What can stoicism teach us about empathy in modern life? This centuries-old philosophy can directly apply to what we face now in our workplaces and our world.
Shermin Kruse is here to talk to us about her latest book, Stoic Empathy. She shares what stoic empathy means and how the fusion of these seemingly opposing forces is particularly relevant today. She shares her personal story and how her immigrant journey shaped her understanding of empathy and stoicism. Sher also talks about how she leveraged stoic empathy as a lawyer to great success. We discuss practical tools for building influence and emotional regulation that you can start using today with your employees – or your partner or kids!
Whether you’re a corporate leader, educator, parent, or simply seeking tools to navigate personal and professional challenges with integrity, you will love this conversation!
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Most of our relationships are long-term. Those are whom you owe a long-term duty to engage in and sustain that relationship.
- Our control in this world is not fixed – everything changes, everything evolves, and we need to be able to accept that we can’t change and control everything.
- Stoicism allows you to make informed and deliberate decisions rather than reactive decisions, especially in difficult situations.
- Create relationships where you feel safe and are willing to trust the other person, even if you may not understand or agree in the moment.
“Know that silence is not submission, pause is not acceptance, and that even understanding is not agreement.”
— Shermin Kruse
Episode References:
- Robin Dreeke: Spycraft and the Leadership Code of Trust
- Chris L. Johnson: When Leaders Pause, They Win
- Renee Metty: Why Mindfulness Makes You a Better Leader
- Laura Vanderkam: https://lauravanderkam.com/
From Our Partner:
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Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
About Shermin Kruse: Corporate Advisor, Law Professor, and Author of Stoic Empathy
Shermin Kruse is a globally recognized author, negotiation consultant, law professor, and TEDx producer specializing in stoic Empathy, leadership, and complex negotiation, leadership, and complex negotiation. Born in Tehran during political upheaval, she immigrated to Canada as a child, later earning degrees in philosophy and neuropsychology from the University of Toronto and a law degree from the University of Michigan.
She is the author of Butterfly Stitching, a critically acclaimed novel, and Global Transactions and Regulation, a key resource for law and business professionals. Her latest book, Stoic Empathy, blends cognitive empathy with stoic principles to offer a transformative framework for leadership, influence, and resilience.
Shermin continues to champion empathy, resilience, and ethical leadership through her work in academia, business, and the non-profit sector.
Connect with Shermin (“Sher”) Kruse:
Website: sherminkruse.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shermin-kruse
Facebook: facebook.com/sher.kruse
Instagram: instagram.com/sher_kruse
Book: Stoic Empathy. Also on her website.
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. What can stoicism teach us about empathy in modern life? Turns out this centuries old philosophy can directly apply to what we face right now in our workplaces and our world. Shermin Kruse is here to talk to us about her latest book, stoic empathy and how we can navigate life’s complexities by blending cognitive empathy with the resilience of stoic principles. Shermeen is a globally recognized negotiation consultant, law professor, author and TEDx producer, specializing in tactical empathy, leadership and complex negotiation. Born in Tehran during political upheaval, she immigrated to Canada as a child, later earning degrees in philosophy and neuropsychology from the University of Toronto and a law degree from the University of Michigan. As the founder and executive producer of TEDx Wrigleyville, she has produced over 60 TEDx talks featured globally and given many of her own a professor at Northwestern University, she teaches negotiation and leadership while speaking at major conferences and media outlets, including NPR and PBS. She also serves on the boards of organizations like the ACLU. Shermin shares what stoic Empathy means and how the fusion of these seemingly opposing forces, one emphasizing emotional restraint and the other, emotional connection is particularly relevant today. She shares her personal story and how her immigrant journey shaped her understanding of empathy and stoicism. Cher also talks about how she leveraged stoic empathy as a lawyer to great success, we discuss practical tools for building influence and emotional regulation that you can start using today with your employees or your partner or kids. We discuss how to create better, longer term power relationships, how control is never constant, so we can’t rely on it to influence others, and how empathy combined with a growth mindset ensures we can constantly improve. Whether you’re a corporate leader, educator, parent or simply seeking tools to navigate personal and professional challenges with integrity, you will love this conversation. Welcome. Sharemene, share to the up at the edge podcast today to tell us all about stoic empathy and your amazing story of growth and the work that you do. So welcome to the
