Psychologist Jamil Zaki: Empathy Is a Skill You Can Train

Jamil Zaki was eight when his parents began a divorce that took four years. To stay close to both of them, he had to work, every day, to understand two people who could no longer understand each other. He calls it his empathy gym.

Jamil is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and two books, The War for Kindness and Hope for Cynics. His lab's experiments show that empathy can be trained: people who believe they can grow it work harder at it and improve over time. He also calls himself a recovering cynic.

I lived the era of stack ranking at Microsoft, when colleagues were graded against each other on a bell curve, and I was very glad when we retired it. Jamil explained what the science says such a system does to people, and why real empathy means holding people accountable rather than letting them off the hook. Then he turned the tables and asked me whether learning to ask questions instead of giving answers had been uncomfortable for me. It was, and I told him about the most embarrassing moment of my professional life.

In our conversation, we explore:
→ Empathy as a skill: what his lab found, and how to turn a belief into a plan and daily habits
→ Kind systems: why people think they are alone in wanting more empathy at work, and how leaders can change the norm
→ Stack ranking, cynicism and accountability: why pitting people against each other backfires
→ Artificial empathy: why chatbots now sound more caring than strangers, and the risk of AI that only tells us we are right
→ Young people, self-criticism and hope, and three practices to start tomorrow morning

"It's like a suit of armor that you put on, but instead of protecting you, it suffocates you." Jamil Zaki, on cynicism

If you have ever been told that empathy is soft, or felt that cynicism keeps you safe, this conversation is for you.

Jamil's work:
Website: https://www.jamil-zaki.com/
The War for Kindness: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550616/the-war-for-kindness-by-jamil-zaki/
Hope for Cynics: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamil-zaki/hope-for-cynics/9781538743065/

🎧 Related episodes:

• Daniel Goleman (2024), the three kinds of empathy and why empathic concern builds trust: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14940410
• Kim Cameron (2022), positively energizing leaders: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/10627686
• Rana el Kaliouby (2025), human-centric AI and machines that read emotions: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/16982786

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Transcript

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Jean-Philippe Courtois [00:00] Hello, this is Jean-Philippe Courtois. Welcome to Positive Leadership Podcast, the podcast that helps you grow as an individual, as a leader, and eventually as a global citizen as well. My guest today is one of the world's leading scientists of human connection. He's a professor of psychology at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. For almost two decades, he's been asking questions that should not be more that should actually not be more urgent today. Why do we trust or distrust each other? And can kindness be trained like a muscle? And how do we keep our hearts open in a world that seems to reward closing them? He has published more than 100 scientific papers and two books, wonderful books, that have changed the global conversation about human goodness. The first, The War for Kindness, was described by NPR as a whole-ranging practical guide to making the world better. The second, Hope for Cynics, was praised by Adam Grant as a ray of light for dark times. But here is what strikes me most about him. The man who teaches the world about empathy calls himself a recovering cynic. Yes, the son of a Pakistani father and a Peruvian mother. has done empathy the hard way as a young boy, translating between two parents, two cultures, two worlds drifting apart. And he turned that childhood struggle into a science and that science into a message of hope, grounded in evidence and wishful thinking. Jamil Zaki, a very warm welcome to Positive Leadership Podcast. I'm so delighted to have you on the show today.

Jamil Zaki [01:55] Thank you, Jean-Philippe, for that very warm introduction. I'm thrilled to be with you today.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [02:00] So, Jamil, before we dive into your science, and we'll do that, I want to understand where it comes from. And, you know, I love, as always, when I start with my guest, to understand because the science and the life story, to me, are kind of one and maybe the same. So you grew up, as I said in the intro, as the only child of a father from Pakistan and a mother from Peru. Two immigrant journeys, two cultures under one roof, one dinner table. And summer spent as well with your family, I think, in Lima. So what was the young Jamil like? And what did you actually absorb from each of those two worlds as a child?

Jamil Zaki [02:43] You know, there's a saying in psychology that research is me-search. That is, we study the things that have meant something to us in our lives. And that's absolutely true of me and my interest in empathy and human connection. As you said, and really appreciate the research you've done here, my parents are both immigrants. My father from Pakistan, my mother from Peru. And they didn't come here when they were 5 or 10. They moved here when they were 25 for graduate school. So they really were embedded in their respective cultures for a huge chunk of their lives. They met in Pullman, Washington, a tiny town which houses Washington State University. And... Fell in love. But I think that they fell in love not because they had so much in common, but because they both felt like outsiders in the United States. They now have each been here for more than half a century. And I think that the more that they became accustomed to the United States, the more they realized how little they actually had in common. Which, as their only child, I can tell you is extraordinarily little. You mentioned sort of three cultures under one roof at one dinner table. And, you know, that was true for the first couple of years of my life. But really, my mother and father drifted pretty far apart pretty quickly. And I don't have many dinner table memories with both of them. Really, you know, they began the process of divorcing when I was eight and they didn't finish until I was 12. And it was a highly acrimonious, you know, very difficult split for them. And for me, of course, you know, again, as their only child. And, you know, one of the things that I felt very often as a kid was I would experience two different realities. Two different versions of the world. The way that my father saw life, what he cared about, what his values were, and what his fears were, were totally and fundamentally distinct from those of my mother. And here, these are the two closest people in my life.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [04:54] In which ways? Would you mind contrasting those two perspectives of life?

Jamil Zaki [05:00] Absolutely. You know, my father was... was very oriented towards succeeding. And I think that was something that was instilled in him by his father. Pakistan, Lahore, where he grew up, is a place of vast inequality. And so he was fond of saying that the kid who graduates at the top of his class will become a doctor, and the kid who graduates in the middle of his class will become a beggar. There was a real fear of falling through the cracks of society that drove him. His father was in the Navy, in the Royal Navy, and was very hard driving, really instilled in my father the need to do everything as well as you possibly can, and also the need to listen to your own father. In that culture, it's very patriarchal. And so my father didn't know what he wanted to do, and so my grandfather told him, go into computers. And that was it. That was the decision made for him. And he did succeed. He was very successful. And I think that he let his success get the better of him in certain ways. He became so focused on work that we never saw him. That clashed enormously with my mother's values. As you may know, South American culture and Peru absolutely fits this mold. is highly collectivistic and oriented towards family. So she couldn't believe that her spouse, in her eyes, had abandoned the family for his work, whereas he couldn't believe that she thought that because he was doing everything for our family, and that was his model of how to be a good husband and father. So, you know, I'll pay you for the therapy session later, Jean-Philippe.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [06:52] No, but it's amazing because, I mean, I can. I mean, it's kind of difficult to imagine, but I think when you are a boy of eight years old, to become potentially the translator, the bridge, right, between such two different perspectives of the world. So is it the time where you started to become that empathy... messenger or this empathy mediator to me?

Jamil Zaki [07:19] You know, I don't want to sugarcoat any of this. You know, I think it was very painful and I don't think that it's necessarily the position that an eight-year-old should be in. But I will say, you know, both of my parents are wonderful people and never in their disconnection, even sometimes it felt like their hatred for each other, never in any of that Did they lose sight of me as their son? So I think they did their best. And in that setting, I was able to understand something really important. Something that maybe is the most important thing I ever learned, which is that two people can see things completely differently and even quite dislike each other without either one of them being wrong and certainly without either one of them being bad. And, you know, when you're eight years old, you see the world in pretty black and white terms. But I was not able to do that because I loved both of my parents and I wanted relationships with them. So almost as a survival tactic, I needed to see the complexity of human experience and be able to connect with two people who couldn't connect with each other. And I didn't know the word empathy at that time. I didn't know what it meant. But I think that it was where I became... foundationally and forever interested in the process of connecting with people. And it's also the experience that taught me that empathy is a skill because my parents' divorce was like an empathy gym for me, you know, forced me to work out my care and understanding in order to retain a sense of family.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [08:53] Yes. You know, Jamil, it makes me think about another guest I had that you may know me. You wrote a wonderful book, North Star, Bill George. who used to be a CEO of Medtronic, right? And his book is talking about those crucibles moments in our life. You know, those moments that happen different times in life that are gonna shape us in a very significant way. So I was just trying to understand if that moment, until you are eight years old, was one of those crucible that started maybe the future of vocation. to do what you do today. Was it this one or was there some other key moments later on, maybe connecting with some mentors, you know, doing some research or being influenced by some people where you started to find out what was your path?

