Empathy is Mutually Beneficial

In this episode of Maxim EQ, Sam and I are joined by John Dykstra to explore a simple but powerful idea: Empathy is Mutually Beneficial.

Empathy has become a buzzword in recent years, but we go beyond the surface—unpacking what it really means, why it matters, and how it can impact both your relationships and your own well-being. John offers thoughtful and practical insights drawn from his unique life and work on Alaska’s remote North Slope.

📌 Note: The limited internet bandwidth in the Arctic affected John’s audio a little, but his perspective was too compelling not to share.

We hope this conversation sparks reflection—and maybe even inspires how you approach empathy in your own life.

Thanks for listening,
Mike

Transcript

Empathy is Mutually Beneficial

[00:00:00] Welcome to Maxim eq, where we explore the common sensical through individual interpretation at a time when the profound is too often reduced to cheap memes and goofy bumper stickers, we head in the opposite direction, digging deeper to examine the commonalities and differences in our perceptions around a particular adage.

In each episode we'll discuss our guest take on a thought provoking maxim, designed to promote self-reflection and personal growth for us, but hopefully for you as well. In this episode, Mike and I are joined by our guest, John Dykstra of Kenai, Alaska, to discuss the maxim empathy is mutually beneficial and, and I know this is gonna be a really good one.

So buckle up. Hope you enjoy the conversation. Now Maxim EQ with Sam Wahl and me, Mike [00:01:00] Baumer.

Sam:I'm super psyched as I mentioned to you before for you to meet, uh, John Dykstra.

Mike: I'm super psyched to meet him, too. 

Sam clone: 

Mike: John Dykstra.

John: Hey, how are you?

Mike: about you.

John: We're here today to discuss a maxim that was chosen by our guest, John Dykstra. John's an interesting guy. I've known him for years. We met on a cruise. I think I told you about that. Um, he was wearing a shirt that, what was that, what was that shirt that you were wearing? Something

I, I still have that t shirt. It says, uh, 

says polite as fuck

Sam:fuck. 

John: nice curse of font. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam:Yeah. So, um, John, John was born and raised in, in Kenai, Alaska. Uh, you know, I, I've, I've known John now for, it's gotta, it's been 15 years, you know, [00:02:00] probably I'm

John: Yeah. Yeah. 15 years. 

Sam:sense?

John: Yeah. Yep. 

Sam:I've heard most of probably the stories that are worth hearing. he tried on some various criminal costumes as a young man, worked in construction, was a commercial fishing boat captain for a number of years, and for the last 20 years, he's, been an industrial instrumentation and controls automation technician. Uh, in the oil fields up in the Arctic Circle. 

John: Um, John works in a a one month on one month off kind of a thing. Uh, and when he's not working, uh, and this is true facts, uh, he has visited, I think, is it now five of the seven continents of the world, John? 

Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got five under my belt. I expect that I'll never need to go to Antarctica because I kind of go above the Arctic Circle and it's, it's, it's similar enough for me to not want to [00:03:00] go to Antarctica. I've seen penguins in South Africa, 

so I don't need to go down for the penguins either.

Right? So, um, yeah. 

yeah, yeah. No, travel's definitely my passion on the off time. Uh, I've been doing that, like I said, close to 20 years now almost and, uh, yeah, two weeks at a time. So half the year off,

Sam:I was just going to add so when this is how we found John, so he's been doing this for years, part of lifestyle that he enjoys because he has a month off at a time, he's gotten, he's purchased several, now leased, properties, short term lease Airbnb properties around him in the Kenai, river area, because that's a huge. tourism area for fishing seasons and stuff like that. And, he and his daughter, now that she's old enough to travel with him, Trinity, his daughter, they take off and she's been all over the world now as a result of your addiction to international travel. And she's seen more of this world than your average [00:04:00] 12 year old.

Right. And isn't she like 12 or 13 now, something like that.

John: uh, yeah, she's 12 and yeah, she's, she's at this point definitely hard to impress. I offered her a, uh, a trip to Hawaii next February, uh, just last night and she told me, uh, I'm going to have to think about it for a couple of days, dad. I don't know if I really want to go to Hawaii. And I was like, wow. And she, you

Sam:Wow.

John: so yeah, that's, that's her thing.

Yeah. She's, she's hard to impress at this 

point. 

Sam:else.

Mike: So we know that Antarctica is one of the two remaining. What's the, what's the other one?

John: Uh, South America.

Mike: 

John: Yeah. Gotta get down there at some point. Uh, very interested in Chile and Patagonia and Brazil, of course. I would love to do

Sam:Mmm. 

John: of

trip down the, uh, Amazon even at some point. Uh, Machu Picchu, of course. Big goal of mine. Yeah. 

Sam:I want to kind of bring today's Maxim into the conversation. And, and I, [00:05:00] um, I'm, I'm not joking when I say this, that I'm guessing. So the Maxim that you chose when we gave you a list of Maxim's was empathy is mutually beneficial. 