Shermin Kruse 03:09
show. Thank you so much, Maria, such a pleasure to be here, and I’m so excited to join you and get to interact with your incredible listeners. I
Maria Ross 03:18
love it. So this has been a match in the making. For a while, we met through a mutual friend, and we’ve both had some scheduling issues of making this happen, and I’m so excited to finally make this happen and have this conversation with you. You have such a wonderful and inspiring story. So I want you to share, if you can, with our listeners, how you got to this point, you do so much. You are, you know, an expert in law, you produce TEDx events. You’re writing books. So tell us a little bit about this journey and how you got to this work that you’re doing now. Well, I appreciate
Shermin Kruse 03:54
that so much. And to you listeners out there, I’m usually the one interviewing people, so it’s sort of weird to be in the hot seat over here. And I think Maria is so interesting, I’d love I have 5000 questions to ask her. Let’s do it. Yeah, let’s do it another time. Yeah, absolutely. I would love that. As for me, it’s, you know, the story everyone’s got a story is actually one of the things that I tell my TEDx curation team all the time, everyone’s got a story. Everyone has a special magic or touch or ability to reveal a part of the universe to you in a way that you didn’t understand it before. And therefore, as a result, I think everybody has the ability to make us smarter, wiser, more connected to the world. For me, I would say, if I were to sort of pinpoint that gift of mine, it would be to love and study humanity and human nature. I was born in Iran, so I’ve lived a number of different continents, number of different countries. I was born in. Iran during the well shortly before the revolution and the Iran Iraq War. So I grew up during the war. I grew up during the immediate aftermath of the revolution, which was a very turbulent time to be in Iran. Folks weren’t even really used to the Islamic regime yet and still not sure whether to embrace it push against it. I mean, the revolution was so new, nobody really knew what was going to happen. Going to happen, and then suddenly all these people were being massacred. So it was a very, very strange time. And then the war, about a million people died during the Iran Iraq War, really, really heavy missile attacks in the city of Tehran. It was sort of similar to modern day Kyiv, I suppose, in that sense, and I immigrated. When we immigrated, we didn’t immigrate to the United States, we immigrated to Canada. And that’s right, I was 11 years old when we immigrated, and I had just wrapped fifth grade, but we didn’t really have fifth grade, because we were in bomb shelters most of fifth grade. So really, I had a fourth grade education in Canada. I don’t speak a word of English, and I have no real economic means whatsoever, but I’m there, and I’m a documented person, which is massive, right? You’ve already sort of received the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory golden ticket. Yeah, yes. And then on top of that, I was so lucky, because we ended up in mixed income housing, which actually exposed me to a really wonderful elementary school and middle school, so I was getting a decent education in a safe environment, albeit nobody could understand what I was saying, which was rather challenging, and there was a lot of bullying issues, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually I made my way to the States, United States, I ended up actually kind of falling in love with this country. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s very easy to see the warts when you’ve experienced other countries, including other democracies, but I think it’s also really easy to love this country and love what it could be. So I have been passionate, politically active person. It’s there’s this joke that Iranians have, what do you call a politician who doesn’t get any money for their work? And the answer is, activist. So
Maria Ross 07:19
yeah, yeah, 100%
Shermin Kruse 07:23
so I had to pay the bill somehow. And growing up with that immigrant mindset, mentality, I went to law school, which I love, actually I love. I did it for a really long time before I retired. 17 years I practiced law. Throughout that whole time, I was really dedicated to my community, a lot of writing, a lot of speaking, a lot of IDEA curation,
Maria Ross 07:44
which is kind of real quick. What kind of law did you practice
Shermin Kruse 07:47
complex commercial litigation, primarily in the fashion sector? Wow, so it would be so I worked primarily for the LVMH group. So the Louis Vuitton mo at Hennessy house was my primary client. Most of our litigation was against other big names, marks, as we call them, right? So it might be LV suing Dooney and Burke, for example, right? Okay, so, yeah. So it’s like a nine or 10 figure piece of litigation involving international parties and usually involving federal law, because it would involve Mark law, right? So it was really fun. I mean, really exciting for a long time,
Maria Ross 08:27
yeah? So you get into law, you’re here and you’re working, and then take us through kind of fast forward to where you’re delivering a TED talk about empathy, yeah. How did that? Where’s that bridge there?