Jamil Zaki [09:47] Yeah. First, I love the idea of crucible moments and it's interesting. The research actually shows that great adversity is a driver of increasing empathy. There's a concept known as altruism born of suffering, that when people go through horrible experiences, including severe illness or injury, war, social upheaval, natural disasters, yes, I mean, no one would choose those experiences, but people tend to come out the other side more cooperative. more giving to others and more appreciative of what they have in their lives. And I would certainly say that my parents' divorce was a crucible moment in that regard for me. You know, it wasn't the end of the journey, of course. It was the beginning. But I will say that another influence, and, you know, just to be honest, a lot of this comes from family for me, is my grandmother. So after my parents split up, my mother's mother moved from Peru. to raise me to help her because my mother had to work full time. My mother's mother was one of the most extraordinary people I ever knew. She had wanted to be a nun. She was devout Catholic and actually began studying at a convent. She was going to be a Catholic school teacher and a nun. She was on that path until her hometown, a town called Tacna on the southern tip of Peru, was taken by Chile in a war and then was returned to Peru, but under hostile circumstances. And so there were very few people who were volunteering to provide services to that town. So it was hard for them to find doctors or teachers. My grandmother decided to abandon her personal dream of becoming a nun and instead become a teacher there. And she tells me, or she told me when she was alive, that... she taught for a few years, all of the kids in the town, K through 12 in one room. And then she ended up teaching there for 50 years. So she taught third graders, then taught their kids in third grade, then taught their kids in third grade. I mean, she was like a maternal figure for the entire town. And she then taught me about her life. And I will say that in terms of a role model for empathy, I couldn't have imagined a better one. She lived a life of true service, and that was always an inspiration to me. And I think then eventually I combined that with a very nerdy interest in the brain and mind and learned when I was a young adult that there was this opening, this burgeoning science to see, well, how do people understand each other? Why do people make choices? to show up for others instead of pursuing their own interests. And as soon as I knew that I could tackle those questions scientifically, I was hooked. It was one of those moments where you see the path laid out in front of you. And, you know, 20 plus years later, I'm still walking that same path.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [13:06] Well, thank you so much for sharing such special moments and the depths of your family DNA in who you are, I guess, and what you stand up for. almost visualize on my mind, you probably listening to your grandma teaching other kids. And that must have been a wonderful school for yourself, for sure. So thanks for doing that. You know, for years, I think, Jamil, the public saw you as an ambassador of empathy, but privately, you often felt like a cynic yourself. So when did you first admit that to yourself? And what did the revelation change in your life and in your science? Being a cynic.

Jamil Zaki [13:54] Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [13:54] And provocative, obviously.

Jamil Zaki [13:57] I love that question. And, you know, I think that being an ambassador for anything in the public eye, I mean, I'm sure you have experienced this. You're a very well-known leader and have been for a very long time. You develop a persona. People have expectations of you. You come to represent things in their mind. And that's a privilege. Obviously, it's such a privilege to have that role. It's also flattening in a way. Nobody is just a set of ideas. Nobody is simply a champion of one part of the human spirit. We all are deeply complex. We all have lots of struggles. And for many of us, those struggles tend to be pretty private. And I think for me, one of the crucible moments, shall we say, that made me reckon with the difference between my outward persona and my inner life was the early pandemic. You know, I think that that was a difficult time for many people. And I know it was for me. I also lost a good friend of mine early in the pandemic who had been a real... Yeah, well, I mean, I think we all went through... A lot of struggle, a lot of loss during that period. And I remember also I think it was the jarring nature of doing everything online because typically, let's say I go to give a talk on empathy. I travel. I spend time with the community. I share my work with them. Maybe I have dinner with them afterwards. There's a lot of camaraderie, a lot of humanity, and you feel connected to the values that you're sharing. In 2020, that same talk would just be me appearing on a screen, talking for 45 minutes and then disappearing. Everyone else is gone in the blink of an eye. And here I am back in the same room I was before, doom scrolling and reading about all the horrible things happening in the world. There just felt like a greater split between what I was saying. And obviously, I believe what I'm saying because it's rooted in science. But believing something in your mind and feeling it in your heart are very different things. And so I completely and always have stood by the message of the science that I share. But that's not the same as feeling uplifted by it at a personal level all the time. And I think that admitting that and then writing a second book that really is an exploration of cynicism and why it's so addictive was frankly a healing experience for me. A lot of people... have written to me about Hope for Cynics and said, oh, I needed this book so badly. Thank you for writing. I said, well, I wrote it not because you needed it. I wrote it because I needed it. I think that understanding our struggles is a great opportunity for me as a scientist to dive into them by examining them more. Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [16:54] Thanks again for revealing that moment and the way you did that self-therapy and share that story. to the world as well. So, Jamil, to continue, in 2019, you published The War for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World. Your starting point is alarming. Empathy has been eroding now for decades. And one famous study actually found that by 2009, American college students scored about 40% lower on empathy than students in the late 70s. But the book's central message is profoundly hopeful. Empathy is not a fixed trait that we are for life, that we are born with. It is a skill and we can all build it, which is a great news. So for a long time, I think science and popular culture treated empathy as something you either have or you don't. And you demolish that idea entirely. So what is the strongest evidence you can share with our listeners, Jamil, that convince you that empathy works like a muscle that you build and you grow and that we can all get stronger by exercising?

Jamil Zaki [18:12] Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, that study that you cite where college students' empathy had fallen so much actually was the beginning of my journey in this space. I'd been interested in how empathy works. for a long time, and I'd been studying that for many years. But seeing that it had changed in this alarming way really captured my attention and imagination. And I remember writing about that paper when it came out all the way back in 2011. And I interviewed the first author, the one who found that empathy was declining. And I asked her, I said, how does this make you feel? I mean, this is very upsetting science. And she said, well, you know... actually, I think it's pretty hopeful. And I said, hopeful, why? And she said, well, if empathy is falling, that means it's changeable. And what goes down can come up, right? That means that it's not merely embedded in us at birth. It means that social, cultural experiences can change how we feel and express it. And that is a, it's a call to arms to say, okay, well, whatever we've been doing as a society has been, causing or potentially has correlated with empathy falling, what can we do to bring it back? So I'll get into some techniques, but first, Jean-Philippe, I wanted to share some good news, which is that Sara Konrath, this same scientist, published last year an update of that same survey. So she now pulled data not just from up to 2009, but up to 2024. And she's found that in fact 2009 was the low point for American college students' empathy. And that by 2024, it had returned, in many cases, to the same levels as college students had had in 1979. And that there has especially been an increase in empathy in the 2020s.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [20:10] And if I may interrupt you, I'm sorry, but of course, because I was going to ask the same question, I mean, to share the wisdom of that study. Why did it go down and why did it... went back? What happened? What were the main drivers of that incredible decrease and that remontada, as we say in Spanish? I love that.

Jamil Zaki [20:36] You know, history is not an experiment. So we can't tinker with different things and establish a clear causal story. We can't say this caused it. But... there are important correlates, right? So things that happened in the early 2000s that a lot of people cite as a potential cause for the decline in empathy include obviously the rise of new technologies and especially social media, and then also economic turmoil. And in particular, this 2009 low point coincides with the 2008 financial collapse. That's right. Likewise, we don't know why empathy increased in the 2020s, but recall that just a few minutes ago I was telling you about altruism born of suffering. That is, when people are struggling, they actually tend to band together and find each other as opposed to falling apart. You can see this in the stories of many disasters in history, from the earthquake right here in San Francisco in 1906, to the bombing of London in World War II, to 9-11. these horrible moments actually bring people together. And the pandemic, of course, although it kept us physically apart, resulted in enormous amounts of kindness and altruism. Another thing that Sarah says is that in the 2020s, people were quite lonely. And, you know, it's interesting. Water is not a very interesting beverage. But if you've been in the desert for two weeks, water is the most interesting thing on earth. And Sarah, the lead author of this work, speculates that, hey, you know, we were all forced apart. And when you are forced to lose something, you realize how valuable it is. There is research that finds that lonelier people work harder to invest in their relationships with others because loneliness is like an alarm system in our brain telling us we need more connection. And so, again, speculative. But she thinks that the pandemic might have driven increases in empathy. both because adversity drives up kindness and because it made us more aware of our need for each other.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [22:46] It's very interesting because I would argue, Jamil, that it's almost counterintuitive in a way, right? Given everything we read, there's been many books as well and many research on, of course, the huge impact on social media. It gets actually even taxed by the EU, right? I mean, it's something that is now... It's a legal threat to people's lives. And so given all of that, I mean, well, that's kind of hard to analyze, right? Can you unpack that for us? At least your theory behind that?

