keep getting to the bottom of this. Maybe there are even more variants we haven’t opened up yet. Or you have nice examples to underline or concretize this further, or additional thoughts we should pick up on with this topic too — feel free to raise your hand. I’ll gladly repeat, today we’re talking about reflection and empathy. How does reflection foster our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes? And with that we’ve basically now already made a start, so to speak, to pick up various aspects and slowly approach the topic and follow along, to see through the dialogue which aspects come to mind for us here and can be picked up, in order to derive insights. I remember, and this was actually quite discussion-rich, relatively toward the end of the room, and I’d like to briefly mention that here too. In one of the rooms, when we talked about empathy, I’d also brought in this aspect, that there are findings from neuroscience that the ability for empathy is developed relatively early on, so to speak. And specifically through the bond that exists at a young age with caregivers, that’s where it develops from, so to speak. And if there are massive disturbances here, that there really can be difficulties later on too. So that’s not the rule, but rather the exception. However, it’s worth emphasizing here again that with empathy training or similar, it becomes difficult. Because if the base empathy hasn’t been established, so to speak, hasn’t been learned — by established I don’t mean the genes, but learned at a really young age — that it then also can’t be developed, but you can then do empathy training or similar, however, in quotation marks, you don’t actually feel it then, so to speak, that’s the findings from neuroscience, but you learn, so to speak, what the desired behavior is and orient yourself to that, but this feeling of actually putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, developing this compassion, feeling grief when the other person also feels grief, feeling along with them, and so on — that this feeling can’t retroactively be established through training, so to speak. But these aren’t the typical cases — usually we do have caregivers. Such exceptions arise, for example, when there’s really massive neglect by caregivers at baby age, at toddler age. For example, that could be the case if the parents, say, suffer from severe depression and really let the child wither, or similar, so that such disturbances can then also appear later. Generally we assume that, maybe to varying degrees, but at least the base empathy is initially shaped in this first phase of life, so to speak. And once this base empathy exists, there’s also the possibility to further develop it. And that can certainly be through training. It could be that toolkits of methods are used to develop it. You could maybe also attend special empathy training to develop it. And here reflection, in various constellations, represents a really important aspect, on one hand to maybe recognize and understand emotions in this context and be able to classify them, and on the other hand, quite specifically through reflection, even if I initially don’t bring understanding for my counterpart or for the other person, or in the situation, to then actually be able to undertake a perspective shift through the corresponding questions, so that, against the backdrop that I can put myself in the other person’s shoes, looking out through those glasses, I can derive new insights from the situation for myself, which already allow first insights to be derived from the overall context. Jürgen, would you like to build on this and connect here too?
Yes, gladly. I’d actually forgotten to mention this in my last contribution. You’ve now mentioned this perspective shift for the second time. And exactly this perspective shift is basically, or not a precondition, but a really essential aspect alongside the method, the approach — the second point, in my view, is the communication that leads to it. And now I’ll come back to this essential point — which kind of reflection, self-reflection or with others, that this communication also asks the right question. And I wanted to add that it doesn’t stop there. It’s not just about asking the right question, but necessarily also about really listening to how the feedback comes back. That was important for me again, that communication also has two support points, so to speak. So, the right question in that regard, in my view, and the listening, the receiving of the feedback. And dear Yasemin, let me take myself to task now. I think we’re looking for a specific context of empathy for reflection, so for personal inward-looking. And I’ll take your last remarks as an occasion to say, yes, that could really be the big topic of one or several reflections — that I get feedback from my environment, at work, or in the family, or in a club, where I take in, I notice myself, I have empathic deficits. And then that’s the trigger for me, the motivation, to go within and reflect. Me, without a coach, without a trainer, without anyone, to come to terms with myself. And then I think I have to reproduce exactly this process sequence within myself. Because our topic is reflection and empathy. Empathy, open parenthesis, question of how it came about, answer the question, why am I not as empathetic as my environment apparently wants me to be, or similar. And then this inward view of reflection, when I do this, especially with regard to empathy, of course, gains an enormous temporal dimension too. So if I now had to take in a signal from a person I really value, who says, have you ever noticed you don’t develop any empathy at all, you can’t empathize at all with how I feel — and I then go into reflection. Then I’d first ask myself, according to my process sequence, why is that the case? I have to know the cause, and always with your topic — this primal emotion, this potential fixation, this burden, or also the positive that I carry around with me, actually since the beginning of my life, namely since the beginning of my upbringing and my socialization. And I think that’s why today’s topic, self-reflection — I say it deliberately, self-reflection without support, self-reflection with regard to my empathy — is one of the most challenging forms of intelligence there is. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And above all, that it’s a component that can be further developed, regardless of how strongly it’s already been learned in us, is also relatively easy to follow and understand. Especially if we think, maybe, of children, at the beginning — every one of us has certainly experienced this — who, while playing, accidentally hurt someone else, not because they somehow bumped into each other by accident, but because they, for example, can’t yet properly gauge their own strength, and in that moment react maybe first surprised when the other one starts crying or similar, because they feel like, I didn’t hit that hard, or something. And here too this empathy really does represent an aspect of learning, and then, depending on how well it’s trained overall, prevails in different degrees in adulthood too. At the same time, we also have situations where reflection can help incredibly. Let me take an example now from a training context or meeting context, where maybe a moderation or similar is taking place, where we can, for example, relatively quickly either realize, something’s not right here, and then look more closely at the meta-level, what’s actually happening here right now, and maybe also — and the term has already come up — communication, so verbalizing this here too and talking about it, that’s often simply swept under the table too, in the sense of, that doesn’t fit the context right now, but one of the top rules from the training context, for example, is that disturbances take priority. That means, if you notice something’s not right, then to address certain aspects too, because often something gets argued out on the content level, but basically it might lie on the relationship level, that something’s not right there right now, and then you can keep going on the content level, but you won’t make productive progress, so to speak. Then there might also be the situation — this is a different example now — that we find ourselves in situations where we maybe don’t even realize it. That doesn’t per se mean we’re not empathetic, but for example, being too focused, especially in the role of someone leading through a session or similar, too focused on moderation, steering, or similar, on the content, so that we might not perceive certain signals, and then to consciously enter into a reflection in the situation via a meta-level, so to speak, here too, to quite specifically check, again and again, or to have checking sequences, where you reflect — and not just afterward, three days after the meeting, after the training, but in the situation too, to build up this ability, to be able to get to the meta-level, in order to look at it from a bird’s-eye view, does everything actually fit here? So also to check, without maybe having realized it, because this or that maybe recedes into the background due to the current focus, because I’m too busy, for example, conveying content, leading the moderation, checking, answering questions, or similar. So, sticking too closely to what I’ll now call the methodology and the structure, instead of perceiving what’s actually happening. Jürgen, would you like to build on this too?
Yes, I think that’s a really essential learning effect, what you just described, in the form of the moderator — I can really relate to this example, that in the learning process with regard to my cognitive empathy, so not the purely emotional one, but the cognitive empathy with the goal of understanding, are there disturbances here — that this is one of these learning effects, that I, let’s say, like a normal process building block, in this case, the one you mentioned, as a moderator or as an integrator, keep holding up and keep communicating with myself, and say, do you feel, don’t you notice something’s not right here right now? So I hope I expressed myself correctly. It’s one of the essential outcomes, for me, having internalized exactly this, watch out, there could be something here. Of course you can’t let it go so far that I lose my methodology or even the topic, but it’s exactly this learning, this training too, possibly with a trainer, that leads to me being triggered, to understand, to take in and first understand and recognize, something’s not right here. Something’s wrong here. And I’m jumping back two steps now, dear Yasemin, to your remarks with regard to primal empathy, or also how that develops as a child. There are sufficient tests and findings, also now for our topic of learning, that for example toddlers start to cry when another child in the sandbox is also crying, even though it has nothing to do with that child at all, and no similar suffering or anything has happened to it either. But it starts, so to speak, to cry in solidarity with them. So I just wanted to weave that in too. I think that supports, just like we develop primal trust toward a person, usually toward the parents, probably the thesis that there’s also a primal empathy in us. So, and that I can, with regard to deficits, learn, improve. On the other hand, careful with this — if I can learn it, I can also unlearn it. Thank you.