Shermin Kruse 08:38
Though, I have been studying human nature since I was a child, and in university, I studied neuroscience and philosophy, neuropsychology, to be precise. Then as an attorney, what I did for a living was advocacy. It was I had to learn how to convince people to think the way I wanted them to think. And Maria, I couldn’t do it by slamming my fist on the table, yelling, shouting, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, because it wasn’t true to me. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t have even worked for me. I don’t know that it would have been successful. Some people are, you know, some people can yell and scream and use force and listen it well, yeah, best way to live your life by power. It’s, well, it’s the command and
Maria Ross 09:27
control model, and it gets you compliance, but it doesn’t get you engagement. And I’m gonna link in the show notes, because you’re reminding me of a great interview I had with Robin dreeke, who was a former FBI counter intelligence agent, and his role was to turn enemy folks into spies to help the cause of democracy and help the cause of freedom. And he did that through empathy, not through coercion, not through torture, not through you know, but just you know. How do you really see people and find common ground and understand what. Important to them so that you can find a way forward together, and that kind of engagement breeds so much loyalty versus just compliance, which, yeah, might work in the short term. It’s like parenting, right? Punishment can work in the short term, but in the long term are is what is the relationship like? So I love that 100%
Shermin Kruse 10:18
and so what you’ve just identified with parenting that is an ongoing, long term relationship, right? If you want to just zoom in and zoom out, if you’re going to zoom in, obliterate an enemy and zoom out, the strategy can be different, although, interestingly, empathy works for that too, but it but most of our negotiations, most of our power dynamics, most of our relationships are long term. Very rarely do we zoom in and zoom out, even in a corporate business context, it is your clients, your partners, your vendors, your customers, your stakeholders, right your board, your CEOs, your So, these shareholders, these are people to whom with whom you have a long standing relationship, and to whom you owe a long term duty to engage in that relationship. And so the sustainability of the relationship is key. It’s really interesting what you bring up about the FBI, because a lot of the work I do is utilized by the FBI, even your typical SWAT interrogation unit, because it’s most likely to yield information. And the FBI has learned that utilizing these tools and therefore revealing more information from these is power. Information is power. Totally more knowledge. If you’re gonna talk to anybody, it’s because you want them to tell you something, right? So you’re doing the
Maria Ross 11:42
because I definitely want us to get into talking about the book so really quickly. So when you did your TED talk about empathy, tell us about that and tell us about what you’re hoping to bring to people through that work.
Shermin Kruse 11:57
Well, my most recent TEDx talk was my third so there’s been a spectrum of empathy related talks given from me for the last 10 years or so. This one is among the continuum of that evolution. This one specifically is on stoic empathy, because as I continued to refine my ideas on empathy, and I’ll talk to you listeners about this in a minute, but focusing on the divergence, distinction and spectrum between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy, I started to recognize the tools of stoicism in that Very spectrum, and controlling where we are within that spectrum, and helping find empathy for ourselves, etc, etc. And so that’s what became stoic empathy, which is the current book, which
Maria Ross 12:52
honestly, what is, what is stoic empathy? Okay, so, okay.
Shermin Kruse 12:55
So let me just say it literally circles back to 2530 years ago, whenever it was that I graduated college with my degree in philosophy and neuropsychology. So stoic empathy is the ability to gain power in the world, ethically and consistent with our value system, utilizing control over ourselves by using stoicism and influence over others by using empathy, actually combining the power of self control with the power of empathic influence to gain momentum in a world even if the odds are against us, but in a way that helps with our sustained relationships and long term relationships, right? Without harm, because a lot of folks, you know, they want to win the battle, but they don’t want to lose the war, right? You want your kid to put the iPad down, but you don’t want to have a lifelong of strained relationships with your kid, right? You want your vendor to agree to this new price point you want your partner to engage with you going forward in the post merger integration from that point on, as opposed to just agreeing to your deal terms, right? So that is the methodology. So it is designed to not harm your relationships, which in a power struggle, let’s be candid, is, yeah, that’s the word struggle. That’s the struggle. Yeah, right. Struggle. The
Maria Ross 14:29
reason for the use of that word, yeah, absolutely. And I just want to talk about this because you mentioned that stoicism and empathy are often seen as opposing forces. And I love what you’re saying here, because this speaks exactly to what I have in my latest book around the five pillars of being both an effective and an empathetic leader. Self awareness is the first one, and it’s not necessarily meant to be sequential, but you can’t really get very far with the rest unless you have self awareness and you have. That mastery of self, and then the second one is self care, where you’re replenishing your tank so you’re showing up as the best version of yourself, fully grounded, fully present, so that you don’t take on other points of view with defensiveness and fear. So I’m seeing a lot of strains of what you’re talking about in terms of stoicism, of those preliminary preparations to then engage in an empathic connection with someone and be able to see their point of view, understand their context, get curious and ask more questions, because you’re not in such a self preservation mode. So can you educate us a little bit about the principles of stoicism and how that feeds into this idea of mastering your own emotional regulation and self regulation. So
Shermin Kruse 15:49
I would say spot on, and stoicism would be, in my opinion, the best way to achieve your first and second pill, because it’s more that it’s the how right. How are you going to get that self understanding? How are you going to gain that self mastery? How are you going to gain that self control? And the pillars of stoicism? I mean, it is a 2000 year old philosophical belief system that borders on a spiritual way of life. So, you know, there’s so many books and mountains of research dedicated to it, but really, at the end of the day, it’s very simple, it, and it really gets boiled down to one principle, and that is the dichotomy of control. It is understanding. And it sort of goes back to, I’m not a woman of faith, but I but if you are. It goes back to that sort of Christian saying, Give me the grace or wisdom to understand what’s in my control. Oh, the Serenity Prayer.