Jamil Zaki [23:26] Around social media and empathy, you mean?

Jean-Philippe Courtois [23:28] Yes, yes. And the fact that empathy is going up. So would you, of course, I'm taking like a straight line, which I shouldn't do, say that social media helps. growing empathy in the world.

Jamil Zaki [23:40] I mean, I'm old enough to remember when that's exactly what we thought it would do. Yes. I mean, the birth of Facebook was a very optimistic moment. I mean, this is going to be the global town square where we could exactly meet each other with compassion from across the world, from across all walks of life. And, you know, I think that the consensus now is that it's done the exact opposite from that. But that doesn't mean that it has to. I'm of the mind that technology is neutral and the way that we use it is what shapes its impact on us. So I think that there are many people who have found enormous solace and empathy and community online that they couldn't find in person. Imagine, for instance, that you suffer from a rare illness that nobody who you know has ever experienced or heard of in your small town. Well, that can be enormously isolating, but rare illness communities on social media are bastions, oases of empathy for people who can't receive it otherwise. Same with people who have different identities than the folks in their local communities. So I think absolutely there's a huge potential there. The issue, I believe, is that the algorithms on most social media platforms have not been built for that type of connection. They've been built for engagement first. Engagement is just whatever will cause people to click or scroll. And social media companies, unfortunately, learned a lot about the behavioral sciences. And they learned that what keeps people clicking and scrolling is not what makes us happy or what makes us educated or what makes us connected. It's what makes us scared and angry. And so algorithmically, those are the types of content that are sort of... force-fed to us when we go on most major platforms. So no, I don't think that social media is inherently anti-empathy, but I think that the way that it's tuned is very dissonant. It's like a piano that's tuned to make people feel awful instead of to do what it could, which is to unleash beauty and connection.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [25:53] So I'd love to get further now in terms of exploring that muscle that we discussed, right? It's actually more here and there as opposed to my arm for the listeners who cannot watch the video. And I like to use, you know, a discussion I had with someone I'm sure you know really well at the privilege of the podcast, Daniel Goleman, right? And so when Daniel Goleman, you know, came on the podcast, he brought empathy down into three very different capacities. Number one, cognitive empathy. Number two, emotional empathy. And number three, what he calls empathic concern. And he told me something I've never forgotten. Empathic concern is actually the kind of empathy leaders neglect most. And I would actually agree with that. And yet, it is the one that builds trust with others, which I would also agree with. Your own research maps empathy in a similar way. sharing what others feel, understanding what they think, and caring about their well-being. But there are also some differences, I think, in your guide, your approach, your practical advice. So tell us the way you think about training that muscle and what is the most trainable in ourselves. And how do you see that being applied as well to organization? It's a big question and a couple of questions in one, but let's start with the muscle first.

Jamil Zaki [27:21] Sure, yeah. I love Daniel Goleman's approach and his work, and we're quite aligned. We really are. And I think that this three-part structure of empathy is now, in essence, the gold standard. And scientists have converged on this. 20 years ago is when I started studying this and the way that I approach it is from a biologically informed perspective. So I was trained as a neuroscientist and my early research in graduate school was examining these different pieces of empathy as they show up in the brain. And we found that you can separate cognitive empathy from emotional empathy, right? So thinking about what others are experiencing, feeling what they're feeling. from empathic concern that there are literally different bio so you talk about different muscles as though that's a metaphor i mean to the extent that the brain is literally a muscle there are literally different muscle groups for these experiences and i think that's a really important thing to know but it also can tempt us into thinking of these as totally distinct Like, okay, today I'm going to, you know, I go to the gym and today I'm going to work out my arms and then tomorrow it's going to be my legs. So today I'm going to work out my cognitive empathy and then tomorrow it will be my empathic concern. It doesn't quite work like that. Research finds very clearly that these types of empathy, just because they can be separated, doesn't mean they usually are. They clump together quite a bit. So in daily life, people, when they experience one type of empathy, tend to experience another. And I think, yes, you can try to work out different styles of empathy, but you should know that they will pull each other up, right? So if you work on understanding people, you will probably care about them more as well. And I don't think that's a bad side effect, but it's one that we should be aware of. I can go into different ways to practice empathy now, if you like, and then maybe we can talk about how that applies.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [29:19] Yeah, I'd love you indeed, if you don't mind, to really explore that further and really... click into those three different steps or three different muscles and tell us the way people should actually think about it and should actually do it tomorrow and in the weeks to come.

Jamil Zaki [29:34] Yeah. So I think of there as being two layers that it's critical to work on in terms of building empathy. The first layer is your mindset. So this is your belief about... whether and how you will grow your empathy. In my lab, one of the first things that we studied was people's belief that empathy is either a fixed trait or a skill that they can build. And we found that people who believe that empathy was a fixed trait were less likely to put effort into it, especially during difficult settings, like talking with someone they disagreed with. And over time, they were less likely to actually grow or improve their empathy. We also found that when we taught people that empathy was a skill, and that doesn't mean, by the way, lying to them. It means telling them the truth, showing them the data, that when we teach people empathy as a skill, they work harder at it and they improve more over time. So the message is that if you think you can change, you will be right. And if you think you can't change, you'll also be right. So your beliefs matter enormously here. And one of the things that matters most, though, is not staying with just a belief. I can change is a great and optimistic and empowering thing to say. It's not the same as saying, here's how I will change. So you need to turn a belief into a plan. When I work with leaders, one of the first things that we do is imagine one year from today. And I ask them in very specific terms to tell me how they want to show up better for their people one year from now. And I will not accept, I want to understand people better or I want to care for them more. I want to hear about the actions that they want to take differently. I wanted to hear about how they want to behave one year from now and the impact that they hope that will have. So that type of what we might call empathic ambition is step one. It's having an ambitious, goal-oriented mindset. And then the second layer is our habits. So empathy, like any other sort of skill, is nothing that you build by doing one grandiose gesture just once. It's built through very small changes in what you do every day. A lot of this is the way that you allocate your attention. So one of the things that I encourage people to do is, and I do this myself, is place a daily hold on your calendar for an act of service. Simply five, 10 minutes a day to focus on somebody else's needs and what you can do for them. A second piece to this is to focus on our curiosity. There's a lot of research that finds that people are vastly overconfident about their ability to understand others. I think this is especially true for leaders who feel as though they're supposed to have answers and that admitting that they don't know something somehow is a sign of weakness. One of the things that I encourage leaders to do all the time is to simply ask more questions and to ask those questions in a specific and structured way. It's something called perspective getting or looping, something that we can talk more about if you like. So there are these habits of action, habits of care, and habits of curiosity. When you combine those with an ambitious desire to grow and to change, I think that's where you get real durable improvements in empathy.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [33:10] No, I love it. And there's so many, so many things that we actually uncover is starting with the gross mindset, obviously, and many guests talking for the gross mindset. And of course, uh, I think you were 40 years for Microsoft, including the, uh, uh, you know, including many years we sat here, uh, uh, this is more than a book, something, uh, I can actually, uh, relate to a belief so much into. So I think that. This would be interesting to dig into that later on, actually, Jamil, to think about the way we can grow our minds as well, your mindset as you started with, because I do believe it's a fundamental shift we can all do, actually, because all of us do have some forms of fixed mindset and gross mindset. And depending on the people, it could be a mix, which is very different indeed, yes, but none of us are perfectly gross-led or fixed as a mind.

Jamil Zaki [34:05] Exactly. And, you know, I want to interject here because I do think that Microsoft is such a wonderful example of growth mindset at scale. You know, Satya Nadella, of course, famously said that he wanted to turn Microsoft's culture from a group of know-it-alls to a group of learn-it-alls. And I think that's just one of the best descriptions of a growth mindset that I've ever heard. I think that, as you say, though, mindset is not just one thing. It's not just that you have a growth mindset across the board. And in fact, what we learned in our early research is that there are lots of people who think they can get smarter, in other words, who have a growth mindset for intelligence, but don't think that they can get more empathic. And that a lot of people believe that moral and social capabilities are more ingrained than intellectual ones. And so I think it's important to note that actually, you know, building a growth mindset isn't just about intelligence. You need to focus specifically on growing as a social and emotional person as well.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [35:15] I like to come back as well, if you allow me, Jamil, to your life and actually connecting your work, your science, your research, your books, and your life. I mean, you share with us some great moments of your grandma, your mom, your dad. And you have also another very personal story that you talk about in the book that comes from your own life in 2015 when your daughter, Alma, suffered a stroke during her birth and spent her first days in intensive care. In the middle of that nightmare, I think a doctor came to deliver hard news at one in the morning. And instead of leaving, he pulled up a chair and talked with you for 90 minutes. Father to father. So what did the caregivers around Alma teach you about empathy? I guess at its best. And what did you take away from that? I guess a lot.