Thank you so much. That’s a really important aspect you’re bringing up again. And here we have to be careful with the cause, so to speak, and maybe differentiate again. The question is, well, the observation, yes, that exists, that children also start crying when other toddlers cry in the sandbox, I’m totally with you there. The question is just, what’s the cause? Is the cause that the child already has something empathy-related built in, so to speak, that doesn’t develop through learning but is already present? Or does it have something to do with, for example, the child getting scared in that moment, imitating, going into a mirroring, or whatever? So that we really differentiate here again. According to the current state of findings — and I’ll gladly say current state, because that can change too, once you have new results — it’s actually not innate, so not genetically established, but a learned process, so to speak, primarily. And on the aspect of unlearning, it’s also said again that you have to learn empathy, so to speak. But it doesn’t look that way the other way around. That’s not unlearning, but you can, for example — we could take the Nazi era as an example here — precisely through aspects like alienation, developing certain fears or similar, you can, for example, toward certain groups or similar, lose empathy — not generally lose or unlearn empathy, but with regard to certain groups actually experience the opposite, so to speak, because here, for example, they’re no longer humanized, because a certain distance prevails,
the other is portrayed as evil or as foreign. That means, even a person who’s normally really, really empathetic and has learned empathy can, conversely, be very unempathetic with regard to certain groups, at that point, so to speak. And that’s maybe also really important to mention in this context. Would you like to build on this too, before I bring in another point?
Yes, thank you first of all for the mirroring, or let me say it again, it had to come up, this specific form of learning through imitation. That occurred to me too, while I was speaking, that occurred to me, that I’d say, if there’s no primal empathy, then this is a precedent for learning through imitation — they cry, I cry too. But okay, I wanted to say, regarding the last points and your examples, that I lose empathy toward certain groups, something else occurred to me. Namely, the forms of expression, or the specific forms of empathy. Can I — this is really a question now, I haven’t thought about this yet, let alone reflected on it — can I have empathic intelligence for very specific forms of expressing emotions, like anger, like joy, like aversion? Meaning, can I empathize when someone else expresses that, that I’m, let’s say, specifically triggered to recognize when someone is upset, when someone is angry. But I’m completely unempathetic when it comes to realizing when someone is bursting with happiness, for example. That’s a question for me, I don’t know. It just occurred to me in the moment, whether there might even be a specific form of empathy within us.
Yes, thank you so much. And that might fit the aspect I wanted to bring in too, connected to what I said before with the two examples from meetings, constellations, or moderations, trainings, and so on — namely the aspect of also learning, what are the possible signals or indicators that give a clue that there might be some kind of disturbance here. And that connects, I think, quite well to your question now. Maybe those are also, in turn, signals or indicators when I encounter anger, joy, aversion, and so on, in my counterpart — that through the signals I pick up on, so to speak, or the indicators I learn over time, I then perceive them too, and that this ultimately also constitutes empathy — that I perceive the signals, that I basically learn that these signals are coming, and then react to these signals or indicators, so to speak, and thereby, for example. And that’s where we’re already directly in a reflection process too. Jürgen, what do you think?
I find that really good, because I’ll basically put it as a question again. That means, for this learning of empathy, or working on my empathy, I also orient myself, not only, if applicable, not only on my deficits that I’ve recognized, that I say, well basically you’re actually an empathic wreck. That’s one possibility of this inward view, this reflection. But the other could also be the trigger, that depending on the need — what kind of empathy is required of me right now, or in the near future — for example as a trainer, for example in the position I’ve taken on as an integration manager — that I say, there’s a need there you have to meet, and for that I have to develop an empathy, and there we are again at cognitive empathy, which I can learn, which then gives me a toolbox of models available, to meet exactly this need for empathy that’s currently required of me. And in that sense it’s become increasingly clear to me, dear Yasemin, thank you for that, that empathy, put a bit provocatively, can actually be a strategic concept. Thank you for listening.
Thank you so much. Maybe you’d like to give an example here too, because I’m not sure yet whether I’ve understood you correctly. Maybe we can get more concrete here, to illustrate it once more, dear Jürgen.