Maria Ross 16:49
The Serenity
Shermin Kruse 16:50
Prayer, that’s what it is. The serenity prayer, to accept what I cannot control, but to change what I can. And the wisdom to know the difference, yeah, wisdom to know the difference, and with that, and this is a pivotal component of stoicism and empathy, especially as they combine, is how that changes, because our control in this world is not a constant. The things we control are not constants. They change. They evolve with our power in this world. They evolve with our circumstances, with our Dynamics, with our wealth, with our race. You know, they could change from day to day for any particular I think it’s also and this is something that I haven’t really heard talked about, but it’s the wisdom to know that is not fixed, but that is where it is today, right? And there needs to be an acceptance that comes along with what it is today, but then there also needs to be that hope and that understanding of what it could be tomorrow, right?
Maria Ross 17:54
You know, what I love about what you’re saying is I do a lot of work for myself about understanding my own emotions. And you know, I might be an empathy expert, but probably, you would probably say the same thing, I’m not always an expert at empathy in every waking moment, because I’m not always my best self in every waking moment. So even experts have to work at this and practice. But I love what you’re saying because it sparks for me something that I’ve been working on and telling myself and trying to help my son with as well, who’s 10 and a half, is that emotions are temporary, and that when we feel anger, when we feel hatred, when we feel frustration, when we feel sadness, telling ourselves that this, not that this too shall pass, because it’s we really want to acknowledge what we’re In when we’re in it, but this idea that our emotions are not fixed either, and I kind of see that in the same way that you’re talking about control, because I might have a command of the situation with this particular team at this particular moment, in this particular company, in this particular market, but there’s so many forces at play every day, every moment, that change things. And so it’s kind of linked to being present and having gratitude in the moment when you’re aware of the control and the influence you have, and leveraging that to its best ability. Kind of going off a little bit on a tangent, but you really sparked, for me, that idea, this is
Shermin Kruse 19:20
such a wonderful conversation. And Maria, this is exactly what I was hoping to do today. I was hoping to really dig in with you, because you have this beautiful way of looking at the world that is so extraordinary and so broad and interconnected, and it’s fascinating to have someone like that sitting in front of you. I mean, we’re sitting in zoom in front of each other, but sitting in front of you and then be able to dissect the notion, here’s the a lot of the roots of what you’re saying. So a lot of the roots of what you’re saying is nothing is fixed, suffering, pain, even life, right? Even life. And this that goes back to the stoic concept of. Mantomori, but it goes back to also Hamlet and Islam and Christianity, and put some and all of these faiths and the idea that nothing is fixed, even pain, even suffering and even life right, everything is transient. And more importantly, this transient experience that I am undergoing is not only something that is happening to me and I am a passive recipient of it, but rather it is something with which I can engage fully and therefore influence, maybe even control, depending on what it is, right? Most certainly influence. So the Greeks and the Romans thought of emotions as in two parts. There’s the sort of the primary part, which is your immediate feeling, and then there’s the secondary part, which is what it is after you have cognitively evaluated it, right? Modern day neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists divide up emotions into five parts, neurophysiological, psychological, behavioral, emotional, motivational, etc, etc. So here’s the thing, you can dissect an emotion, and by dissecting an emotion, you can understand the emotion better, and therefore understand better how and what aspects of that emotion you have control over, and how much control you have over how you express that emotion, right? Because you might be terrified, but you might be very cautious of how you show that terror to your children,
21:41
right, right.