John: That's the one.

Sam:Okay. Okay, good. So I am, I'm guessing if you and I have this in common, John, that deeper considerations about empathy and what that means is likely something that's more of a recent evolution in your consciousness. Is that fair to say? 

John: Uh, you know, I would say that, and I think it'd be very interesting to like, you know, the Google, uh, word entomology search tool that people use. I would think that empathy has been on a serious uptick in society in the last four or five years. So, and I think kind of before that, like, People understood it.

And as I was thinking about this [00:06:00] for like the last 24 hours after choosing that. I think empathy usually used to be called by different names, you know what I mean? A lot of like, uh, you know, walk a mile in another person's shoes or these other kind of cliches before we've really gotten good with the language and have targeted it.

So I think it's been around for, for a long time, right? At least in 

what I would call. The, uh, the gentle side of society as has upheld empathy, right? And then and then you have the viscous other side of society that that just judges, you know, essentially, um, but it's 

very interesting now, like, talking to Sam on here.

You know, when Sam and I met, it was a very different dynamic. You know, we came from very, very different worlds. So we had, we kind of started out, uh, empathetically with each other. You know, I'm, I'm a weirdo from Alaska country boy. Sam's from the big city at that point in his life. And, uh, yeah, so [00:07:00] not a lot in common, but common men.

And, uh, women getting together. 

Sam:Yeah, indeed, man. Uh, absolutely. And I think that time period for me speaking, uh, happened to be a pretty formative time in my life too. And or at least on the cusp of what became a very formative time in my life too. So, um, it's funny like you're one of those people that came into my world when I was ready for you.

They always say that when you're ready for teachers, teachers will appear or something like that. But, um, you know, it's, you know, of all of my friends and I've, and I've said this to you before, John, you know, I, You're, uh, you are incredibly unique, uh, among those who I call close friends. And, for what stereotypes I had. Uh, projected maybe in my head about what rural Alaskans were going to be like, you know, I, I obviously, uh, I, [00:08:00] I gave into this prejudice that perhaps in one way or another, you would all be less sophisticated or, you know, or,Not the most like literary people or whatever it is that I had in my head, you know what I

John: Sure. Sure. 

Sam:and I was and I was wrong and I was wrong obviously with you who are one of the more well read people I've ever met in my life and in terms of You know just being an astute like Student of the world and citizen of the globe. Like you, you, you're all those things. And, and, uh, and I've always been blown away by that about you, about just how broad your bandwidth is for understanding and seeing and, the way that you seem to metabolize life is really admirable.

And, uh, uh, and when I met your community of friends visiting. Kenai, Alaska. I found that there was a whole community of you you're not, you're not unique [00:09:00] among your friends. Your friends were all these like dynamic thinker, you know, like, you know, interesting, quirky, like well read and, and kind of philosophical folks.

Like it was just interesting, you know, like, so I, I, I'm going to guess again, because I don't know that that, that, That must have something to do with the ethos of living in rural Alaska, you know that like Folks do fill their minds and their time with exploratory Things you know, I don't know

John: Yeah. I mean, if, so if I had to put a, uh, you know, it's interesting when you say the ethos of Alaska, there's, there's like a couple of things that, you know, that are, I think, still unique to Alaska in that it is still, you know, it's, I mean, it became a state in 1959. I guess my, my dad first showed up here working for the borough of Indian [00:10:00] affairs in the, in the bush.

And 63, and you really, you know, if you're 1st generation Alaskan, like, I am, that really means that your parents were adventurers, you know, to some degree to, you know, while while everybody else is worried about Vietnam war, these are people that were going to a place that had just became a state within the last decade and trying to forge out some sort of some sort of existence.

There's also a very great story about a town called. Uh, and there's a lot of Midwestern farmers relocated there in the Great Depression to try to make a agricultural, uh, stand. And, um, so you 

have that influence as well. But yeah, I think everybody who has wound up in Alaska has, you know, that that type of spirit.

Like, I, you know, my, my mom's from Texas. My dad's from Montana. And then they both decided on their own to move to Alaska and met here [00:11:00] and that's a very common story amongst first generation Alaskans, you know, so, so your, your, your parent, if you got here in that timeframe, your parents were probably adventurous type people and then politically and demographically, I think I've seen several times where Alaska is the most libertarian leaning state.

So there's. There's a very, um, you know, the license plate for the state says the last frontier, like, like, it's space, you know, 

I mean, um, 

and so that there's a common thread of freedom and. You know, uh, you know, letting your, you know, live and let live. That's a very sort of common theme up here, you know, where people aren't necessarily and you probably got some of that.

Sam 

 Alaska is very live 

and let live and so maybe that has something to do with it. 

Sam:Mike what you got?

Mike: Yeah, um, I got a lot of stuff kind of teed up, so I'm going to try not to wrap too many questions [00:12:00] into one, but they're related. you shared that over the last 24 hours or so, you know, given some consideration to the word empathy to empathy,in terms of like the traction that it's picked up over the last couple of few years, right?