So, from my personal environment — some of you know this — I’ve partly lived in Germany and Italy for decades now, and worked there too. And I don’t want to go into specifics of the different regions of Italy, but the further south you go, the more emotional the people you’re dealing with. And a project, I don’t need to tell you, dear Yasemin, is primarily a clearly, logically structured approach to reach a goal within a certain time. And that’s actually the standard, from the culture I come from — here from Germany, where I did my training, had my first jobs, and also from the industry I come from, banking, where it was quite clearly primarily, under this orientation, about the matter, about logic, and not about emotions or anything else. I relatively quickly had to realize, on a project in Milan, that with that approach I’d hit a wall pretty fast. And a completely different kind of empathy, of empathizing with the other person, is required. It was, for example, quite concretely, when it was 12 o’clock, the Italian would go to the next restaurant for a merenda. And there was no — no logic applied here to say, we’re right in the middle of the discussion now, or we’re close to the crux of the matter now, or whatever — niente. And I was simply required to empathize, that this belongs to this culture. And in the moment where I — and the following project was then exactly the opposite, that had to do with London, or specifically with Ireland, there it was exactly the opposite. So that’s an example for me, something I really internalized. I’m saying, yes, a very specific empathy was required of me at these two different places. And I had to learn that. Thank you for listening, and I’m looking forward to Sabine and Marc.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And maybe another note here too — we’d already talked about the fact that there are also different cultures and subcultures in companies, for example, and so on. Sometimes you don’t even need to leave the country, but depending on which industry it is, there can be worlds of difference here too. While you were telling that, I remembered, I once worked for an energy provider. And here it was really the custom, out of the former monopoly, so to speak, and a somewhat civil-service-like way of working, that Fridays from 2pm at the very latest, nobody was reachable anymore. And that was really a culture shock compared to an airline, where basically almost, well, basically people work around the clock, maybe not everyone, but basically around the clock, and that was completely normal and self-evident to realize and also accept and learn, that if something needs to be settled for Friday, in quotation marks, it has to happen before 2pm, because after that really nobody picks up the phone anymore. That’s what I had to think of just now, as you told that. Thank you so much. Yes, and with that, we’ve apparently triggered something that led to Marc and Sabine also joining us now. Now I’m really curious. A very good morning, dear Marc. What are your thoughts?
Good morning to the group. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to join earlier. It wasn’t any triggering, and I apologize if I now bring up an aspect that’s already been covered, or if I now take the room in a different direction. I’m just going to listen to my gut now, look at the text reflection and empathy, and what spontaneously occurred to me — you always ask, dear Yasemin, what spontaneously comes to mind with these terms — what spontaneously occurred to me again was the word perspective shift, or role change, and I thought of a situation, namely the situation of traffic, of mobility in the car. When I’m in the car, so when I’m out driving in cities, it can happen that pedestrians or cyclists annoy me, who then, even though they no longer have right of way, think, on the bike, they have right of way, so they take my right of way, or they cross the street — then I, as a driver, get annoyed by these pedestrians and cyclists sometimes. But if I’m the pedestrian, I get annoyed by the drivers who say, hey, watch out, I have priority, I’m a pedestrian, I’m unprotected. And it’s totally interesting to observe that when I’m in a different role — once in the role of the driver and once in the role of the cyclist — that I can get annoyed at the other person every single time, and that’s where the perspective shift helps, which for me, as a driver, led me to really consciously think about it again — that when it’s raining, I really do stop, whether I have the right of way or not. The pedestrian is unprotected then, and if I imagine that I’m out there in the pouring rain, while as a driver I might be sitting in a warm car and not getting wet — in that case it doesn’t matter to me at all how long a pedestrian takes to cross the road in front of me, because that’s exactly what I’d do as a pedestrian, seek dry shelter to avoid getting wet. And that’s maybe an example of perspective shift and empathy.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and really a nice example too, because we always have different roles in our everyday life that we slip into, always context-dependent, so to speak. So every manager, every employee, every CEO and so on doesn’t just have the one role, but there are different roles we take on, and that’s a nice example of that. And yes, and non-reflection would then be, so to speak, always slipping into these different roles and getting annoyed at the other person, so to speak, but exactly realizing that I’m looking here from the different perspectives and wearing different glasses, and realizing that I get annoyed again in the different roles, and being able to derive something from that. That’s where we’re in this perspective shift, and that’s exactly what we talked about earlier too, in coaching or training, where that’s also used quite specifically, for example, as a method or from the toolbox of methods, whatever it is, whether that’s a role change through the hot seat or something else, to undertake this perspective shift quite specifically and consciously, which of course I can also undertake for myself, if I’m practiced in it, trained in it, to realize that too, and here also maybe consider what I can derive from that, or how I deal with it, or maybe even an emotion regulation already takes place within me, in the form of, now I’m not annoyed anymore because I’ve realized. It always depends on which role and through which glasses I’m actually looking at it right now. So, really, really valuable. Thank you. Sabine, a very good morning. What are your thoughts?