Maria Ross 21:41
Or to anyone, to your neighbor, to your spouse, to your employees, like anyone. And that’s the thing of you know, this is a constant conversation in our house where it’s, I’m, you know, I’m sorry that I snapped at you, because what I was feeling was frustration, or I was feeling trapped, or I was feeling these other things that caused me to react in a way that you read as anger or as indictment. And so we’re always kind of talking about this, and I think about workplaces both good and bad, that I’ve been part of, and those leaders who, you know, I don’t say this lightly, I had two leaders that were psychologically abusive, and I don’t say that with drama or, you know, hyperbole. And I think about knowing what I know now, about studying empathy and about researching leadership and getting older and wiser, is wow. What was going on for that person that they thought that was an appropriate way to react or respond in that moment, and how hurt must they have been, or how insecure must they have been. And you know, what could people do in that kind of situation to help someone through that? If it is a work situation or it is a colleague situation, or whatever it’s, what can we do to kind of center ourselves and separate the emotion that we think we’re feeling from someone else with what is reality of what is going on for them?
Shermin Kruse 23:12
Well, yes, and how much of that reality are they even observing, and how much of that is that is totally decision at that time, because even those of us who study this material, we have caught ourselves behaving impulsively before or automatically right? One of the ways in which I respond to things automatically all the time is I’m still very overcome by loud, sudden sounds. A lot of that is because growing up and the missile attacks, etc, etc. But if I hear something vociferously falling right behind me, I jump right. I jump. And it’s not because I’m afraid, it’s because I’m an alert. I’m in a state of alert. My body has learned loud sound. Be careful. It could be a kid jumping up saying, boo, it is smallest thing, and I would still jump up in an unnatural way, almost because of the way my body responds to whatever trauma it has stored in me. So the other thing to often consider is, look, they might not even have the capacity or ability, or the training or the time to even reflect this could just be habitual. And if it is habitual for them, how much control then do I have? And maybe the answer is, I have a really interesting
Maria Ross 24:34
question for you based on that, yeah, and I go off script a little here, when you’re faced with a leader or a manager or even a colleague like that, that you suspect they’re not even conscious of the impact of their reactions or their behavior. Do you have any advice on where to start, where, how you can appropriately have a conversation with that person depending on the power. Dynamics that would actually be influential in helping them recognize that maybe there’s some work to do without it sounding judgmental or shameful. I know that’s a lot to pack into, like one conversation, but based on your work, what would you advise someone listening that’s going, Oh, wow, I wish I could show that person that what they’re doing is actually harmful, sure.
Shermin Kruse 25:21
So my advice would be and this advice would apply every single time. Start with stoicism. Start with gaining control over yourself, because when they’re behaving in that way, you would be well within your rights to be defensive, to be angry, to be judgmental, to not have control over your own words. If you are able to create space, literally in the seconds of time that pass, and be able to reflect and think cognitively and clearly about the situation, you are far more likely, whatever the answers are, to come up with them in that moment and acknowledge that the answer might be at this time, on this day, given the power dynamics, this might not be in your control. So then that’s to me, you don’t do anything right. You might believe that your commitment to justice or your value system, or whatever your goals are in that moment obligate you to do or say something in a manner that is appropriate and consistent with your way of thinking toward the world. Or you might not, but if you do, you should know what is the likelihood of impact? What is the likelihood I’m going to get fired? And if little Timmy needs his braces or needs his treatments for his medical condition, and I need to keep this job. Maybe I don’t want to risk it. Maybe I do want to risk it, and that is how I show my commitment to this value, but let that be an informed choice and not something you accidentally fell in too, because you just had to say something, yeah, right, yeah. Let it be an informed choice, so that when you make a sacrifice, which you will in life, will you will sacrifice material comfort, you will sacrifice all kinds of wins in order to stand up for your principles, hopefully right, especially leading a life of empathy. So then when you make that choice, you are prepared for the consequences that follow, and it was informed and delivered right now. That doesn’t mean that it was the right thing to do, either you could reevaluate later and say, right, you know, maybe I should have done this differently, or thought about this differently. I learned. I’ll do it differently next time. But the more aware and thoughtful you are, the more strategic you are, the more space you’re able to create between the stimuli and the response, right? That space? That is where your willpower sits. Yeah, that is where your control sits. I had
Maria Ross 28:01