Did you also think about the rest of the maxim that it's mutually beneficial? Like, how did you process the second half of, what we put in front of you for today? The mutually beneficial part. 

John: 1 of my all time favorite Mark Twain quotes, and this ties into, of course, my love of travel, you know, and it goes like this, right?

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. So, and like I [00:13:00] said, you know, in common nowadays speak, you know, we recognize that as empathy.

But, I mean, that's what, you know, Mark Twain didn't say empathy in that passage, but, you know, fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness, you know, and he's saying to go abroad and be charitable to people and you will gain, you know, so much more by actually understanding these people. So it was 1 of those things where I was, and I, and I think that's the real.

You know, uh, to, to pointedly answer your question. I mean, that's the real gain for the person who is actively empathizing is you, you know, to me, you get, you get the growth, you get the knowledge, um, you also, a lot of times, you know, if you take the next step and, and, and, and actually do help a person because you understand that person, then obviously you get that, that really good inner feeling that, you know, at this point in our lives, I feel like we're all similar aged.

We understand that. You know, [00:14:00] helping people is truly like the gift that, you know, is the well inside of a human that definitely springs forward. You know what I mean? And obviously the other person, you know, the, the recipient of empathy, you know, to have that understanding and to be seen. And to be understood, right?

Like, lots of people, they just seek that, you know, I think that's a very human need. And in fact, and now when, you know, people talk about, you know, I, I like the verbiage of being seen and that's, that's another newer, newer word, like, you don't, you don't find any philosophers waning on about being seen, but of course, the greats always did talk about truth, right?

You know, and that, and that's kind of, I guess, my point is that these are. These are things in my mind. I don't I'm a big believer and there's nothing new under the sun, you know, so these things have been expressed before necessarily throughout philosophy [00:15:00] throughout

Sam:Sure.

John: path of human course. Uh, it's just maybe we're calling it something a little different now.

You know what I mean? Um, which is why I do love. I love that. I 

love what you guys are doing here with Maxim's and Sam knows. I'm a big I'm a big stoic guy. And when you boil down a lot of what we got going on in the world today, like we're just, everybody's just remixing the greats, you know? 

Mike: Absolutely. 

John: and, and those guys really were, it's, it's amazing to me to look back and to be like, these guys had it figured out 10 times, you know, back, you know, you know, pre, pre Jesus, right.

You know, they were already talking about all this stuff. So, 

Sam:Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Vedic, the Vedic mystics and, and early Sumerians and, and, you know, and the ancient, uh, indigenous cultures of most continents on this planet have all shown signs through whatever iconography or signals they left behind that they believed in a oneness they believed in a, you know, and, and not just, not just limited to human souls, that they believed in a oneness of [00:16:00] all life forms and that they were all part of one organism.

I mean, this is an ongoing. human exploration and it's, it's, yeah, you're right, dude. This is ancient shit. You know,

Mike: Well, I like the way

you, you refer to it as 

John: right. 

Mike: you know, what's already there. because it is all there and you never know what combination of phrases, what combination of words, what repackaging of it is going to resonate with the Any particular person in any particular time, right?

Like if it comes in one form, I might not even hear it. It might not be enough for me to attempt to process it, or digest it and try to find some relevance back to what I'm working on or what I'm going through. So I, I really liked that way of remix for sure.

Sam clone: if I may,Bring a generic description to our current understanding of fully realized empathy. So there's three components apparently to what would be considered realized [00:17:00] empathy. Um, and, the first of, of which is cognitive empathy, which is, you know, I put myself in your shoes, as you said earlier, John, like, you know, I, I relate to your plight. Or emotive empathy would be the second component.

And that is more of a, I feel with you. I'm next to you possibly this great component that you just brought up, John, which is the understanding part. I understand you. You know what I mean? Uh, I remember a great, uh, Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote that I saw on a t shirt one day that set my whole life into a tailspin.

And that was that a luxury to be understood. And although that's a really simple, group of words, it, it, it was really impactful on me realizing that, that to truly be and feel and experience understanding is truly rare and truly, luxurious. Um, but the third component of fully realized empathy is the empathic action [00:18:00] and an empathic action is, is very, um, specific. Which is what differentiates empathy from sympathy Compassion and other things it is that I will stand with you without Fixing anything. I'm not here to help you or to fix you I'm here to be next to you and to be with you and to be Experienced by you by only my my presence You know what I mean?

And I think in that is something powerful too. Um, my question for you, 

Mike: does empathy apply in your lexicon only to people you? Or does empathy have relationship with all forms of life? 

John: I will absolutely come back to the, uh, all life versus, uh, humans thing. But I'm going to diverge for just a 2nd and pull on something that is weirdly.

I made the connection a long time ago when they sent [00:19:00] me to it. And it's, it's weird that this happened in an industrial oil field setting, 

Sam:Hmm. 

