Human leadership demands human emotions.
On the first day of 2018, the psychologist Dr Sherry Turkle published an article that reviewed a burgeoning consumer trend for ‘sociable’ robots.
The previous year had seen Jibo, an android companion, being made cover star of Time magazine. “With toys for children that declare their love and want to chat,” Turkle wrote in her essay, “we bring to life a longstanding fantasy that machines might be our companions, that they might seem to not only be smart, but also to care about us.”
Yet Turkle had identified a flaw in the concept. “We run into a problem,” she wrote. “Simulated thinking may be thinking, but simulated feelings are not feelings, and simulated love is never love. Our ‘success’ in making robots that pretend to empathize involves deception with significant consequence. Children can learn chess from a chess-playing machine; they cannot “learn empathy” from machines that have none to give. On the contrary. They can learn something superficial and think it is true connection.”
For children, read adults too – our ability to be hoodwinked by simulated empathy is unrestrained by age. Turkle was wise before her time: today’s digitized world has lowered the barrier to creating connections. Yet it has failed to increase our ability to create stronger bonds.
When researchers in 2020 explored the quality of connections on LinkedIn, they discovered an awkward truth. Almost two-thirds of users said that less than 21% of their LinkedIn connections had provided value to their personal career. A similar proportion admitted they had met fewer than half their connections.
Professionals’ networks were a mile wide, but an inch deep. Yet this was scarcely the fault of the platform, which regularly urges users to consider carefully with whom they connect, advocating quality over quantity. Rather, the shallowness was born of a technology-accelerated culture where professionals – like children with Jibo – increasingly confuse artificial flavors with the real thing.
The exchange of authenticity for superficiality is dangerous. The world faces a polycrisis to which human leadership is the antidote. Yet no leader can lead without allies, and allyship is impossible with only superficial connections. If collecting ever-greater numbers of social media followers was the key to success, leading would be a cinch: we’d employ an algorithm to make the linkages, and suddenly we’d have an interconnected global army of expert allies. The world would surely solve itself.
Yet the world will not solve itself. That is our role as leaders. To persuade others of the right actions, to create context for our decisions, we need enduring social bonds that generate mutual empathy. Communication and storytelling are the conduit. “Finding empathy is a difficult challenge, but also the most human of the reasons we tell stories,” said the former US National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman. “Often, effective persuading means truly stepping into another’s point of view.”
It is impossible to step into another’s point of view when your connection with them is a façade. Yet, as connections have become commoditized, bonds command ever-greater premiums. As machines facilitate routine networking, that which they cannot do – empathy – becomes the currency of success.
“Face-to-face,” Turkle wrote, “people ask for things that computers never do. With people, things go best if you pay close attention and know how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” That ancient human quality – empathy – is now our leading edge.
In a world of accelerating digital disruption and transformation, the power of providing context has never been more important. Emotion – and empathy – matter. Bonds are sacred; connections are free.