a guest on, and I’ll link to this in the show notes as well. Chris L Johnson and we talked about the power of the pause for leaders. And just that. I mean, it’s something I work on all the time in my you know, 52 years, I’m still working on the like recognizing the physiological symptoms of me losing myself given a certain stimulus, and take a breath, take a pause, and then think about what you want your reaction. And I will say, you know, given our current climate of the world and of our country, that’s been some of the best advice I’ve heard from activists, from people that say, Okay, this is all meant to distract and get us all lathered up. Let’s all take a pause. Let’s take a breath, and then let’s figure out the best way forward, because now we’ll be engaging our cognitive functions, our executive skills, to decide the best way forward. And I just think that’s so important in the micro moments like you’re talking about, and in the macro moments as well,
Shermin Kruse 29:03
absolutely. And I love the example you just provided, which is in the context of activism, just taking a pause, reframing, before we turn to strategizing. And I love what you just said now, which is in the micro moments, in the context of a conversation. I call it the dynamic pause, or the tool of silence, right? Yeah, and all of the various features of this incredible tool, yeah, right, yeah. All that it can earn for you in that moment is absolutely incredible. But one of the things that ends up happening Maria is the more you practice this, and the more aware you are of how you’re acting, and the more intentional you are of how you’re acting, what you’re feeling, how you’re expressing what you’re feeling, etc, the slower time moves for you. Yeah, time is relative. Time could be moving at a consistent pace for someone else, but be moving much slower, like you’re Neo. From the matrix or something. Yeah, the little bullets are coming your way and able to move your body. But seriously, though you’re able to, know slow it down for yourself,
Maria Ross 30:09
you can the more present you are, there’s an expert, Laura, I want to say her name is Laura vanderkamp, and she talks about the power of time, of you actually accounting and keeping a time journal. She’s kept it for years, and it’s kept her sane, and it helps you, number one, remember things more because you’re writing things down, but it also helps slow down time for you to know where your time is going every hour. It’s an amazing practice, but, yeah, it’s this idea of I remember talking to another guest I had on the show who’s also a friend of mine, Renee Mehdi. She’s a mindfulness expert, and she spoke about, I don’t know if she spoke on the podcast interview or just to me personally, but she spoke about going to a silent retreat, and how life changing that was because when her family came to pick her up, she said it felt like I was moving through molasses. I felt like I couldn’t keep up with their conversation. I couldn’t keep up with formulating my thoughts. And it lasted for a few days, I know, and she said it was wild, and that was at the beginning of her mindfulness training journey. And I just thought, wow, what would that be like to just feel like you could actually, literally, like you’re saying the matrix, the great coming at you. Can I also ask you to share you’ve already kind of shared one here, but some other practical tools for building influence and emotional regulation. So one or two of those actionable strategies, it sounds like taking the pause. But is there a strategy you have for getting someone to take the pause in the heat of the moment?
Shermin Kruse 31:47
Okay, so I’m happy to move on and talk about some other tools, but we can also just dissect the pause and the silence there. It’s so in terms of a strategic manner of approaching that really the best way is a reassurance in the knowledge that silence is not submission, pause is not acceptance, that even understanding is not agreement, no, right, no. And because I find so often, I mean, I don’t I was a debater, and then I studied philosophy and psychology, and then I was a lawyer, and I was a litigator, and I was taught to argue for a living. I got paid lots of money to anticipate what people were going to say before they even finished talking so that and having a prepared response ready to go. And there’s a time and a place for that, and there’s a there’s a way that can be utilized. And I’ll tell you that time and place is not most of life.
Maria Ross 32:44
Yeah, it works really well in a courtroom, yeah, the big tournament, yeah. But for
Shermin Kruse 32:50
most of life, if we’re just waiting for our turn to speak and oh, yeah, right, and using all of our mental energy to formulate our next thought, it’s gonna be really hard to force that silence. Yes, we already know what we want to get, what we want to say. Now we’re just waiting around and
Maria Ross 33:10
we’re not listening, and we’re not actually listening to the context of the other well, I talk about this all the time, that empathy does not mean you agree with someone. It just means you’re getting curious about their point of view and their perspective, and you could still walk away saying, I don’t agree with you, but I understand where you’re coming from. I had this with someone years ago in my own life, where we disagreed about a certain political issue, and I was surprised that they had this perspective. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this these days, but then I heard him out and I thought, wow, what you said makes a lot of sense. And I actually understand that point of view. I understand how you would get to agreeing with this. I still don’t agree with it, but man, that I never thought of it that way. Well.
