Hi Folks,
A couple of thoughts for the week:
- I’m super excited about an announcement coming tomorrow about our company. Follow us or connect with me on LinkedIn to get it in real-time.
- Let me know how you’ve been enjoying the Fix. Send me an e-mail or drop a line through one of our various social media links.
Enjoy this week’s Fix!
– Alex Gertsburg, Esq.
Enlighten me . . .
I think empathy gets short shrift in leadership circles. It’s considered a soft skill. It’s usually near the bottom of the standard list of entrepreneurial goals to shoot for, along with community service and diversity (which are also incorrectly at the bottom, for different reasons). I think empathy, and its older brother, emotional intelligence, are two hardcore skills that are critical to any successful leadership playbook.
A few years ago, I talked myself into going to a three-day silent meditation retreat. Insight Meditation Cleveland organized it and held it at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Parma. There were about a hundred people in a large room arrayed around a dais in concentric half-circles, sitting in chairs or on meditation cushions or yoga mats, all facing Jean Esther, our instructor. There we sat for three days in complete silence, save for two evening talks and Jean’s voice during the occasionally-guided meditations.
The first day was difficult as my mind kept projecting into the future and looking at the clock and chattering incessantly, mostly saying “There’s no way I can do this for three days.” Towards the end of that first-day things started to settle down and I found myself in a good place. The second day was blissful. By the third day, I felt like I was walking on air.
Then this happened.
Jean asked us all to find a partner and sit facing each other, knees to knees. I sat across from a woman, probably in her thirties, who looked exactly like my cousin Rema. Jean said, “You’re either going to love this or totally hate it.”
She then asked us to close our eyes and take some deep breaths, which we did, for about two minutes. Jean then asked us to open our eyes and look at the other person’s face and not look away.
It felt a little awkward and uncomfortable at first. My brain kept telling me not to stare. It seemed totally unnatural and weird, but after a few seconds, Jean read from a text that went something like this:
Before you is another person. Take this opportunity to behold their uniqueness. Open your awareness to the gifts and strengths 
in this being… Though you can only guess at them, there are behind those eyes unmeasured reserves of courage and intelligence… of patience, endurance, wit and wisdom… There are gifts that even this person is unaware of having.
As you consider that, experience your desire that this person be free from fear… free from greed… from hatred and confusion and from all the causes of suffering…
Now let yourself open to the pain that is in this person’s life. As in all human lives, there are sorrows in this one. Though you can only guess at them, there are disappointments and failures, losses and loneliness and abuse… There are hurts that this person may never have told to another human being…
Let your awareness drop deep within you like a stone, sinking below the level of what words can express… to the deep flow of relationships that interweaves our lives through space and time, through myriad encounters and countless forms… Your lives are as inextricably interwoven as nerve cells in the mind of a great being… Out of that web you cannot fall… no stupidity, or failure, or cowardice, can ever sever you from that living web.
In this person are gifts for the healing of our world.
When Jean stopped talking, my partner and I were weeping openly. We sat there staring into each other’s faces for another few minutes, tears rolling down in buckets. At one point I looked around the room and saw that almost everyone was crying too.
It was incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as connected to another human being as much as I did that afternoon, and I carried with me that feeling of connectedness, of deep empathy, ever since.
Except when I haven’t. Because I’ve forgotten it many times. I’ve had to consciously force myself to remember it. I’ve used hacks to do that, like writing it down and putting it into an Evernote called “read this when someone pisses you off”.
When I’ve forgotten it, I’ve acted prematurely. I’ve overreacted. I’ve been less than kind. I’ve been unproductive. I’ve focused on the public slight and on the need to get back at them because I felt so hurt by what I perceived as their disloyalty. I’ve failed with employees, clients, business partners, my fiancée, my friends, my kids.
In business, forgetting this lesson can result in losing good employees, or damaging good relationships. Forgetting results in our being judgmental and paranoid.
Oh, but when we remember, it’s transformative. It creates a new filter through which we see the world. It stops us when we’re about to do something we can’t take back. It lets us think.
Above all, it rescues us from that evolutionary fight-flight-freeze tendency that we still carry with us even though saber-toothed tigers aren’t chasing us anymore, that sense of “limbic hijack”, as Tara Brach calls it. (I highly recommend you check her out, or read her book, Radical Acceptance. It’s amazing.)
The thing is, running a company is an experience filled with saber-toothed tigers. It’s a constant struggle to break through another barrier, or get a good deal, or beat the competition, or make payroll, or protect our reputations. At least that’s how it seems sometimes, and when bad things happen, our autonomic nervous system sees those saber-toothed tigers again and increases our heart rate and tells us to react quickly, and taunts and pokes and prods us to act now, fast. The last thing we think about is that the person who just talked shit about us to another client, or to one of our employees, is just doing the best they can with what they’ve got.
It took me years to cultivate and apply empathy into my interactions with other people, and I still fail at it constantly. When I fail, bad things happen. But when I’m empathetic, my business succeeds, my relationships strengthen, I’m happier and so are the people around me.
I expect that the same may be true for you, too.
Thank you, Jean.
To opt-in, or opt-out? That is the auto-renew question.
Ok, that was a long one so I’ll even out this week’s Fix and the rest of the universe with a quick and dirty tip for companies that sell products or services under an auto-renewing contract. Short version:
- Provide prominent notice of auto-renewal terms
- Avoid vague language
- Limit the length of the auto-renewal term
- Obtain affirmative consent and send users an acknowledgment of terms
- Provide a clear and simple cancellation process, including specific contact information
To get more details, including in the context of a recent class-action suit against Noom, check out this article from GLF.
Grammar Glitch
Every once in a while, these little tips are nice to read: 28 Life Hacks You Won’t Believe Nobody Told You About Until Now, even though the title has a double negative in it.