John: they, uh, 1 time, I got paid a bunch of money to go to this root cause analysis class for, like, 3 days, you know, hotel, whiskey, the whole 9 and we're in there 8, 9 hours a day.

And we're studying all these industrial accidents. And, you know, it was, it was to teach us how to do analysis after something really bad has happened, you know, explosion, people are dead. You know, take your pick, right? And the whole thing, that guy boiled it down. He was really good. He boiled it down and he said, look, he goes for you to make criteria going forward as to how something should change.

He goes, you have to understand the accident to the point that you can see yourself making the same mistake. And 

this process really became. [00:20:00] And I'll go ahead and divulge and say that a lot of corporate companies don't go to this length because they preach it, but they don't go to it. You know, it's the poster in the room, but it's not the practice.

Right? Um, because 

then you do get into if you really understand why the guy, let's say, he pushed the wrong button and 2 people died. Right? Well. You know, he pushed the wrong button because a myriad of reasons, you know, he's not getting enough sleep. His relationship isn't good at home. He feels pressure from the corporation to meet quota.

There's all these, uh, you know, kind of softer things that can't be solved by policy alone. Right? You know, and then and then real root cause analysis brings this forward into the workplace and says, well, hey, you know, maybe, you know, I'm just. Playing off this example here, maybe we need a better, a better mattress for the, for the working people, or maybe this, or maybe that, but it's a, 

it's not, you know, accidents are not as simple as just the guys [00:21:00] dumb and he pushed the wrong button.

Right? And I always took away from that training that that was the letter. Of what you needed to do to really, truly understand a situation is to be able to see yourself making the same mistake. Right? And, and it was, it was interesting to me. It was when I did that training. I was like, holy shit. You're talking about like, a complete level.

Of empathy here is what you're, you know, it's to fully understand what went wrong. And then, of course, like, very interestingly enough, Sam, and your 3rd part there that, you know, and I like that you would say that, you know. It's not that I need to do something to help it or stop it or this or that. A lot of times you just need to understand the situation.

And be there with the person, and I think societally we go wrong in that regard a lot, a [00:22:00] lot of times, right? what springs into my mind 1st is, you know, even things like, uh, affirmative action, right? We empathize with, uh, people's and, you know, we've tried to put this into process and we've tried to make a tones for it with policy and procedure.

And really what we maybe need to do at 1st step is to have just been there for them recognize. And, you know, just be there with them. Um, I know that's a lot to unpack, but I am going to real quick. I'll answer your thing. Sam is a guy who grew up and had, you know, we had, I grew up with goats and ducks and chickens and rabbits and some of them were pets and we even had for recreational only, like, we've always had cars here in Alaska.

We, but we recreationally, my dad had learned a lot from the Alaska natives. And so he came back and built his own dog sled. And we had dog sled team that we went around the lake on when I was growing up and stuff and so, and in the fall, we would [00:23:00] oftentimes kill those animals. You know, those were some of those were meat animals, of course, not sled dogs and things of that nature.

And I think if you are around, um, animals, you cannot be around them for very long before you realize that animals, of course. Uh, very much have a soul, have a, have a, have a knowledge base of who they are and where they are in the world and, uh, obviously have ties to each other. And yeah, I mean, and a lot of this too, you see, uh, often too, in the portrayals of indigenous people where, you know, they may, they may take a deer, but then they offer up and say, thank you for taking of the deer.

Traditionally, and they honor it too. And that's back to that connectedness of us all kind of being as one. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not so far into it that I would necessarily apologize to an ant if I stepped on it, like, maybe a Buddhist would [00:24:00] necessarily, you know,

Sam:I want to go back to the root cause training or exercise, however you would refer to it, right?

Mike clone: It's almost like you would need people to come in with a really clean slate in order to get them to that point of full understanding. this might not be the greatest example, but I'm going to use it anyway. I got really fascinated. It's a bit morbid, but I got fascinated when I lived in this neighborhood where there was an accident and, uh, hopefully I don't start bawling. It was that a mom had left their child in a car when they, after they thought they had dropped 

Mike clone: The child off at daycare elementary school or something.

 And the child passed away. I don't have biological kids, but I do have kids. It was so fucking heartbreaking to me to know that that happened, right. Just for all the reasons that if we wanted to pause here for like eight seconds would hit you guys. And so, I thought, well, there's got to be a way to prevent this, right?

There's got to be like some sort of, uh, [00:25:00] weight triggered sensor or something that tells you that something's still in the car, even, you know, after you've locked it and whatever. Right. So, so I went down this rabbit hole like 20 years ago of looking into this. And there's like, there was one company in Missouri that was working on like an alarm system or whatever that alerted you to, somebody not being in the car and I called the owner of the company and had this great conversation with him one day and then followed this up.

It was validated by what I would go on to just believe what I was seeing online people just refuse to believe that it could happen to them. Um, you know, I'm a good mother. I would never do that. I was like, of course you wouldn't fucking do that. Like the, the cognitive dissonance. I don't even know if that's the right term in this case.