Shermin Kruse 33:55
And Maria, your analysis there, if you go back to your conversation with your FBI guy, if you can’t understand where they’re coming from, how are you going to change it? Yeah, how are you going to reach them? How are you going to connect with them on a level that works within their framework and their logic, right, and their moral values and so so I think step one would be taking that step Okay, step two would be, and this is important, there’s a big difference between a silent retreat and a dynamic pause. A Silent Retreat is nine days of pure listening, okay, even just to your freaking backache, which is what I find most terrifying about it, sitting there and just listen. You can’t even write. You can’t, you know, it’s just listening. A dynamic pause is different. It is in this moment I’m allow. Doing my processing of verbal linguistics to slow down. It doesn’t really even stop all the way to slow down so that I can extract more auditory information from my environment. That then gives me more stimuli than I had before, because now I’m picking up tone, tenor, body language, mood, the birds I couldn’t hear before, the traffic accident across the street, whatever it might be, right? I’m picking up all this additional stimuli that I didn’t have before, which gives me greater armor to form my strategic response going forward. And I’m giving myself a second, not just to regain that additional stimuli, but to gain calm over my thoughts, right? And maybe I’m making the other person a little bit uncomfortable, right, not in a horrible way, but in a I also want them to think very clearly about what it is they’re saying. And if we’re spitting back and forth beyond each other. They are also not thinking about what they’re saying. Yeah, so if I give create that space, they, too are now forced to deal with that silence right after they just said what they said, and they could have an opportunity to re evaluate what they said, right? And maybe they’ll double down, maybe they’ll backtrack, maybe they’ll act like they’re doubling down, but actually
Maria Ross 36:26
backtracking right. And
Shermin Kruse 36:28
maybe through your silence, you could actually decipher that distinction,
Maria Ross 36:32
you know, what you’re making me think of saying this the other alternative that we never talk about. And in all my leadership workshops, my keynotes, I always talk about this about, you know, empathy is not agreeing. It’s being able to listen and hear the other person’s context, and, like you said, getting all those other auditory and nonverbal cues from the environment. But the possibility that we don’t leave ourselves open to is that there could be a reevaluation of our initial stance. So the goal of empathy is not conversion. It’s not coercion. I always say that, however, listening to someone’s context and hearing their point of view could be so compelling to you as to possibly make you rethink your decision or your stance, and we have to not be afraid of that. It doesn’t mean it always happens. And yeah, you know, there’s some conversations specifically I’m thinking of where you don’t want that to happen. But you know, in a budget discussion, in a strategic decision meeting, it’s opening yourself up to the fact that you might hear, if you listen, you might hear a compelling argument that changes your mind, and that’s okay.
Shermin Kruse 37:45
So I would describe that as a form of stoic courage, because it is that is very difficult, and
Maria Ross 37:55
of course, I don’t know how to do it. I just talk about it. I don’t know how to
Shermin Kruse 38:00
do this. You could do it with the budget, right? Maybe you can’t do it vis a vis you know, your deeply held moral beliefs exactly, but there’s a whole world between the budget and your deeply held right universe. And so we could practice at it. But here’s the tricky part, it’s difficult to maintain yourself in a place where you’re constantly refining and reevaluating your understanding of the world without insecurity, with confidence and with a really strong grounding in knowing who you are, right? That’s a difficult balance. A lot of people who we know who go back and forth and back and forth, they were either lying to begin with, or they have no real convictions, or, you know exactly, yeah and so. And then there’s most other people who just don’t go, don’t change their minds at all, which is, can you imagine if five years from today, you’re the same person you were today? You grew not at all? Right?
Maria Ross 39:06
Right? Not good. Yeah, I always say I was like a hot mess in my 20s, and so glad I didn’t get married back then. Yeah, no, it’s, I think it’s true, but I think it’s just something that, like you said, that’s sort of like next level that’s like, you know, Jedi mastery level of being able to have those conversations. And I’m not, let me be clear, listeners, I’m not there yet.
Shermin Kruse 39:28
So we could practice at the budget meeting. We could practice at
Maria Ross 39:31
the budget meeting. I mean, you know, honestly, you know, where I practice is with my kid. Yeah, there’s sometimes that he you know, there’s different boundaries we’ve set and rules we’ve put in place. And when he articulates things in a certain way, and I’m actually listening, I do tell him like that’s a fair point. And sometimes I will go back to my husband and say, maybe we need to rethink this. You know, I mean, sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t, but having that can. Connection with someone could potentially, you know, lead to it doesn’t always have to lead to a third outcome. That’s a compromise that no one gets what they want, right? It could lead to something where, just as much as you want to bring someone along with you, again, I’m talking about in like a work situation, they could bring you along with them. They could.
