The Empathy Trap

The Empathy Trap

If you’ve attended a leadership seminar, read a management book, listened to a business podcast, or spent more than fifteen minutes on LinkedIn over the last decade, you’ve probably heard the same message repeated over and over again: empathy is the ultimate leadership superpower. Great leaders are empathetic. Great managers are empathetic. Great organizations are empathetic. Unfortunately, like so many other corporate buzzwords, empathy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Now, before anyone starts drafting an angry email, let me be clear: I am not arguing for cruelty, indifference, or treating people like malfunctioning office equipment. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I do think we’ve stumbled into a semantic trap. When most people praise empathy, what they actually mean is kindness, understanding, compassion, patience, or simply paying attention to another human being. Those are all valuable qualities. The problem is that empathy, in its most literal sense, means something much more specific. It means feeling with another person. It means emotionally resonating with their experience, absorbing some portion of their fear, grief, anxiety, or distress into yourself. And that’s where I started getting uncomfortable with the way empathy was being promoted in management circles. Back when I was supervising teams, I used to argue against empathy in the workplace. Not because I was heartless, but because I noticed a pattern. Whenever I began feeling with an employee—when I emotionally absorbed their panic about a deadline, their anxiety about a project, or their frustration with a workplace conflict—my decision-making often got worse. Instead of stepping back and evaluating the situation more clearly, I found myself reacting to the strongest emotional signal in the room. I wasn’t solving problems anymore. I was performing emotional triage. So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Acceptance Out Loud

Acceptance is more than polite tolerance. This week, we explore what it means to recognize the value of every person, embrace people without demanding conformity, and turn compassion into action. In a world increasingly divided by fear and tribalism, acceptance may be one of the most important skills for human flourishing. Have you ever noticed how often people claim to value diversity right up until someone’s differences become visible, inconvenient, or uncomfortable? We celebrate acceptance in theory, but in practice, we often expect people to fit in, quiet down, or keep certain parts of themselves hidden before they’re granted full belonging. The result is a world where many people are tolerated, but far fewer are truly accepted. Welcome to Mythologizing the Bible, where we’ll be taking a look at three readings from the Christian Bible through the lens of “sacred myth.” As we reflect on the readings for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we’ll explore the journey from recognizing the value of every person, to accepting people without demanding conformity, to turning that acceptance into meaningful action on behalf of our broader human family. In this episode, we’re asking a challenging question: Do we actually accept people who are different from us, or do we just tolerate them as long as they stay quiet, invisible, and out of our way? Because there is a world of difference between privately allowing someone to exist and publicly embracing their full humanity. CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Silence the Women (or Change the Text)

Our core value this week is Equality, and in the main presentation we spent quite a bit of time talking about Paul’s beautiful image in 1 Corinthians 10. “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body.” It’s a powerful metaphor. Everybody shares from the same source. Everybody belongs. Everybody matters. The image cuts across wealth, status, ethnicity, nationality, and social class. It presents a vision of humanity that is remarkably inclusive for a text written nearly two thousand years ago. But if you’ve ever sat down and read more of 1 Corinthians, you may have noticed something strange. In fact, “strange” might be putting it politely! Just a few chapters after Paul presented his inclusive “one body” image, we encounter one of the most frequently quoted passages used to exclude women from leadership in the church. Suddenly, the same letter that seemed to be dismantling social barriers appears to be reinforcing them. The same author who sounds radically egalitarian in one chapter sounds surprisingly authoritarian in another. One moment we’re all one body. The next moment women are told to sit down, shut up, and let the men handle things. That should make us uncomfortable. Not because we’re modern people imposing modern values onto an ancient text, but because the contradiction exists inside the text itself. The tension is already there. If Paul is truly building a community based on shared dignity and participation, why does he suddenly sound like he’s auditioning for a first-century patriarchy appreciation society? Most Christians are taught that the answer must be theological. Maybe Paul changed topics. Maybe there’s hidden context. Maybe we’re misunderstanding the Greek. Maybe there’s an invisible footnote that only appears if you’ve attended three years of seminary and consumed an unhealthy amount of coffee. But what if we’re asking the wrong question? What if the real question isn’t what Paul meant? What if the real question is whether Paul wrote every word attributed to him in the first place? So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Who Gets a Seat at the Table?

This week’s readings challenge us to rethink equality. If all people share the same needs, belong to the same human community, and deserve access to life’s essentials, then justice requires more than good intentions. Justice demands fairness built into the systems we create together! Have you ever noticed how often people talk about equality while defending systems that leave some people without food, housing, healthcare, education, or opportunity? Most of us claim to believe that every human being has equal worth, but our policies, institutions, and communities often tell a very different story. Somewhere along the way, many basic human needs stopped being treated as necessities and started being treated as privileges that must be earned. Welcome to Mythologizing the Bible, where we’ll be taking a look at three readings from the Christian Bible through the lens of “sacred myth.” As we reflect on the readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we’ll explore what equality actually requires: recognizing our shared human vulnerabilities, embracing our responsibility to one another, and ensuring that the resources people need to flourish are accessible to everyone. In this episode, we’re asking a challenging but practical question: If every person has equal dignity, why do we continue building systems that ration basic human needs according to wealth, status, geography, or privilege? Because it seems strange to celebrate symbols of shared nourishment while millions of real people are still struggling to find enough nourishment to survive. CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Hey! They Skipped a Verse!

The Roman Catholic Lectionary is a rather interesting thing at times. This week, a verse quietly disappeared from the readings for Trinity Sunday, and that omission reveals a lot about moral evolution, generational trauma, and the uncomfortable reality that even religious institutions edit their sacred traditions to match changing human values! The fact is that ancient ideas about inherited punishment eventually collided with growing concepts of compassion and individual accountability. But this isn’t just about ancient times because all of this still matters today as we struggle to break cycles of harm in our own families, communities, and societies! One of the things I find genuinely fascinating about organized religion is how often it quietly edits itself while simultaneously insisting that its truths are eternal and unchanging. And honestly, nowhere is that more visible than in the Lectionary readings used in many churches. For those unfamiliar, a Lectionary is simply a pre-selected schedule of scripture readings used during worship services. It determines which passages get read publicly and which ones… mysteriously remain out of sight… kind of like that weird cousin who eats by himself in front of the TV during Thanksgiving dinner. This week’s reading from Exodus is a perfect example. In the Roman Catholic Lectionary, the reading jumps from Exodus 34:6 directly to verse 8. That seems harmless enough until you realize that verse 7 is doing the theological equivalent of pounding on the locked door it was shoved behind, screaming, “Hey! You skipped something important! Don’t forget me!” Well, we’re not going to ignore it or just skip over it. We’re going to take a good hard look at Exodus 34:7 and talk about exactly what it means… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]