It’s easy right now to believe that the divisions we see are simply too deep to repair. That empathy has become a liability. That listening has been replaced by winning.
And yet, I still believe, perhaps more than ever, that empathy remains our greatest tool for healing even the most jagged fractures in our world, not as a naïve ideal, but as a courageous, strategic choice. And that choice has the power to transform entire systems.
My guest today, Dr. Claire Yorke, has devoted her career to studying exactly that possibility.
We explore what empathy in politics actually looks like, why empathy is essential for effective leadership, the challenges empathetic leaders face in polarized environments, and why we can’t simply wait for more empathetic political leaders to emerge.
We also talk about hope. Not passive hope, but participatory hope. The kind that invites each of us – as citizens, leaders, and humans – to model empathy, practice deeper listening, and engage in shaping healthier political cultures, whether through community dialogue, civic participation, or simply choosing curiosity over certainty.
This is a conversation about what’s possible when we choose empathy, not as an escape from reality, but as a path forward through it.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- The relationship military leaders have with empathy and their job.
- What it can look like to have empathy in our politics, regardless of country.
- The impact of citizen assemblies and civic engagement.
- Why do we need to change political culture so that it attracts and rewards politicians who embrace empathy and can stop battling?
- Maintaining an ideal vision of what’s possible and what to do to make it a reality.
- Steps that can be taken at the local and national levels to make changes.
“We need to change our politics. So it’s much more about building relationships, building that sense of connectedness, both between politicians and the public, between citizens and their communities, and seeing this as an ecosystem.” — Dr. Claire Yorke
References:
- Book:Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us by Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad
- Democracy Next
The Empathy Edge:
- Sam Daley-Harris: Reclaiming Our Democracy
- Mónica Guzmán: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Divided Political Times
- Dr. Gina Baleria: Empathy in Journalism and Today’s Media Landscape
- Elisa Camahort Page: The Art of Empathy in Politics, Activism, and Media BS
- James Coan: Closing the Perception Gap that Tears Us Apart
About Dr. Claire Yorke, Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, Author of Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World:
Dr. Claire Yorke is an author and academic. Her work focuses on the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, politics, leadership, and society. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian War College, Deakin University, Canberra, where her research and teaching focus on these topics. In 2025, she published Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming Our World with Yale University Press. She is writing two more.
Claire received her PhD in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She has a Master’s in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, and a BA in Politics, International Relations and French from Lancaster University.
Connect with Claire:
Website: claireyorke.me
LinkedIn: Dr Claire Yorke
Instagram: @theempathydoctor
BlueSky: @claireyorke.bsky.social
Book: Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:00
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. It’s easy right now to believe that the divisions we see in our politics, in our communities, even within our own families, are simply too deep to repair, that empathy has become a liability, that listening has been replaced by winning, and yet I still believe, and perhaps believe more than ever, that empathy remains our greatest tool for healing even the most jagged fractures in our world, not as a naive ideal, but as a courageous strategic act, because empathy doesn’t mean agreement, it means choosing to understand, and that choice has the power to transform not just relationships but entire systems. My guest today, Dr Claire Yorke, has devoted her career to studying exactly that possibility. Dr Yorke is a senior lecturer at the Austrian War College at Deakin University, and the author of the groundbreaking book empathy in politics and leadership, the key to transforming our world, published by Yale University Press, her work explores the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, leadership and political systems, areas where empathy is often dismissed as weakness, but where Claire’s research shows it may Be most essential. Her international career spans the UK, France, Denmark and the United States. She’s held prestigious fellowships at institutions including Yale University and the University of Southern Denmark, where she led a European Union funded research project on empathy and International Security. She earned her PhD in international relations from the Department of War studies at King’s College London, bringing rigorous academic depth to one of the most urgent leadership challenges of our time. Today, we explore what empathy and politics actually looks like, not as sentiment, but as strategy. Claire shares why empathy is essential for effective leadership the challenges empathetic leaders face in polarized environments, and why we can’t simply wait for more empathetic political leaders to emerge. We as citizens must actively participate to create conditions for them to thrive and be held accountable. We also talk about hope, not passive hope, but participatory hope, the kind that invites each of us as citizens, leaders and humans, to model empathy, practice deeper listening and engage in shaping healthier political cultures, whether through community dialog, civic participation or simply choosing curiosity over certainty. Claire offers practical ways that we can practice strategic empathy at the national community and individual citizen levels, and how doing so can help rebuild trust, attract healthier leadership into public service, and ultimately transform how we govern and live together. This is a conversation about what’s possible when we choose empathy, not as an escape from reality, but as a path forward through it. This was such an amazing conversation. Take a listen. Big. Welcome Dr Claire Yorke to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about the topic of empathy in politics. I know it is your wheelhouse. You are a senior lecturer at Deakin University and an author empathy and politics and leadership, the key to transforming our world. A men, welcome to the show.
Dr. Claire Yorke 04:13
Thank you so much, Maria. It’s such a pleasure to join you from Australia today.