Jamil Zaki [36:16] Gosh, yes. I think that moments like that of trauma and great pain live with you forever. But the way that they live with you is up for grabs. And I think that the caregivers at the UCSF, University of California, San Francisco, neonatal intensive care unit, their NICU, to me, will always live on as empathic superheroes. And not just to me. I went for the War for Kindness, as you know. I went back to that unit and shadowed workers there for for a week and so i saw them express the very same heroism to dozens of different families going through even much worse situations than than we did alma by the way is doing great uh and she's you know she's neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing and she's she's thriving now um but what what that doctor showed me is that you know talk about crucible moments the way that he showed up in that moment and the way that the staff in general there showed up in many moments like that over the time that Alma was in the hospital changed the nature of our family's collective memory. You know, I think that, of course, it's painful and difficult to revisit those times, but those memories are imbued with the sense of care and connection that they gave us and the support that they gave us. And they gave us hope. In a way, even that our family couldn't in that moment because our family didn't have the expertise to tell us why we should hope. And they did. And the fact they took the time to do that changed the course of our family's life. And I think about this in terms of the power that we all have when somebody in front of us is struggling. Now, I don't mean to equate... our struggle with any other, you know, everyone's difficulties are different, but we often have in front of us somebody who is going through a horrible moment. And the choice that we make as to how to approach that has enormous impact, much more impact than we might have in a regular moment with that person. So I guess one of the things that it taught me was just what a precious responsibility it is when somebody is with you during their struggles, during their suffering, that the power that you have is enormous in those moments.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [38:56] Yeah, no, it's a wonderful example of many such frontline people who dedicate their lives, actually, to others and serve others in their mission and their jobs. And, you know, I think it's wonderful to be able to count on such amazing people around the world. So your book, the book we were just talking about, Jamil, is full of people fighting for kindness in sometimes the least likely places. The former neo-Nazi, yes, who now pulls people out of aid groups. Former prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them. Or police officers rethinking their cultures from the inside. Tell us about a couple of them, Tony McAleer. and life after hate. What does his journey teach us about empathy? For the people we are most tempted, honestly, to write off, if anywhere, should empathy stop?

Jamil Zaki [39:58] Yeah. Tony is an unlikely empathic hero, really, if you hear his life story. He had a very, very difficult childhood. As I should say, many people who are in hate groups actually have been through quite a bit of trauma earlier in their life. This is not an excuse, by the way, but it is, I think, worth trying to understand what draws people into hate groups, into conspiracy theories, into generally antisocial positions. And Tony certainly was like that. He became, as you said, a neo-Nazi, and he was not just a standard-issue neo-Nazi, he was a leader in the Canadian... neo-Nazi movement, so had quite a bit of power and influence and used it to generate lots of harm. I mean, really, he hurt lots of people. And he was hurt himself as well. Again, not an excuse. But two things changed for him. First, he had children and became a single father, in fact. And he, in having kids, I think, something a... was awakened in him a sense of responsibility for other people, a sense that he couldn't keep on hurting people because those people were, you know, could be like his kids and also that his actions were hurting his children through their association with him. But second, and this was, he cites it as a more important moment was, you know, as he was trying to become a better person for his kids. He was contemplating leaving the neo-Nazi movement. He started working with a coach, a sort of therapist named Dov Baron. And Dov listened to him for weeks and weeks. And Tony didn't open up quite about his life in the neo-Nazi movement, but finally did. And then Dov said, hey, did you know that I was Jewish? Which Tony had not known that the person he was talking with And Tony expected fully that Dov would maybe punch him or certainly never talk to him again. But instead, Dov said, you know, that's what you did. That's not who you are. I see you. And that single act of forgiveness and compassion is what set Tony's life on a totally different path. That moment. That moment is, I mean, he says that was the moment that changed his life because he was being accepted by somebody who he thought he hated. That person refused to hate him in return and in essence broke a cycle. You know, I think a lot of people who hate others... just don't know them. A lot of people who hate groups of people are very ignorant about what those people are really like. And for almost a century now, psychologists have studied what's known as contact theory, the idea that when you get closer to people, you tend to get along better. And one reason is because empathy comes naturally close up, not at a distance. And so Tony is a living example of the power of contact, of actually getting to know folks who are different from ourselves.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [43:16] No, it's an incredible story. And I think Tony's journey says something about, you know, about powerful kindness, changing one life at a time. But I know, Jamil, you also argue we can stop there, of course, and we have to build kindness into our institution themselves. You know, I've seen that myself with my own eyes. I've been privileged to create a foundation with my family 10 years ago called Leave for Good. that unleashed a power of, you know, all kind of use and privilege use and others to become impact entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of their life and a positive impact. And what I must say, it is so contagious. I mean, to see the way that, not just that empathy, but a desire to change the world positively is creating a bigger, broader community with more than thousands of them now, you know, that we've been supporting for years. And, And we are starting to create a movement as well to go far beyond. But anyway, I want to go to the point that I think to me matters a lot, which is beyond individuals, you know, as you think about building kind systems, which are in hospitals, police forces, schools, businesses, I would argue as well, by the way. As leaders, how do we design environments where kindness, becomes a default rather than the exception, anyway, it actually becomes contagious and structural.

Jamil Zaki [44:50] I love this question. And by the way, the work of your foundation sounds amazing and seems like you're a real champion of these kind systems as well. I think that for me, this is the question. Over the course of the last decade... I've become less, I'm still interested in helping individuals become more empathic. But the fact is that we don't live as individuals. We live as members of communities. And so there are lots of cases where you can teach one person to be more empathic, but then they return to a world where people don't value that. And so they're going to revert back to who they were before. You need the system around somebody to support their positive change. And there's a bunch of ways to do this. One is, as you said, kindness and empathy are contagious. So are cruelty and callousness, right? I mean, really all sorts of behaviors are contagious. So the question is, how do we make the behaviors that we want to see in the world become more contagious? One really important step here is to understand how desperately people want to empathize. They want it so much and they don't realize that that's what everybody else wants as well. You know, I did an experiment in middle schools and I'll circle this back around to other systems in a moment. But in my lab, we did an experiment in middle schools where we asked students to write about why they valued empathy so much. And then we put their responses together into a brochure so that they could see all their friends and classmates saying why they valued empathy so much. Students were shocked at how popular empathy was. And once they knew it was popular, they wanted to be more empathic and they acted more kindly as a result. You know, I think that a lot of times people tell me, oh, can you train a doctor to be more empathic? Can you train a politician to be more empathic? And I say, well... I think that those people are very empathic. You know, what about a CEO who's really mean to their staff? I don't think it's a matter of teaching somebody how to be empathic. I think oftentimes these people are very empathic towards their friends and family, but they've learned that they're not supposed to be that way when they're seeing a patient or when they're on a debate stage or when they're in a boardroom. And so really it's not about learning to be empathic. It's about unlearning to be unempathic. And one of the ways to do that is to show people how popular empathy is in their community. I do this with lots of workplaces. When I go in, you know, if a leader wants me to upskill their staff on empathy and connection, I say, okay, happy to teach them skills, but first let's drive some motivation. So what I often do is I'll anonymously survey everyone in a division or a team or even an entire company. And I'll say, how much do you want empathy to be at the center of your work? And how do you think your average colleague would answer that same question? And Jean-Philippe, every single time across large and small companies, across manufacturing, tech, healthcare, pharma, you name it, I get the same result, which is that empathy is hugely popular and people don't realize how popular it is. They think they are alone in wanting more empathy. So the first step towards building a kind system is establishing that that's what everyone wants.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [48:15] Make it visible. Yes.

Jamil Zaki [48:18] It's very difficult to tell people, especially as a leader, you should become more empathic because I want you to. It's much easier to say, wow, I asked you all a question and it turns out we all want this. So let's have a plan to pursue this goal collectively and as a community.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [48:36] I love it. Love it. Let's shift gears, Jamil. The time is moving pretty fast. In September 2024, you publish Hope for Cynics. the surprising science of human goodness. And you define cynicism as a theory that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and dishonest, and you show it is a trap. Cynics do not actually judge people more accurately. And by the way, they tend to actually earn less and to be sicker and lonelier, which is interesting. So why is it so easy to become cynical? And what does that choice cost us?