Shermin Kruse 40:21
And one of the things that really helps with that, and I love that you use the example of 10 year old child, is deep inherent trust in good will of that individual right, which is not always present, right? And you know, we must acknowledge that, of course, especially in corporate settings, right? But when you know it’s there. I mean, I say this to my husband all the time when we’re in a conflict situation, just give me the benefit of the doubt here, it’s been 20 years. I mean, you know
Maria Ross 40:55
who I am exactly, well, and that’s why all of this is so interconnected, all of these emotional intelligence skills and this idea of creating trust and creating psychological safety in the workplace, you want to create these relationships where you can have this ebb and flow and it’s safe and it feels like okay, you know, share. I’m not 100% on board with you, but I’m willing to trust you, yes, because you’ve given me some good points to think about, and that’s also the relationship we can build with our managers, so that we can have a back and forth with them, and they can hopefully let go of a little bit of command and control and be listening to our input and our perspective. But also, you know, the other way around of managers for their people, and when you get to know your people, and you work at building that trust that isn’t just transactionally related, right? This is why this work is so important in the workplace, and it just boggles my mind. The leaders, you know, the numbers dwindling, but the percentage of leaders who think that empathy has no place in the workplace, it’s because they don’t understand what empathy actually is. They think it’s something else. They think it’s people pleasing or caving in or coddling. So that’s always my first cue of if you have a leader that says they don’t believe empathy has a place in the workplace, it’s like, Let me have a conversation with them, right? Tell them what you really let’s parse out what they think it means, right? So this is so great share I’d love to just kind of close with maybe a final thought or a gem, or a direction, an intention that you want to give to our listeners as they navigate this balance of understanding how to bring in some stoic empathy into their relationships and into their interactions. I
Shermin Kruse 42:39
love that I would say my closing remark is always what I say to myself first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed at night, which is tomorrow’s another day, and I can do this better every day. And some days I do a really terrible job, and some days, I’ll tell you I’m kicking butt out there, right? Totally either way, tomorrow is another day, and it’s a chance to do it all over again. When we’re talking about emotional regulation, especially emotional control, this idea that I can’t help it is not accurate, at least not entirely accurate, right? There might be some things, and we talked about this earlier, that are trauma rooted, that are habitual responses. But even those, with enough time and enough practice, you can gain control over them. And this is where I suppose the final tool I’ll close on this is that where I discuss is the tool of Memento Mori,
Maria Ross 43:42
which is you will die, right? The
Shermin Kruse 43:47
Greco Roman stoic ideology of you will die, which means you are not dead, which means you are alive, right? And you have another chance, but it won’t last forever. The transience of this life, the transience of everything, and therefore the exponential meaning of it all, because it ends, because if it never ended, it would have no such meaning, right? Right puts on us both the ability to gracefully forgive the mistakes of the day and take them seriously enough to do them a little bit better tomorrow, right? And keep working toward that, and keep working toward that. And so this is what I want. And I tell my kids all the time, I want this combination of grace and forgiveness, empathy for yourself with a dedication to a resilient mindset that is put toward growth. It’s a combination, because if we’re forgiving ourselves way too much, we’re never growing, we’re never pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zones, we’re just staying in our little bubbles and saying. It’s okay to be safe and never feel threatened, okay. I mean, if that’s the way you want to live your life, but you can do bigger. You can do better by embracing a little bit outside of that comfort zone. And you have to be willing. You have to have the stoic courage to be willing to open yourself up to that while still having that grace within yourself for the imperfections that come along the way. Oh
Maria Ross 45:27
my gosh, so so good share. I This conversation was worth the wait. I’m so excited, and I’m so honored to share you with my audience, folks. The book is called stoic empathy. Make sure you check it out. I will have all the links in the show notes on how you can get the book and how you can connect with share. But for folks on the go, can you share with us? Where’s the best place to find out more about you and your work?
Shermin Kruse 45:49
100% probably my website, sherminkruse.com, so that’s my full name followed by a.com Easy to find. I am on LinkedIn. I’m not easy to reach on LinkedIn. There’s just way too many people, but I promise I’ll get to you sooner or later on LinkedIn, if you but if you go through my website, you’re more Yeah, you’re more likely to get a quicker response,
Maria Ross 46:11
yeah. For anyone exercising right now, that website is S, H, E, R, M, I, N, K, R, U, S, E, so share. It’s been wonderful to connect with you again, and I’m so glad we’re in each other’s orbits. I love your work. Thank you for your insights today. Thank you for the conversation, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