Yes, good morning everyone first of all. I wanted to check back in from vacation and can’t quite find the button to wake back up yet. It took a bit longer. Yes, I actually wanted to bring this up right at the beginning — our solar installer came and put up the scaffolding. And then, well, it fit right in again when Jürgen brought up Italy. I’ve actually reflected a lot over the last two weeks, and that’s why the topic of reflectivity and empathy fits really well. We were in Sri Lanka for two weeks and did a round trip with a local driver, and I reflected the whole tour — was it empathy, was it pity? I don’t know, sometimes both. Through our driver’s explanations — we weren’t even aware how close he was to us — but it was also a lot about the country and the people, and we had a lot of discussion within the family too. There were five of us traveling. Our youngest, who’s just come from Canada, where he’s doing well and so on, and then coming to such countries — that really gives you a lot to think about. But there’s also a lot to think about where you just say, how can this be? Back in 300 AD they were so far ahead of us, and why are they so far behind now? You’d reflect the whole tour — if you came into a restaurant or something, there’d be five people standing there and nobody doing anything. If you ordered something, the glasses would come one at a time. So you get this feeling inside sometimes, like, hello, should I get up? Should I help? Things like that, until you get a bit used to it, that this is just how time ticks there, that you just let yourself go, that you become a bit calmer too and say, okay, so the drink comes a bit later then. Or if you ordered a scoop of ice cream with your espresso, then the espresso’s gone by the time the ice cream arrives. That’s just how it is. And since Marc just said something about mobility — that also gave me a lot to think about. We do a lot with electric cars here. We thought, if we’d had our Tesla over there — we found a single EV charging station in Colombo, and it was probably meant for ambassadors, because it was even guarded. And the way people drive there — you’re on a lane that’s not actually two lanes, more like one and a half. A bus comes toward you, driving in your lane, our driver pulls to the side, lets the bus through. So sometimes I preferred reading to watching. It got to me sometimes. I wouldn’t have dared drive on those roads myself. But that’s just how it was everywhere there, on the whole island — well, we weren’t on the whole island, but wherever we were. And I’ll probably keep carrying that with me a bit over the next few days. And we sat at breakfast again this morning and said to each other, it really is a culture shift. From that side — if you go into the first hotels, you probably don’t notice any of this, but the way we drove around, we noticed a lot. It was really, really interesting. On the side, I’ve also been reading the book “Talk To Me,” and the chapter on listening really helped me along. Just listen to what the other person is saying.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And that reminds me again of a room where we also talked about traveling and things like that, and what relevance traveling has with regard to encountering other cultures and people. Because Marc talked, in that context, about how he really likes to travel, and traveling in particular brings about, for him, discovering a lot of new things, in quotation marks, reflecting, and drawing conclusions and takeaways for himself, for his business too, and for his life too, again and again. And that’s a nice example you brought in, Sabine. Because we’d talked, back then, also for example about aspects like, what’s foreign to us often also represents a threat. And traveling in particular is, for example, a wonderful opportunity to encounter people, or the foreign, in quotation marks, whoever falls under that, where we haven’t been yet, and to generate new perspectives too. And here, quite consciously maybe even, also to travel, quite deliberately and strategically, to countries or areas that aren’t familiar to us. And to just let it work on you, to see, what new further perspectives can I generate? And that this isn’t just with regard to this foreignness, but what I take from that, which is what Marc had just presented, can then also be transferred through reflection to many other situations, contexts, and so on, and certainly also plays a really essential role with regard to empathy and empathy development, being able to put yourself in others’ shoes. So, that’s great, thank you so much, otherwise that wouldn’t have come up again now, so to speak. I’d like to move into the closing round for today, and then give you the opportunity, on one hand, to build on one of the aspects that just came up again, in order to then follow up with the closing word or the highlight for today, and then gladly the preview for tomorrow. I saw that Marc raised his hand again, so I’d like to start with Marc, then Jürgen, and then Sabine, in that order. Go ahead, Marc.
Yes, I’d like to say something else, namely, we see what we want to see, and on my travels I’ve also noticed, best example — I once wanted to walk through Venice at my own pace, and you always hear Venice is so romantic, and when you ask people, did you see this square, or that one — but I really enjoyed discovering this city at 7am, and when I saw the garbage collectors — I don’t know the politically correct term now, so the people who keep the city alive — with what kind of carts they drive, and when Venice is full of steps, how much strength that takes to keep this city clean, when you see where the tourist stalls, the ones they live off, come from every morning, from the tiniest corners, all the postcard stands — then you suddenly have a completely, completely different impression of this city. And really, an incredible amount happens around us that we don’t see at all, because we’re only focused on the museum, on this church, and I always find it incredibly exciting to see, what do the individual people do, what does the taxi driver do, the subway driver, the waiter, where do they live, where do they come from, where does the food in the restaurant come from, how many people are involved in that — and that always fills me, on the way back, with deep gratitude, that I can really relax and start the morning with you all here in a Deep Talk Club with nice people. With a cup of coffee in front of me at my desk, and not having to physically carry garbage up and down stairs. And when I come back, I always think, wow, I don’t have to go back to Germany, I get to go back to Germany. And what a gift it is to be able to start the day with a cup of coffee and nice people.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Jürgen.