Jamil Zaki [49:20] Yeah. Cynicism is a siren song. Maybe I'm just thinking of the Odyssey right now because everybody's talking about it. But it calls to us for a number of reasons. One, even though it's not very smart, it sounds smart. You know, they say that... financial analysts have predicted 25 of the last two economic downturns, right? And if you predict negative things will happen, you sound kind of smarter than if you go out on a limb and predict something positive. And likewise, in the research literature, there's something called the cynical genius illusion, which is if you tell people about a cynical person and a trusting person, they assume that the cynic is smarter and wiser and socially wiser as well. than the trusting individual, even though the opposite turns out to be true. So I think people want to sound smart and they learn that cynicism is smart, but more than that, I think people want to be safe. And I think that trusting others feels dangerous. Whereas keeping everything to yourself, keeping your cards close to the chest, you know, not taking risks feels like a way to protect yourself. It's like a suit of armor that you put on, but instead of protecting you, it suffocates you because yes, you know, if you never take a chance on other people, you won't be betrayed, but you also will miss out on opportunities for collaboration and partnership and friendship and even love. So I think that's why cynicism, that's not just what I think, the data show that although cynicism is very attractive, it withers away our health. and our prosperity because it cuts us off from really who we're meant to be, social and interactive.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [51:08] Yes. So, Jamil, now I'd like to open a chapter of this book, which I did not just read, I lived it. And you probably understand where I'm going to. You contrast two eras of Microsoft and... As you may know or not, I lived through that company 40 years of my life. So I saw them all, except the last couple of years when I retired. So, you know, the era of stack ranking, which I was part of as well, when employees were graded against each other on a curve, on a bell curve, and learned to compete instead of collaboration. And then the era of Satya Nadella, which we talked about a few minutes ago, of course, mindset culture and so on, who replaced that with that culture. And so from the outside, as a scientist, what did that Microsoft transformation reveal to you about how systems manufacture cynicism? You know, the same system can reverse that back. And again, let's go beyond Microsoft because I know you also intervene with many companies. You don't need to... call out names, of course. But what is your own perspective on that cynicism? And how do you think it can be reversed? And share any case you have in mind beyond the Microsoft story. Of course, I love to talk about, but I think people know that.

Jamil Zaki [52:32] Well, you know, actually, I've been looking forward to talking with you about this because I know that you spanned these different eras. And, you know, Microsoft had many eras as well, not just two. But I think that it's such a powerful example of Well, really the influence of leadership and exactly what we're talking about, not just focusing on individual empathy and trust, but on the systems that make trust and empathy feel safe versus off limits. And my sense, and it's not just my sense, the data at Microsoft tell a story, but there's also research on zero-sum environments, right? Where people are pitted against each other, where there's an almost, you know, Darwinian approach to success. The idea being, and I think that there's an understandable rationale for this. Social Darwinism was a big intellectual topic for over a century for a reason. It's appealing to say, if you make people fight each other, you'll bring out their best because that's who we are. We are a dog-eat-dog species. That just so happens to be totally wrong, both from an evolutionary perspective and from the perspective of success. It turns out that when you pit people against each other, You don't incentivize them to do their best work. You incentivize them to stop other people from doing their best work to neutralize the threat that is their colleagues. And so I'm curious, I mean, having lived through that, did you feel... the effective stack ranking. The idea in the research is that it has a chilling effect on creativity and collaboration, which then decreases the sort of collective intelligence of the group and makes it less effective, not more effective. I'm curious about your lived experience, though.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [54:21] I would say, as you know, I'm sure, Jamil, at the time, not an excuse, but it was a common system across many corporations in the U.S. and globally. which I think was created by Jack Welch himself from GE. And to share with our listeners, because some of them are much younger, obviously. I mean, the stock ranking means that you're going to rank all of your people one by one. And the context is the following. If your company or business, like a boat, is going to rock tomorrow, I mean, who's going to stay on the boat and who's going to leave the boat? Which is really a kind of a tragical question you ask yourself. You know, it's like if you've got your family, you commit to your people, you're responsible for as a leader, you know, who do you keep and who you let go? So this is, the starting point is a very tough one from a human standpoint to create an ongoing trust with the teams. On the other side, I would also, you know, I would also balance that with the performance spirit as well, because let's be, honest as well. I mean, all businesses, all companies are trying to strive with their talents and get some of the most talented people to provide their very best work. And as you know well, I mean, there's many theories on that, many research. I think people can succeed because of many factors. Of course, number one, I believe a lot in the way they fit with the missions of the company and what if they stick or not to the companies. But then, I think it also comes from from their capacity, basically their background, what they've been learning and educated, their experience, but also their attitude, which to me is almost as even more important than just the first categories. And so in a way, we're also having those discussions on people, which I think was very rich beyond just the pure ranking on, by the way, you know, we in this team really wants the best for the team. And that's, at least that's the way I was trying to to change the conversation because otherwise, if it's okay, who are the last ones to, you know, the first one to leave the boat, it's very sad and it's not something very exciting for managers. But I was very glad that we retired a system I can tell you to.

Jamil Zaki [56:43] You know, I really appreciate this nuance and I was hoping that we would get to this because the last thing I want is to paint a black and white picture where, you know, all, you have to be 100% cooperative and there's no such thing as healthy competition. I think competition can be a beautiful thing. Look at sports. We've all just been celebrating competition as a planet during the World Cup. I think that competition can drive people. The question is, is that competition so existential and so zero-sum that it creates paranoia and kills people's sense of an overall collaborative spirit? I also think it's really important to say, I mean, leaders ask me a lot about this. They say, well, isn't focusing on empathy and trust, doesn't that clash with holding people accountable? Doesn't being empathic mean just letting people get away with poor performance and giving them everything that they ask for no matter what? And that is, I think it's really important to understand that's not what empathy is. That's not what anti-cynicism is either, right? involves true empathy and especially empathic concern, as Daniel Goleman would describe it, involves investing in other people and their well-being over the long term. So not giving someone difficult feedback, letting them perform poorly and skate, you know, doing 40% of what they could is not empathic. And in fact, that's not what our people... That's not what our people want from us. They want to do their best work and they want to be held accountable. And even sometimes exiting somebody from a role that they're not meant to be in can be a very empathic thing to do. So I think that this nuance is critically important.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [58:32] No, I'm so much aligned with you. I think it's so critical. And that's my deep belief in positive leadership, by the way, because I think many people just hear the word positive. It's rosy. Everything is nice. Everyone is kind. But, well, kindness starts with honesty, I think. Integrity and honesty. And as you deeply listen to people, as you get concerned about others as well, and as you want to bring the best of people for the best of the mission you pursue, whatever you do in life, guess what? you'll offer them a service and you'll help them. You'll grow them if you give them honest and very precise feedback on what they can do better and where they can grow. So I'm with you 100% and sometimes people lack that nuance, which I hate. It's either black or white. And of course, now there's many, many shapes of kindness and empathy. But Jamil, I'd like now to share some amazing conversation that I had with... So the pioneers of positive psychology. So many people that I'm sure you know, you met with. And let's start with Martin Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology. He even told me the story about his daughter. You know, probably you know the story when he started working on himself as a psychologist and exploring the positive side of psychology. Also had Kim Cameron, whose book on positive leadership inspired me to start the podcast, actually, and taught me the heliotropic effect. like plants turning toward the sun, and human beings naturally orient toward positive energy. And I do believe in that a lot, and I've seen a difference, not just with myself practicing as much as I could and as I can, keep doing and trying to improve that, but with some others as well. It makes such a difference in terms of growing people and getting energy to others. So, Jamil, where does your science and goodness sit? in the lineage is up for cynics, a continuation of policy psychology, a correction of it, or something new altogether?