Like there's just this blockage 

 They literally could not get over that hump of even imagining How it could happen to them or how they could have it happen to them. 

I wanted to use that example because I feel like until you break down some of [00:26:00] that prejudice isn't necessarily the right word, but preconception might be better. And you go into a training exercise like that. Did they have to do something? At the front end of those sessions to even prep people to be in a space to be able to imagine themselves without whatever preconceptions they have about their ability to have this happen to them, were cleared out.

Sam:before you start to answer that, John, I want to just, I want to just say, uh, so for me, um, when, when something like that happens, the empathetic mindset would be, you know, the response to said person who's like, I would never do that. The empathetic action there would be, wait a minute. That's something that happens. And we are doing that. So we need to cultivate a solution to minimize the number of times that happens to us. [00:27:00] You know what I mean? 

there's nothing to be gained by the prejudice. And I, and I do think prejudice is the right word there, Mike. Uh, I do think that was a good use of prejudice because that's what it is. Um, and it's all prejudice is, is just a preconceived idea or, the story you're telling yourself is what prejudice

Mike: Right. Except you're projecting that onto a situation as opposed to a person in this case, you know, but 

yeah, 

Sam:right. That's right. But when when John and his crew are up there, you know, split, splitting hairs and analyzing productivity, you know what I mean? I'm sure on an incredibly technical level, uh, you know, they see the forest for the trees and that there's nothing to be gained by, by a prejudicial response or a loaded or emotional response to, you know, life, Uh, consequential

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sam:and so the, the approach is gentlemen, let's understand who's on the job. understand who's on the job and let's approach [00:28:00] all possible scenarios as we, as us, as

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but everybody's 

John: So, so, and, and really, and really, what, what,

Mike: the group, you 

John: sorry, I'm just, I'm just jumping in. I, I love that you guys love this scenario because like I said, it was years ago for me, very much a study of empathy when I went to this, and what, what Mike's saying is actually. And I mean, of course, I'm just, [00:29:00] I'm just an old country boy, but, you know, psychologically, I've seen it played out over the years, of course, in my own career, what you were talking about, Mike, is literally the Bane.

safety culture and every safety guy is that you have to break through. I like dissidents better than prejudice necessarily, but you have to break through that and make people compelled to understand that it can happen to them and it's it's widely dispersed across industry. That usually the people, you know, it's like, um, it's, it's also true that, you know, who, you know, who drowns the most in this country is like white guys who can swim, right? 

Because they won't put on a fucking life jacket, you know, because they don't think it can happen to them. And in industry, we see it all the time that, uh, you know, it's the experienced person. That actually makes the, the bad mistake because [00:30:00] they literally didn't think it could happen to them. And so then, like you said, Mike with tearing people down, this becomes interesting.

I was thinking this as you were saying, and I was reliving like, because we get, we get a ton. Like, just a massive amount of safety stuff thrown at us in my industry all the time, uh, you know, and to the point where, you know, you become, you know, you just kind of tune out to it because there is so much of it all the time and then, you know, but the compelling safety meetings that I've been through over the years, you know, like.

I've been to ones where in person, a guy spoke that had, suffered a bunch of chemical burns because of a mistake they made. And, you know, he talked at length about being in the burn unit, and then the effect it had on his family. And so that is the type of thing that strips it away. It makes it personal where you can see yourself in that person and then real.

Real safety culture. And then, and then like for the context of what we're talking about, [00:31:00] that type of empathy, that upfront in your face, when you really see it, empathy. Then the group oftentimes walks out of a safety culture meeting like that, and they're like, oh, shit, I am going to be more safe today because I had that empathetic moment.

Whereas a lot of times, if it's just a 

PowerPoint, and it's dry guys, don't guys don't take it. And I think that example goes across the board. I mean, you could, you know, until you, I would go so far as to say that, you know, whatever, uh, Empathetic example, you'd like to come up with until it becomes personal for people.

They won't accept it necessarily until they can see themselves. You know what I mean? And this is why you see that, like, you know, things like good journalism, you know, 1 picture can change the course of a war. Right? You know what I mean? Like, of course, the 1 that comes to mind is the, uh, the lady running down the road in Vietnam.

Right? Uh, America [00:32:00] forever 

changed about the, the use of napalm, right? Because you saw it, right? You saw it, you felt it and seeing it and feeling it is the, you know, those are the symptoms of empathy as it were. Right? So. You're absolutely right, Mike, that you do have to strip away and get past that with a lot of humans.

And then, and then sometimes, though, you also have a crew or or a type of people. And this is all personality types and probably, you know, differences in upbringing and what people bring to the table. Some crews are gonna, you know, or groups of people are going to get to it quicker or slower than others necessarily.

Right? You know, more of a barrier or less of a barrier. But, uh, that, I mean, that really is the, you know, some of the benefits and I, I feel like we're covering it really good here. Fellas that, you know, that it's like, you know, the benefits and how it's how it happens.