Yes, first of all, heartfelt thanks, as always, for your moderation. It’s a great topic again. Heartfelt thanks to Marc and to Sabine too. Fortunately they jumped in to support me. And I’d like to briefly pick up the last examples, with regard to traveling, and say — we talked today about reflection, sorry, we talked today about reflection with a specific focus, with empathy. For me there’s now, as an insight from this room, a meta-level, maybe it’ll even become a small overarching topic. Because I see that empathy has two really essential, how should I put it, sibling quantities alongside it, namely sympathy and pity. And that got triggered for me through these travel examples that you, Marc and Sabine, brought us closer to. Namely, that’s basically a question for me now, not a question, that’s wrongly put, but a difference in how my feelings manifest. Do I have sympathy for these people? Do I have pity for these people? Or is it simply, in quotation marks, please just strike that, is it empathy, that I can even put myself in these people’s shoes? So, thank you again for all these contributions, and I wish you all a wonderful day.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And here the question arises for me — we can just let it keep working on us — whether those are really siblings of empathy, things like sympathy and pity, or whether that’s maybe below that, so the children of empathy, so to speak, at that point — that through this putting-myself-in-their-shoes, I, for example, develop sympathy, or develop pity, or bring up understanding, and so on. So there are certainly many, many more, I’ll call them children, at that point, so a kind of resultant quantity that can be derived from it, because I put myself in the other person’s shoes. Exactly, that this is a different level again than the superordinate level, so to speak. You’re welcome to check that for yourselves afterward too. And with that, gladly over to Sabine.
Yes, what Jürgen just summarized, that would also be my highlight, because the whole room today, following on from the vacation, gives me a lot to think about again, and what Jürgen just said, or what you, Yasemin, said, whether mother, child, or siblings, or whatever, empathy and pity — that’s occupied me for the last two weeks, because you keep going and saying, why doesn’t he move, why doesn’t he walk faster, why doesn’t he go to another country, why doesn’t he do this. But when you then, for example, talk about it with our guide or driver, they have a completely different cultural background. And when you think about it again, you say to yourself, it’s really not that simple. You don’t just go to the government office and get support. That’s really something. So, thank you so much, Yasemin, for choosing this room so fittingly for me today. And I wish you all a great day.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And you know, there are no coincidences. It comes to us. So it should probably be this way. I find that nice, at this point. Thank you for that, dear Sabine. And we should also be careful again here — and there we are again with reflection. Because such aspects as sympathy or pity, and so on, what gets derived from that, is also again, first of all, viewed through our own glasses. And I’d like to bring in one more example here, before I wrap up for today. If I look, for example, at living conditions in other countries, it can well be that in one place or another we first feel an impulse of, say, pity, through empathy. But if we then look more closely, or there are also statistics on this — that for example, in certain countries where you might assume, well, I’m glad and grateful to live here in Germany, and so on, the satisfaction, despite the circumstances, despite the conditions, is significantly higher than in Germany, where there’s so much prosperity. And here we’re again allowed to check that through reflection, so to speak — which glasses am I looking through when I get an impulse like pity? And is that really — so how is that from their perspective? And in many cases we’ll be able to establish, if we look through the other person’s glasses — there we are again at the perspective shift — that our pity, too, neutralizes itself again, so to speak, as an emotion, or as a derived resultant quantity. Because depending on which perspective, which glasses we’re looking through, maybe pity isn’t even the appropriate quantity at that point. And here too, reflection plays a really, really essential role again, namely also the ability to look through the other person’s glasses, in order to be able to derive the corresponding resultant quantities or insights here too. Maybe also a really important impulse, to neutralize that. Yes, a great room. Thank you so much, especially for the last contributions that just came in too. Nice additions too, to tie it all together and round it off. And tomorrow we continue with reflection and problem-solving. I’m already really excited about that too. So how does reflection actually help us develop effective solution strategies, that’s the question we want to engage with tomorrow. So I’m looking forward to that, and you’re all warmly welcome to join again tomorrow at 8am in Deep Talk. Until then, ciao!