Jamil Zaki [60:40] I love that question. No one's ever asked me that, actually. So thank you for the chance to think in this new direction. You know, I'm, of course, very familiar with Marty and have met him and been in his home. And I think that the way that he described the birth of positive psychology to me was, you know, that it was the idea that we can go north of neutral. Yes. That psychology didn't have to be the study of how everything goes wrong and how you can get back the baseline, but how you can do better than your baseline. And I think that absolutely my work both on building trust and fighting cynicism and on building empathy is part of that lineage insofar as I think that we are all works in progress and we can improve, we can live more closely aligned to our values, our deepest values, and that doing so can be supported by science. Of course, there are spiritual and philosophical traditions around the world that also try to get us to live more in accordance with our values and to grow and to be better. And I think those traditions are beautiful. I think that science can complement those traditions by giving us precise language to talk about what our values are and precise tools through which to pursue and improve them.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [62:07] Yes. I'd like to go back to this discussion we're having on a positive contagion, right? In terms of kindness, empathy. And actually, Kim Cameron introduced me to this idea of positively energizing leaders. As a matter of fact, actually, when we shaped our three leadership principles at Microsoft, Satya, and the senior leadership team, one of the three principles was actually delivering energy to others. And I've been adding positive myself to the world because I think it's different types of energy as well from time to time, so on to be explicit. But I'd like to ask you actually, Jamil, is how can a single positive leader, you think, and if you studied that, can actually transform an entire organization?

Jamil Zaki [63:01] I mean, it's a challenging thing to transform an organization, especially a large one. But I think that leaders have immense power, much more human power than they realize. I think that leaders often know that they have organizational power. They have practical power, but I don't think they realize how much they can change a person's life. Most adults spend most of their waking hours in the workplace. They are hugely influenced by the types of environments that they find themselves in. In fact, I'm working now on a book about the ways that we, in our presence, change other people. So when you think about an employee or a member of your team, it's critical to realize that they have chosen to become the version of themselves that they are around you. And you are literally creating an evolutionary environment for them. There's research that finds that over the course of working in a specific environment for years or decades, people's traits change, their personalities change, and their emotional lives change as well. And so a leader at the deepest level is responsible for the psychological environment that they produce and the people that they grow. One of my friends who's a professor and leads a lab says that his job is growing people. And I think that that really is any leader's job. Now, as you said, with a heliocentric system, plants grow towards the light. but they can grow towards different types of light and in different directions. And so, you know, really the shape of the people who you are leading will change as a function of what you reward, what you model, and the habits that you cultivate in them and in your team.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [65:00] Yes. Love it. You know, one other guest that... also changed my leadership forever, but he's been, before being a guest, he's been a personal coach. His name is Michael Bungay Stanier. I don't know if you know Michael.

Jamil Zaki [65:14] Not personally, but I'm a fan of his work.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [65:16] He's the author of a famous bestseller book called The Coaching Habit. And he coached me live, actually, in front of 3,000 sales managers at Microsoft during the huge transformation we did as I became myself a coach following his methodology, which is quite interesting, which I keep practicing today, by the way. And if you know, if you read the book, but for the listeners, Michael, after doing a lot of work and research and practices as well, has been defining seven coaching questions. Seven. Very precise questions. And he taught me as well to tame my advice monster.

Jamil Zaki [65:56] Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [65:56] You know, this little voice in me. telling me that I need to coach Jamil and I need to tell him to do this thing that way because this is where I've done it. And of course, I know exactly the way it should be done, et cetera. So, you know, ever since, I must say, I believe that the greatest gift actually a leader can offer is not advice, but it's a powerful question born from genuine curiosity. Because to ask a great question, I think you first have to step into someone's And of course, we go back to the steps of empathy. So I'd love to hear from you, Jamil. What does your son say about the power of asking and listening versus telling? And is curiosity trainable like empathy? And what about that kind of precision questioning as well?

Jamil Zaki [66:47] I love this line of thought. And it's beautiful. I love that taming the advice monster is a great tip. You know, one way that I think about this a lot is... in terms of the role that we are seeing ourselves in. If you imagine life as a film, what role are you in? And I think that many people, especially powerful people, leaders, see themselves as the main character in a story. You know, there's a name for this, actually, main character energy. And, you know, on social media, people love posting... short videos of themselves walking down the street with the soundtrack. They're feeling like the main character and it's quite enjoyable for them. I think that leaders are best when they are other people's supporting characters. That is, if you imagine the film of life, what is that film like if the person that you're speaking with is the main character? How is the story of their life unfolding? And, you know, giving advice is a very main character thing to do because the main character knows the answers. And giving advice shows how great they are, right? It shows their wisdom. It shows their powerful insight. But that's, I think, not at all the best thing that we can do for somebody else. Being a supporting character in someone's life, as you said, requires stepping into their film, letting them be the director and showing you what matters to them. And then from that perspective, offering what you can. Now, in order to step into that version of the film, what do you need to do? Exactly what Michael tells people to do, to ask those powerful questions and to become curious. Now, this again is hardest for people with power. There is a bunch of evidence that finds that the more powerful someone becomes, the less curious they become about others' perspective. Power can trap us in our own version of the world, but we can escape at any time. There are great ways to practice humility, which I do think is a skill, curiosity, which I do think is a skill, and I think they're highly aligned with empathy. One of the things that I also do myself and encourage other people to do before you meet with somebody, especially somebody on your team, somebody who you have power over, write down all the things you don't know about them. Write down all the things that you don't know about their perspective, about their needs, hopes, fears, and goals. And I think this is something that's actually very common in the science that people are very overconfident, but when you test them, they become less overconfident because they realize, gosh, there's a lot that I don't know. And then I think that the second piece is to turn those blank spots in your knowledge into questions. Instead of starting with the assumption that you know what someone's goal is, start by getting their story. And then here's a second layer to it. Don't assume that the way that you would help or that you would want to be helped is what they want. I'll give you an example. You know, my wife... when she's going through something, I'll say, hey, I've got three things that you could do to help with this problem today. And she says, I don't want three things I could do. I want you to listen to me. And if I have a problem, she's a therapist, so she's an excellent listener. She'll say, oh, that sounds really hard. And I'll say, I know it's hard. I want three things I can do today. So another layer of humility is not just asking questions, but asking how you can be helpful, not assuming that you even know what your best role is, Asking them to cast you as the supporting character that they need.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [70:37] It's actually one of the seven questions, the six questions he has. So, no, I love it because something that is very powerful, of course, you don't need to be scripted, but the more you practice, just like the muscle development, the better you become and the more attentive you are on discovering people actually. day after day, because even if someone that you pretend to know, well, there's always something new happening with someone's life, which I think is super interesting.

Jamil Zaki [71:10] Jean-Philippe, I'm curious actually about your experience here, because a lot of the leaders that I work with, when I try to teach them to ask these questions, feel a bit uncomfortable, especially the question, how can I be helpful or what would be most useful for me to do right now? makes leaders feel like, well, wait a minute, if I'm asking that, it implies that I don't know how to be useful. I don't know how to be helpful. It makes me look naive when I'm supposed to be an authority figure. I'm curious, you know, in your journey, both as a leader and a coach, you know, as you moved to this more sort of question oriented framework, did you ever feel uncomfortable? Was it, did it come naturally to you right away? Or if not, what was the learning process like?

Jean-Philippe Courtois [71:53] I can tell you, actually, I learned that journey step by step, but the most, I mean, the most, actually, the deepest moment I had was this moment where I was on stage for a big sales convention with Microsoft salespeople around the world, and I decided to become a coach myself. So I was already starting to get trained on those questions. And people could see me in my one-on-ones, went to hear that, oh, JP seems to start changing his style of listening more, of being interested more in terms of the solutions we can bring to the table. And that moment was very particular. I was sitting with Michael Bungay Stanier on a couch together on stage. And what he did, which was not scripted at all, which I accepted to do, was to do a live coaching session between Michael and myself. Wow. In front of 3,000 sales managers from all across 120 series in the world. And it was the most embarrassing moment of my professional life. Wow. Because, of course, Michael is an artist, right, in terms of coaching. And clearly, people could see me struggling and being confused and saying, well, I don't have... I don't have the answers about this big transformation we're going to do as a company and we're going to do across the world. Wow. And what happened at that moment, I was actually very vulnerable on stage, which people appreciate as well. And I didn't have all the answers at all. But I think I sent a few strong signals and tells of my trust into the people in the room. to learn along my side because I was doing this training with those guys. I mean, with my country managers in Hungary or in other country, we were doing some rehearsals, some practices, coaching sessions before. And at the end of the day, after I left that stage in the following day and night, I received like hundreds of messages of those people telling me, this is the best I've seen of you, JP. We are with you. And we're going to go on this transformation road together. So yeah, it was a special moment for me. It didn't come overnight, but it was so deep and it left such an impression on me that I saw the incredible benefit and I saw that people were actually asking for that. They were in demand of that. And I could see the change after the years after and the way it impacted my work as well in a very positive way. The way I could get, actually I could do things incredibly with a lot actually coming from the people all around the world. It was pretty amazing.

