Jamil Zaki is Director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, which aims to unpack, understand, and ultimately teach empathy: “empathetic practice becomes empathetic habits becomes empathetic people,” says Zaki in his acclaimed TED Talk. It’s a skill, he explains. We just have to start seeing it that way.
Empathy isn’t a static figure. It moves and changes, and right now in our fraught political climate, it’s actually eroding. That’s why, says Zaki, “it matters that we realize empathy is a skill that can be developed. When people think they can’t get better at something, they shy away from it, when they think they can grow, they open up instead.”
In warm, generous keynotes, Zaki offers real practices that he uses in his lab to develop empathy in people, along with eye-opening anecdotes to illustrate exactly how it works. Everyone wins when there’s more empathy: “patients of empathic doctors are less depressed and employees of empathic managers are less stressed,” he tells us. Zaki’s exciting, practical take on empathy will actually change the way you interact with your family, your friends, and your co-workers.
