How Poetry Expands Empathy

I can’t help to wonder if there’s an empathy deficit? When searching Google ‘’How to build empathy.’’ You’ll read 8 ways, 6 steps, or 5 actions to ‘kick-start’ empathic development.

Empathy is one of those perpetual words on the leadership skill list and WFH has raised it more. So, yes, no surprise there’s a deficit.

In my research for a new coaching book, ‘how to build empathy’ always pops up. The standard building empathy advice is to step into another person’s shoes. Or as, Roman Krznaric, have “an insatiable curiosity about the particulars of those you meet.” A few ways to nurture empathy:

• Give time to people you don’t know well and find out more about them, what they like and what they find meaningful?
• Listen attentively, let go of distractions (phone, or other gadgets), pay attention to non-verbal cues and what’s not said.
• Travel to different places, (when Covid lifts), take in different perspectives, experience a new way of living.

I’d add to this list, ‘the ability to notice and understand the emotions in others’ (harder through Zoom or other platforms, but possible).

There are still plenty of workshops, assessments and coaching to improve empathy. You can take the Greater Good’s science based, Empathy Quiz, 28 questions to gather insights, interpretation, and practical tips to bolster your skills.

But I’ve found two different (research based) practices to strengthen your empathy muscle and listening skills.

First, become a voracious fiction reader. Research shows that readers of fiction have better empathy and emotional intelligence. In fiction, you engage with the characters, what they’re up to, how they carry themselves, their motivation, style of talking, their values, and even what is going on inside their head. Two researchers at the New School, David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, designed experiments to measure the effect of reading literary fiction to understand one’s mental state. Using the term, Theory of Mind (ToM) the researchers found that reading fiction enhances our ability to notice and understand other people’s emotions. Intuitively this makes sense as empathy requires an understanding emotions, and feeling of others.

Second, read or listen to a poem. Giulio Gabrieli and Gianluca Esposito, two researchers at Nanyang Technology University in Singapore, found that reading poetry has the potential to enhance empathic traits. Poetry, like fiction, enhances our ability to see another point of view, particularly for those with low empathy traits. (Amanda Gorman’s recent reading has made many new poetry readers, such is the power of the poetic word)

Empathy undoubtedly makes better leaders, managers, individual contributors and parents. Whether you’re naturally empathetic or not, stretch that curiosity muscle, strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know well, and try to imagine how others feel.

I’d also recommend poetry or fiction podcasts. Begin your day with This American Life, extraordinary storytelling with people at the center. Then move to poetry, consider listening to On Being with Krista Tippet or The Slowdown with Tracy K Smith. Listening to a poem is to experience different cultures, beliefs and perspectives. After Amanda Gorman’s poem, my WhatsApp pinged incessantly, her words hit a global chord. Poetry helps us understand that different views can be simultaneously correct. You learn how others think, what’s troubling, what’s motivating, and how they view the world.

Taking this one step further, Tracy Smith believes poetry deepens empathy, allowing you to see what you need to see. Smith’s erasure poem, Declaration, does just that. A declaration of human rights, the poem begs the question, ‘whose rights were we talking about?’ To practice empathy, read or listen to Tracy’s poem here.