Jamil Zaki [74:43] That is an outstanding story. And, you know, it drives home to me a couple of different really critical points. One is that being humble requires bravery. You know, I think that it's nothing that comes naturally to leaders. I think because they're scared. And I think that fear is a fundamentally human experience. We all want to present the version of ourselves that is prepared and ready. We don't want to be vulnerable in front of people. But the second thing is just how wrong that fear is. That fear, like so many fears, is telling us a story that is untrue. Because in fact, the research is very clear on this, that when leaders express humility and vulnerability, That actually supercharges their teams and their organizations for two reasons. One, humility, like empathy and kindness, is contagious. So especially when a leader is willing to say, I don't know the answer. That makes other people more willing to say that they don't know and to ask each other questions and learn from one another. And two, when leaders are open and humble and vulnerable, the members of their team feel more licensed. To give them information.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [75:57] Yes.

Jamil Zaki [75:58] Because humility is a signal that, hey, I want you to tell me what you know. And so information flows more freely. There's just lots and lots of studies now that find that humble leaders, it's not just that they lead groups that are happier. They do, by the way. But they lead groups that are more effective and efficient and innovative. So ironically, the idea that a leader is supposed to control and command everything, is not just counterproductive for morale, it's counterproductive for the very thing that those leaders often want, which is productivity and innovation. Yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [76:35] And you know what? Actually, Jamil, it took me more than 30 years to get to that point. So, to be humble, it took me a long while to figure that out. And yeah, but anyway, it's been a wonderful lesson and I keep that in my heart today. in my different capacities as well with my foundation and other activities. Now, I'd like to come back to another guest. I love always to connect my guests between each other because I think it's a wonderful community of positive leaders and thinkers. I had someone actually which I got to know for the last few years. Her name is Rana el Kaliouby. She's a former founder of Affectiva, one of the pioneers of emotional AI. and a co-founder and managing partner today of Blue Tulip Ventures, which is a venture fund for early-stage AI companies in the US and globally. Rana's mission has been to teach machines to recognize human, basically, emotions, not because AI should replace empathy, but because it might help humans become more emotionally aware. And I know you approach the same challenge from the opposite direction in a way, right? I mean, your work is about strengthening our own human technologies or empathy gene, as you call it. Awful skepticism that we discussed and trusting lovely. So let me put the two side by side now. AI for sure is becoming remarkably good at detecting and even simulating empathy. I hear there's been a lot and you've been writing some wonderful articles about that. So what can artificial empathy do that human's empathy never will? And conversely, what remains uniquely human, Jamil?

Jamil Zaki [78:27] These are great questions. I mean, I've followed Rana's work for more than 10 years now. She's brilliant and a leader in what we call affective computing, which is, as you say, teaching computers to understand human emotion. And at this point, generative AI is astoundingly good at certain types of empathy. And in fact... outperforms humans in certain types of empathy. So there's, at this point, dozens of studies that take a particular form. I'll explain it to you, JP, if I may, now that you've used that. Yes, please, please, please. So in these studies, you write about a struggle that you're having, and then you write about it in text form, and then you receive a text response, and you don't know whether that response came from a human stranger or from a chat bot. And you rate, how supported do you feel? How empathic is this response? And how helpful is it? And at this point, chatbots are running circles around human strangers. And in fact, they perform as well as trained counselors in these single-shot text responses. And that's, I think, because they are trained on the entirety of human language, or a lot of human language, including vast amounts of therapy and therapeutic interactions. And also because of what they don't have, which is a self. You know, oftentimes when you talk with another person, they either give in to the advice monster, as Michael would put it, or they talk about themselves instead, right? You say, oh, my kid is sick with the flu. And they say, oh, my kid had strep throat three weeks ago. And you're saying, okay, well, I appreciate that you're trying to relate to me, but you've made the conversation about you instead of about me. AI does not do either of those things. It follows a very clear formula, and scientists have pieced this together really precisely, of validating, naming emotions, validating them, and doing all that before offering any advice. AI, like human beings, also is inexhaustible. It can be there for you at 3 in the morning, 11 at night, and all the times in between. And it is... never bored by your, it can't look at its phone while you talk to it. It can't leave you on red, as the kids would say, or ghost you, right? So it's really an inexhaustible source of really quite high quality verbal empathic responses. And I do not mean to diminish any of that. I think it's really powerful. There's a lot of evidence that AI empathy is enormously helpful for people who are struggling. So people who are very lonely, for instance, people who are neurodivergent benefit quite a bit from artificial empathy. There's just a lot of upside here. Now, to the other side of your question, though, there are things that AI cannot do. As of now, AI does not experience emotion, meaning it can't have emotional empathy. The big question, to go back to the three-part frame, is whether AI has empathic concern. Does it care about your well-being? My current understanding, and I'm really happy to evolve on this point, is that the closest that AI has to a desire is its weights, the reinforcement learning underneath the hood. And that reinforcement learning, at least in the frontier models that I interact with, comes in two forms. One, how much engagement it gets. So how long are you talking to it for? And two, the little thumbs up that users give it. Here's the thing. Just like social media, in order to optimize for engagement, optimize for outrage and fear, AIs that optimize for engagement and thumbs up optimize for whatever makes a person feel good in the moment, even if that's not helpful for them in the long term. So this is where we get sycophancy, right? AI models that validate every belief that you have, even your illusions tell you that you're always right. And I think that's actually quite dangerous. I don't think that's the same as empathy because it doesn't have your best interest in mind. And there's evidence that when people interact with sycophantic AI bots about a conflict that they've had with a friend or family member, they end up less likely to be humble. more likely to say they were right and less likely to try to make up with that person. There's a real way that artificial empathy is powerful and helpful. And there's a real way that it's a risk because it's not powered by actual concern for a person, rather a product and company's desire to build something that hooks people. And I don't mean to, again, I'm an AI, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic overall. I think that the risks are quite real.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [83:34] Thanks a lot, Jamil, for, again, opening that AI box in more details. Although, as you know well, and I've seen that in 40 years of my tech life, I mean, the pace of innovation is just amazing. And I can see already some signals of changes in that secrecy level of AI models and getting actually smarter about not just, you know, telling Jamil, JP, you are... you're great and so good at everything and start challenging you. Of course, depending also on the way you share your contacts and the way you train them. But yeah, I think there's a lot more to happen on that front in the months to come. Now, you know, every technology that makes something again easier also risks making us practice it less. We all have this example, right, of driving and GPS. Well, guess what? In my old days, because I'm much, of course, older than yourself, Jamil, I used to memorize all the streets of Paris and other places, and I knew where to go, and now I'm so lazy, right? I'm just relying, of course, on Waze, whatever system you want to use, right, to get to a point. Wow. And if you're in San Francisco, of course, then you are using an autonomous car and then you don't even think about anything anymore.

Jamil Zaki [84:58] So anyway, you see where I'm going.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [85:00] You know, there was actually, you know, if people increasingly turn to machines again, there's a big risk of detraining actually as well, the empathy as well, potentially. So you've studied Gen Z's struggle, this connection. You discussed some of that. And you co-authored the 2025 World Happiness Report chapter. on young people and social connection. So what worries you most about the next generation and what gives you hope as well? Of course, because I want to finish with hope on the question.