Mike: sticking with this experience. It's like people are [00:33:00] coming into a session like that with, well, just, you know, Stick with the word for a minute with varying degrees of empathy walking in the door, right? And I'm always fascinated by To the degree that this can actually be true, right?

Like I get that there could be a disconnect between what I think is true and what's true But it's like I consider myself somebody who doesn't necessarily have to experience something firsthand or have a family member Or have it be in my face to be sympathetic to someone else a situation Where some people it's like it literally does doesn't, their, their attitude and their point of view on something is not affected until 

 it's like in their face or has touched them directlywhat I'm wondering, John, in your experience of doing that and knowing that there's a spectrum of personality types that walk through the door to begin with, do you think that it's It's more impactful for someone who needed that dramatic example and experience to, to shake them [00:34:00] into recognizing that it could happen to them. I wonder if the person who believes they're empathetic already is actually possibly missing out on The more dramatic effect of having walked in without that empathy, but then having been hard by the story of a guy who comes With the whole burn trauma experience, you know what i'm trying to say?

It's like oh, yeah, but I didn't I didn't really need the example to be empathetic I already was and so did I get less out of it than the person who who walked in less empathetic? but got shocked into Into that new understanding 

John: Who, um, you know, that's a, that's a tough call that I wouldn't necessarily make, but I would say that. Cataclysmic changes, real change as opposed to, you know. we have a phrase. I don't know if I'm sure it's a phrase across the country. I would expect, but, you know, come to [00:35:00] Jesus moment.

You know what I mean? And I think come to Jesus moments, you know, they do absolutely hit you. Yeah, you know, so, yeah, I just, I don't know, but I, I would, I would definitely agree with it. It's a gradient across people, you know, and how they, how they open up to things for sure. And like, we were saying earlier, you know, you can hear something 1 way, you can hear it another way.

Um, you know, for, for some people, they need to hear it from a parent from some people. They need to hear it from a friend from some people. They can hear it in a safety meeting from some people. They need to hear it from a preacher. Etc, etc,

until you push the push the right button. Um, you know,

the 1 thing I do, I will say is I don't ever believe and this is, uh, this is probably just a me thing.

I am different in that. I don't think you can legislate this. You know what I mean? I think you'll get a little traction with [00:36:00] legislation or rules and and and that's, you know, even even in the corporate sense. I'm not even necessarily talking at a government level, but certainly would expand it to that.

You know, when the company comes in and says, thou shalt. You know, here's and I hate to draw my work experience, but for us, you know, it's it's ice and a lot of people slip and fall, right? Slip and fall is is 1 of the huge safety concerns of where I work in the Arctic. And the company is always like, thou shalt wear these things on your boots that you won't slip and fall tons of people don't wear them.

Right? Yeah. I mean,

Mike: an argument. You could actually, retard the progress because by telling somebody what they shouldn't do, there's gonna be certain population of people that are just gonna push back. So they're pushing back against

John: sure.

Mike: more than they're necessarily pushing back against what it's trying to accomplish.

So, yeah. Okay.

Sam:want to hop in here because I was last night, I was reading an interesting article when I was doing a little bit of a [00:37:00] deep dive on this topic, uh, that was talking about, um, the effects of power in business. professional or political relationships to other people, you know, for example, CEOs or, you know, people in executive power that have that power to relationship doubt that dynamic with other, with other subjects, sometimes hundreds and thousands of other subjects.

And, and the article was talking about, um, a struggle for folks that considered themselves to be. Empaths, who find themselves in positions of power, over other people, uh, and their correlation between increased power to decreased empathy and that that becoming an existential struggle for them. Um, because that feels like a paradox to them, or I just, I guess I wanted to ask [00:38:00] you, um, one of you guys actually at this juncture, uh, if that, if that resonates with you, if you feel like you, you remember being, uh, in a, in a position of power where you had people working beneath you or, or, you know, uh, subordinates of any kind and that you, you found, uh, that it changed your ability to relate in an empathic way with those people.

Uh, can you speak to that? 

John: you know, Sam, I think I think that the power dynamic is a really good question. I, you know, I mean, I think 1st and foremost, we've all worked for great people before where. That maybe they were successful in and in running that, that trap of power. Right? And they always walked around and made people feel as though they were the most important.

And, uh, you know, 1 of my favorite guys out there is Simon Sinek and, you know, and he, he absolutely frames up leadership as opposed to necessarily power [00:39:00] frames up leadership as serving your underlings. And that will take you the furthest.But I 

do and I have also, you know, I've absolutely I, uh, I'm not that great of a person.

I have absolutely, cursed my underlings, whether they were one of my housekeepers or, you know, somebody working on a crew. That's like, you know, why can't you just get this done? Right? Like, what's holding you up and. And what I think is, though, is that if a person was, you know, is is a student of empathy that you will, if you sit with it, you will, you will realize, you know, what their struggles are and, um, and be more gracious, which is, which is another term, right?

