Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How a Career Empathy Audit Can Improve Your Work Relationships
Transcript
- Lucas: You know that colleague who always seems to know exactly what to say in a tense meeting? The one people trust instinctively, even when they're delivering bad news? Luna: Oh, I know the type. They're usually the person everyone wants in their corner during a reorg. Lucas: Right. And most of us assume that kind of trust comes from innate charisma or years of experience. But I think it's something more specific — and more learnable. It's empathy, practiced deliberately. Luna: Before we go deeper — and I know we're about to talk about a structured way to build this — I want to say that if this show has helped you think through a career move or a tough work conversation, a couple of dollars a month genuinely keeps these episodes coming. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Small amounts, real difference. Lucas: Yeah, and we stay ad-free because of that. So thank you to anyone who's chipped in. Now, the tool I want to explore today is what I call a career empathy audit. It's a four-part framework to assess how well you're actually understanding and responding to the people you work with. Luna: An audit sounds formal. Is this like a 360 review but focused just on empathy? Lucas: It's different in a couple of ways. A 360 review collects feedback others have about you. An empathy audit is something you run yourself, proactively. You're not waiting for someone to tell you you're hard to work with — you're checking in on your own blind spots. Luna: So it's self-directed. What are the four parts? Lucas: First, perspective-taking: can you accurately describe the other person's point of view, even if you disagree? Second, emotional attunement: are you picking up on what they're feeling, not just what they're saying? Third, responsive action: once you understand, do you adjust your behavior? And fourth, feedback loops: do you check whether your adjustment actually landed? Luna: That fourth one is subtle. Most people stop after they think they've 'been empathetic' — they never verify. Lucas: Exactly. Let me give you a concrete example. I was talking to a product manager at a mid-sized SaaS company — let's call her Priya. She was frustrated because her engineering team kept pushing back on her feature requests. She felt they didn't trust her judgment. Luna: Classic product versus engineering tension. Lucas: Classic. So I had her run an empathy audit focused on her lead engineer, Raj. For perspective-taking, she wrote down what she thought Raj's biggest concern was. She assumed it was about scope creep — that he thought she kept adding features. But when she actually asked him, his real concern was different: he felt she wasn't accounting for technical debt from past projects. Luna: So the first step alone revealed a misalignment. She was solving the wrong problem. Lucas: Exactly. Then for emotional attunement, she paid attention to Raj's tone in their next one-on-one. She realized he wasn't angry — he was tired. He'd been firefighting production bugs for weeks and felt like his team's stability work was invisible. Luna: That changes how you approach the conversation. Instead of defending your roadmap, you might start with, 'I see how stretched your team is.' Lucas: Right. Third, responsive action: Priya didn't just empathize — she changed her behavior. She proposed deferring one non-critical feature and instead allocating two sprints to refactoring. Raj was surprised but appreciative. Luna: And the feedback loop? Did she check in? Lucas: She did. A week later, she asked Raj if the adjustment had helped. He said yes, and more importantly, he started proactively offering to review her early drafts before sprint planning. The trust shifted. Luna: So the audit isn't just a one-time exercise — it builds a habit. Lucas: That's the goal. The idea is to run a mini audit on one key work relationship each quarter. You don't need to do all four steps in one sitting. Sometimes just the first step — perspective-taking — surfaces something you've been missing for months. Luna: I imagine it's harder to do this with a boss than a peer, because there's a power dynamic. Lucas: It is harder, but maybe more valuable. Let's say your manager keeps giving you vague feedback like 'be more strategic.' An empathy audit would push you to ask: what does 'strategic' look like from their seat? What pressures are they under? Are they worried about their own visibility? Luna: And then you can tailor your work to address that, rather than guessing. Lucas: Exactly. I've seen people use this to turn around strained relationships with skip-level managers, cross-functional stakeholders, even direct reports who seem disengaged. Luna: What about the risk of over-empathizing? Like, being so focused on others' perspectives that you lose your own? Lucas: That's a real concern, and it's why the audit includes a check: after you've taken perspective and attuned, the third step is about action that serves both parties. It's not about sacrificing your needs. Priya didn't say yes to everything Raj wanted — she negotiated a trade-off that worked for both of them. Luna: So it's empathy with boundaries. Lucas: Exactly. And there's research backing this up. A 2023 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that employees who practiced 'perspective-taking' — just the first step — were rated as more effective by their peers, especially in cross-functional teams. Luna: Do you have a recommended cadence? Quarterly sounds right, but some relationships might need more frequent check-ins. Lucas: I'd start with one relationship per quarter, but if you're in a high-stakes project, you might audit a key stakeholder monthly. The steps are lightweight — ten minutes of reflection, maybe a five-minute conversation. Luna: So let's say someone wants to try this tomorrow. What's a concrete first step? Lucas: Pick one work relationship that feels slightly strained or distant. Open a blank document. Write down what you think their top three priorities are right now. Then, in your next interaction, ask them directly: 'What's taking up most of your headspace this week?' Compare what you wrote to what they say. The gap is your starting point. Luna: That's simple but not easy. It requires humility to realize you might be wrong. Lucas: And that's the core skill empathy audits build: the willingness to be wrong about someone else's experience, and the curiosity to correct it. Luna: I like that framing. It takes the pressure off being perfect and puts the focus on learning. Lucas: Right. And over time, you build a reputation as someone who actually gets things done with people, not despite them. Luna: That sounds like a career superpower. Lucas: It is. And it's one you can develop starting this week.