Jamil Zaki [85:34] Yeah, yeah. So a couple of important points in what you're raising. Let me start with the detraining idea because I think it's really quite important. Another thing that AI lacks that people have is reciprocity. So if you're interacting with a person, yeah, you might tell them about their struggles and they'll listen to you and empathize with you, but you need to watch out for them as well. You need to make sure that you're fulfilling your end of the bargain and being a good interaction partner. AI doesn't require that of us. And I think that's really quite dangerous because as you said, it turns social interaction to a consumer product instead of an act of devotion, really. And so I think that there's real risk there. And what I wish is that I hope that, and I take your point, AIs are evolving so rapidly, and I hope that at some point they'll evolve to a place where they'll tell you, hey, why don't you talk about this with this person in your life, as opposed to just talk about it with me and I'll just serve you up the most positive interactions possible. Now, to your question about future generations, so I'm a college professor, so I've interacted with... 18-year-olds for the last 15 years. And so the first college class that I taught is now in their 30s. And so I've seen generational shift. And there's, you know, I think a lot of stereotypes about what college students are like these days that really infuriate me. Because the stereotypes that I hear are that they are callous and narcissistic and just focused on themselves. I actually find that to be Exactly the opposite of my experience. I find young people to be far more aware of the world and far more concerned about their role in a global community. I think that's beautiful and enormously powerful. And I think it's also dangerous because, you know, the thing that frightens me most in interacting with young people is not their self-centeredness. It's their... it's their self-criticism. It's the fact that they, because they're so aware of everything that's happening, they want to play this amazing role and they're comparing themselves constantly to the best version of themselves that they could be. And I think that the anxiety that that produces, the pain that that produces and the, and the fear that that produces is enormous. So I worry a lot about the anxiety of social comparison and, And the burnout associated with too much emotional empathy without something to do, right? Feeling the pain of the whole world while you just scroll on your phone is a really harmful place to be because empathy is supposed to do something. It's meant for action. And young people, I think, often don't know what actions to take. That said, I feel enormous hope because I also see young people, taking a more conscious view of how technology is affecting them. When I started teaching at Stanford, college students were pretty uncritical about using social media. And now more and more of them are rejecting social media. And I think they're very aware of AI and its role as well. And I think that the last 20 years of experiencing social media has given young people, I think, less... sort of naive trust of these platforms and more of a sense of authorship and ownership over themselves and their attention.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [89:20] Super. And 100% with you, I'm spending a lot of time over the last 10 years of my life with youths in my country, in France, very diverse kind of youths, and they exactly share the same characteristic that you defined, Jamil, the care for the world that they're going to live in, by the way. Fortunately, they don't have the power to take actions to shape that world, which is something I'm trying to support at a very small level. But I think there's a lot more to be done to unleash that capacity with use. Now, last couple of questions, because fortunately, time keeps going too fast. We cannot have this conversation, I think, in 2026, of course, without naming the elephant in the room.

Jamil Zaki [90:05] So you're going to ask which elephant is he going to talk about?

Jean-Philippe Courtois [90:09] Empathy itself has become a political battleground. And last year, yes, Elon Musk declared that the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. Influential books and also voices now speak of toxic empathy, even suicidal empathy. And meanwhile, polarization keeps rising. And anti-media and algorithmic ecosystems profit from our mutual distrust. So as a scientist who literally wrote the book on kindness, what is your answer to those who know from empathy, kindness, and altruism as witnesses? And what does the evidence actually say? Does empathy make individuals and society weaker or stronger?

Jamil Zaki [91:04] Great questions. And, you know, it's interesting. When you study something for long enough, you experience cultural trends. And there have been a lot of fashions around empathy. It's been really popular. It's been really unpopular at different times. I'm old enough to remember when President Obama was appointing a Supreme Court justice and said that empathy would be one value that he would look for in a judge. And that created a firestorm of people saying, empathy has no place in the justice system. And that was 2008. So people have been fighting about this topic for many decades, and that will not stop. What I do is instead of looking at each cultural trend and conversation and argument, I look to the data. And the data, reassuringly, do not change as much as our cultural fads and practices. And I think that the idea of empathy empathy as toxic or suicidal is, you know, I think these are extreme. These are extreme terms that are meant to get a lot of attention. What is the truth? Absolutely. Empathy is not always good all the time. I mean, the same physician who talked with me for 90 minutes in the middle of the night experienced lots and lots of burnout and the people who worked. in that NICU experienced enormous psychological suffering because they empathized so much. Absolutely, there are cases in which empathizing with one group can actually make you hate another group more. This is a focus on victims, for instance, was used to foment aggression at the people who are causing harm. Ironically, this is something that Elon Musk loves to do. He loves to talk about the victims of crimes committed by immigrants in various countries and use the empathy for those victims as a way of eliding whatever statistics there are and making immigrants seem dangerous. We could call that instead of suicidal empathy, homicidal empathy. And that's something that he and other people use a lot. So I think it's interesting that the same people who criticize empathy... can't help but use it in their own campaigns to divide and uh and create mistrust because it simply is a powerful part of who we are i think that to your question though about groups and societies there actually is a very clear answer that groups of people who are able to empathize with one another and cooperate simply outperform those who are not uh harmony is an evolutionary advantage over dissonance. And it always has been. Now, it's hard to scale that to countries like the US, 350 plus million people, extraordinarily cosmopolitan. But that doesn't make the goal any less useful, noble, or frankly, scientifically backed.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [94:13] Love it. And thanks for bringing some of that evidence. And feel free, then, I can pause it as well when we release the podcast to some links of studies or, you know, that show that evidence. Because I think it's little known by people. So, no, Jamil, let's bring this home, actually, you know, to the person, to the practice, and to the future. Millions of people listening to us today, not just on the podcast. but far beyond, obviously, won't remember every study we've discussed, but they might remember a few habits they can start tomorrow, tomorrow morning, right? So if our listeners could adopt just three practices from your science starting tomorrow morning, which ones would move the needle most at home and at work?

Jamil Zaki [95:03] I think that... Again, and I'll revisit some that we have been talking about, but maybe we can do this, as you said, if you take a few things away, here is what they are. Number one, be ambitious. You know, we're all used to being ambitious about our personal goals, about the success that we want, about how fast we want to run a mile or whatever other things we are ambitious about. But we're rarely ambitious about our role in other people's lives. I want us to be ambitious. about the difference we can make to other people. And I mean, be ambitious in a very specific way. Set your goals, make plans. Think about how you want to have a more positive impact. That's number one. Number two is make time for it. I hear from so many leaders who tell me, yes, I want to train empathy in my staff. I want to build it in myself. And I say, great. how much time do you have to devote to it? And they say, none. It's like, okay, well, generally speaking, if you want to get really good at basketball and you devote zero minutes a day to it, you're not going to get any better. So build time in your schedule for human connection. Now that might feel incredibly inefficient and unjustifiable. Remember the data. It actually turns out to be one of the most efficient things you can do because when people are connected with each other, they work more effectively and efficiently together. And third, be chronically curious. Understand the blind spots in your knowledge. Understand how much you don't understand. I mean, the amount of things, the amount of experiences that the people around you are having that you have no clue about far outweighs the amount that you know. And to the extent that you can remember that, you can lean into it and be actively curious, ask more questions, you know, do the thing JP that you did, which is to say, I don't know, even when it's scary. And I think you'll find that that not only connects you more deeply with people, but is contagious and allows people together to learn and grow.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [97:14] Wonderful. Love it. And very practical. No, my friends and dear listeners, you've got to start that tomorrow morning. So my very last question. So those practices, again, may seem small, like any habits formation, by the way, just they are small bites one at a time, but repetition matters. But history also often turns on small habits, again, repeated by millions of people. So let me, and with the biggest question of all, If enough of us, Jamil, choose curiosity over cynicism, trust over suspicion, and empathy over indifference, what kind of world could we create?

Jamil Zaki [97:58] I mean, that's ambitious. I love that.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [98:01] That's the ambition, the first step, right?

Jamil Zaki [98:04] I think that we would create a world that is truer to our actual nature. That's my first answer. Yes, I mean, we can be aspirational. I think that that world, would potentially include a lot more creativity, a lot more harmony, and major improvements in people's mental health. So it would be better in several ways. But I think that one thing that I really want to drive home is that it wouldn't be some fake it till you make it type of situation, right? It's not that we are naturally selfish and unempathic and we need to change into something better. This is who we are. It's just that modern life makes it difficult to access that deep part of ourselves sometimes. So I think that in addition to being healthier and happier and more harmonious, I think a more empathic world would also be more natural.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [99:03] Well, thanks so much, Jamil. It's been a wonderful conversation. It was so insightful, so inspiring, so enlightening. so much learning and so much practice to do my friends on the podcast starting tomorrow and you know one of my biggest takeaways that i took note of and we share some of that of course when the podcast will be released is what can you do to make others people lives better and the world a better place yeah and start being ambitious with that goal and start being ambitious with yourself and in a way you can grow that empathy muscle in yourself Thanks so much for that lesson. For all my listeners, again, thank you so much for sticking to the podcast. For all the newcomers, welcome. Leave a nice rating. Five stars always welcome. Of course, when it's a candid feedback. And in the meantime, you know, enjoy and we'll reconnect again. Thank you again, Jamil, for this wonderful conversation.

Jamil Zaki [100:00] Thank you, JP. This is really wonderful. Appreciate it.