Like, yeah, as I was thinking about this, I, I like to connect a lot of dots when I think on subjects and I think that, you know, that's another thing that is probably a newer. Word that's really ticked up in the last five or six years, you know, this giving people grace [00:40:00] and, and I thought about it and I was like, well, shit, that's really what people are talking about when they, when they talk about giving people grace is this just kind of understanding that, hey, you know, what?

Yeah, maybe that person snapped at me a little bit today, but you know what? Maybe, uh, maybe they're going through a lot, right? You know, or something like that. And, uh, 

so it was just another one of those connections that I made thinking about empathy, you know? 

Sam:that is 

John: Um, 

and, and weirdly enough here. 

Mike: Yes.

John: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Sam:That is empathy

Mike: Yeah. 

Sam:out.

John: Yeah. 

Sam:now,

John: Yeah. 

Sam:last night I was discussing this with my brother in law, Matt Firlik, who happens to be, You know, I don't even know what the hell his title is. He's an executive at Apple. He's been there for 28 years. Um, and he's, he runs a team of like 350 people or something crazy like that. You know, engineers, they're 

John: Wow. 

Sam:code

John: Yeah. 

Sam:I posed this question to him last night I'll probably not do [00:41:00] any justice to, the way that he articulated himself, but, 

He was giving me, you know, feeding me a scenario that was speaking to this and I know Matt and Matt is particularly a very thoughtful, very composed and incredibly empathic person, by nature, just that's who he is. but he was saying, here's an example. He's like. I've got a team, one of the operators in this team has long COVID has some severe symptoms, and she's come to us through all the proper channels via, HR, you know, with several different tiers now of like needing exceptional, treatment, needing, uh, concessions made for her.

You know what I mean? She's like, I can only work one day a week now while I'm having these symptoms and I need, to be able to take a nap in the middle of my one shift a week or whatever the hell it is. You know what I mean? and him saying like, okay, [00:42:00] look, you're on a team. That, needs all its players, in play six days a week at the least, you know, that's just the nature of this team, we can try to accommodate you with a job, so that you have employment, we understand that you're not choosing these circumstances, you're not choosing these symptoms, but we also cannot this operation to fail because one of its parts is broken.

You know what I mean? So we can offer you something that's more, appropriate for your abilities up against these symptoms or whatever, and so, his job is to represent the company. His job is to keep that team producing. His job is to keep all of his teams producing. so he can only afford. to sit with the shared experience or empathy with this person for so long. It's not in his job description to be empathetic to this person. And [00:43:00] that's not part of his job. And in order to do his job, he literally has to separate himself from whatever empathic impulses he might have and reappropriate or reassign this person.

And, So the point is, within The corporate and, and capitalist paradigm, perhaps there is no function for empathy. Like it's just not constructed that way. It works for us conveniently with regard to getting people motivated to adhere to safety standards.

We've already discussed that. We've just sussed that out. But for all intents and purposes of using a capitalistic or power dynamic, hierarchical, structure in order to make production happen. There's no place for empathy in that. You know what I mean? There's really not at the end of the

Mike: Uh, 

Sam:you

Mike: there could be, 

Look, it depends on how you design the team. Depends on how you design the goals. Depends on how you allocate your resources. let's just use this example, and I'm not, [00:44:00] Sticking to Matt as an individual, in this case, but their manager, their team leader, whatever. If you've got 300 people that you're managing on your team, what message does it send to the other 299 people if they're working every day, whether it's front of mind or back of mind, that if they get some condition that's outside of their control, um, that, you know, that,

That they'll be exiled from this team or repurposed or whatever. Right? So I don't know, like, I don't know what effect having that hang over your whole team has on the collective productivity of the other 299 people. 

Sam:I'm not saying that every organization can absorb that.

Mike: And I'm not saying that every organization can work around that or incorporate that into, you know, some additional headroom resources or whatever. But if you were trying to build a team where a lot of the things that we're talking about right now, being comfortable, being seen, being heard, being understood, having security, like what are those things [00:45:00] mean?

And I'm not in the business of organizational behavior and design, although I did. You know, take it as a class 30 some odd years ago, I would make a decision about whether or not I would want to absorb some top line perceived inefficiency potentially in exchange for having what might be an otherwise healthy team that can actually afford the occasional, Hit to its productivity and still have a healthy team. Obviously if the whole team, if that happens to 150 people out of the 300, then it becomes unmanageable or untenable. Right. But it's not a, by definition, incompatibility just depends 

on how you want to organize it

Sam:Yeah, bud. Yeah.

John: Right. Well, and so apparently you and I were not going down the same road, but I love the road you went down there. 

Mike: you know, a lot of times I [00:46:00] feel like. You know, and kudos to Matt for, for taking it up on the empathetic side. And a lot of times that really does vex us as humans. Like, that's that's something that we haven't really touched on yet. Is that, you know, how this internal what empathy does to us internally?

John: Right? It's, it's tough. But I think that there's, you know, going back to what Sam said originally about the last step isn't necessarily to do an action. per se, I mean, it's that you understand it that you 

are there with the person, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm going to tie this into something else. I was thinking about coming into this podcast that, um, you know, an interesting place where we find this empathy in our society is with the law.

And, you know, a lot of times the letter of the law is held to what a reasonable person would do, or would conceive to do 

right or even being [00:47:00] found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And so I think that there is definitely a space for that. You can't really define this necessarily.

So I like that the law uses the term reasonable. and if we 

applied that to Matt situation, would a reasonable manager be expected to keep this person on the team and then have a foregoing conversation around that? Because. While you can empathize, you do not need to, I don't feel as a human directly fix the situation always right?

a lot of times you do a person a disservice. we don't talk enough in this country. I don't think about the hurt that sympathizing or patronizing people does to them. You know, it's an unintended consequence. I mean, for sure. I'll throw myself on the altar as a fat kid, right?

You know. No one ever did me a service by letting me, run slower in gym class and then eat a cheeseburger [00:48:00] afterwards. They just didn't. They didn't making allowances for me. Never helped me lose a pound, right?

so, yeah, I mean, those are 

all very complicated things.

Mike: hmm.

Sam:too much further down the road, I, I feel like I keep stopping you and I apologize. It's only because you're saying such juicy things that I want to have a minute to discuss, you know, some minutia, but you brought the law into it, you know, which is ultimately authored. And officiated by people who have an adherence to or a collective understanding of ethic, you know what I mean? And ethic is, should reflect some empathetic values. If I'm not wrong, I mean, it should be all laws should be reasonable and our collective ethic. that gives foundation to [00:49:00] those laws should be reasonable and should be empathetic in nature in terms of like, we are all, on a spectrum of fault, to one extent or another with regard to, you know, uh, sinning, so societally sinning, breaking the law, whatever, you

John: Oh, no, you're you're well, you're absolutely right there, Sam. And I think I think that's the genius of the trial by peers, right? If you're truly being tried 

by your peers, then you should have a jury that is empathetic. And it's funny you talked about the sinning because I, I cashed it as a point, you know, Jesus absolutely, uh, was absolutely sent a very empathetic message with the, The lady who was being tried and going to be stoned for adultery, right?

Like probably one of the most famous empathetic lessons Western culture, right there that, you know, whoever is without sin shall cast the first stone, 

 and that's all wrapped up in there. 

 and I honestly never tied [00:50:00] the jury of the peers thing together until just we were just having this conversation.

But, yeah, that is your best shot at empathy in a courtroom. Is that it is an actual 

jury of your peers. Right? You know,

Sam:Yes, sir. So I think that we're all in agreement. It sounds to me like that, you know, empathy, uh, equals a measurable depth of understanding, uh, relatability and all of those things. And I think that we learn more from one another when we're in that mode, when we're in the mode of. understanding and and relating 

Mike: Can I, I just want to throw in one because I, I really, I'm glad you just said the last bit Sam, because that ties back in the mutually beneficial part, right? Like, so we're spending a lot of time dissecting empathy, um, and no problem, not as much time On the flip side of it or the second half of the maximum, which is kind of funny too, because I think we have three empathetic people.

So we're spending less time talking about how we benefit from being empathetic, but that's cool. but that [00:51:00] was at the heart of. You know, when this first hit me that day to put that combination of words together, it was because I felt like growing up 

I think that historic understanding of it was always to see it as. that the recipient was the primary beneficiary, of the empathy. and what I realized, it wasn't just about, what I might learn and pick up from engaging that way.

It was more of just that being more empathetic. meant killing more of the prejudices that exist and that were occupying space in my brain or my energy or whatever. And so the more empathetic I was being, the more positive energy I was creating. And I was in a better space to receive more positive things as a direct result, Of clearing out some of the negativity.

And in this case, the negativity might be coming in the form [00:52:00] of, a knee jerk to be prejudiced about a situation or project something onto somebody that wasn't there. And so I came to the is mutually beneficial part, that's what I was thinking about. And I'm really glad that both of you guys have kind of keyed in on, more Of how being able to make that connection with people and understand people sit with people to feel with people to see people is actually just enriching you in your personality and the way that you walk through life in general, right?

Whereas I kind of felt like the more I was executing on that empathy. Um, the more, space I was creating for other positive things to kind of, to, to be received by me, if that makes sense.

Sam:Yeah. Amen.................................. undisputed, that's undisputable.

 John, thank you so much for, for being here with us today. This was as amazing as I thought it was going to be. Uh, did you have anything

else you wanted to say before we, [00:53:00] we jump

John: Well, thank you guys for having me. It's my first podcast ever. So this is cool. 

Mike: second. 

Sam:That's

Mike: So, hey. only 

John: ha. 

Mike: of you, John.

John: Nice! Nice! 

Sam:That's right. Yeah. 

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