Maria Ross 04:18
I love it and can before we get going, and there’s so much we have to talk about, but I’d love for you to share your story and how you got into this work, because, you know, we heard in your bio, your experience is very impressive, and the work you’re doing is so important to kind of bridge this gap between empathy as a theory and empathy and practice and how It impacts millions of people’s lives at the same time, through government and through community. So share with us a little bit about how you got into this work.
Dr. Claire Yorke 04:48
Oh, yes, so thank you. It has been a journey, and I probably began when I was very young. I love languages, and I love meeting different people, and I discovered that languages are. Opened up new worlds to me. I grew up in the northwest of the UK, and we didn’t travel a huge amount, but I just had this fascination with how different people create meaning, and how you gain access to that through speaking different languages. And then when I did my Master’s in Middle East politics, I had this view that I was going to go and live in the region and do things and life had other plans, and I ended up working in politics in Westminster. So I worked in the British Parliament for a front bench politician, and did defense in that role for three years, helping him with that portfolio. And then I worked at Chatham House, which is a international affairs think tank in London, for four years, and in that capacity, I managed the international security research department. And what I found in those roles was that I was exposed to a lot of people who really cared about the world, and they had this real passion to create change and do something differently, but that wasn’t always translated into what we needed in policy and politics and so working in those environments gave me a real understanding of some of the systemic and structural problems that we have in those spaces. But also it did give me quite an enduring sense of hope that people in those roles do care. They don’t conform to this sometimes very negative view we have politicians, and I wanted to do something with that when I started the PhD. And I started the PhD at King’s College in 2013 and initially planned to look at this idea of complexity and strategy and policy. How do we create good policy in a world that is ever changing and complex, and empathy kept coming up in that, and I kept finding that the way it was spoken about in the academic literature was great and very hopeful and very kind of visionary, but it didn’t always correspond with what I had experienced and witnessed working in Parliament and working with all these international policymakers and practitioners at Chatham House. And so I wanted to do my research on that intersection. What does it mean when empathy starts to be applied? Where does it encounter resistance? So my PhD itself was on empathy and diplomacy, through the case of Nixon going to China, which is not a usual case study, because he’s not a leader you would associate with empathy. And then from that, I got a postdoc, obviously, at Yale, that enabled me to dig into that a little bit deeper. And then I worked in Denmark for two years doing empathy and international security with a European Union grant. And so I kept finding that there’s a lot here that we’re not talking about, and there’s a huge amount of work that people are doing that should be in different spaces. Both practitioners should be heard in academic space and academics in those practical spaces. And it just felt like once I made that shift in my topic and in my focus, all these different doors and avenues opened, and I’ve just really loved exploring it. It constantly expands. And Yale University Press invited me to write this book, because obviously they knew my work on empathy, and I had a lot to say. Having worked in politics for a while, yeah. And then I moved to Australia, and now I teach senior military leaders and public servants about what empathy can mean for strategy and geopolitics, which I love. I think I have one of the luckiest jobs.
Maria Ross 08:24
I mean, God bless you for the work you’re doing. I there’s so many things we could talk about your storied career and the work that you’ve done, and I think you trying to thread this needle of number one, helping people understand that there are people that go into politics to serve others. I think there’s a very jaded view of why people put up with the shenanigans of politics that you need to in order to do it, but that there still are people in the world, and we see this a lot with the younger generation, too, as they get more politically active and as they get more socially conscious, that desire to make things better and do things differently. And, you know, somewhere along the line, it gets, you know, kind of beaten out of us by the system. And so if we can change the system, and then change what we’re expecting of leaders in that environment, but also giving those leaders hope that they can be values driven and still have an impact, and still, you know, rise in the ranks and be part of the system that they’re trying to change. The, I think the better quality of candidates we’re going to get, you know, because we’re not attracting always the best of the best, because they’re not the ones attracted to all the downsides that go along with being in politics and being in government. So, you know, I, for me, I saw a lot of this in recent years here in the US, where the majority of civil servants, the majority of people working for government, are genuinely trying to do the right thing. And there’s been this, this false narrative placed around them. Because of a few, you know, maybe a few bad apples, of people that are corrupt and people that are jaded and people that are just trying to get by, right? They’re trying to get by for their own purposes. But your work, especially the work around what you’re doing now, in terms of working with military leaders, I’ve had several military leaders on the show, and they talk about the fact that empathy is a very important part of strategy. It’s not just command and control that only works in the heat of battle. That really where you build the trust and you build the loyalty and you build the engagement, is the other you know 90% of the time, where you’re getting to know the people in your troops, in your army and your navy and your you know Marine Corps, and being able then to create that trust so that they will follow you into battle, right? It doesn’t happen in the moment of crisis. It’s a foundation that’s laid. So I’m just curious, before we dig into all the juicy topics here, with the work that you’re doing now, are you finding a different mindset among military leaders than maybe before, what tell us a little bit about what their reaction is and what their appetite is for learning about empathy in terms of the very tough job that they have to do?
Dr. Claire Yorke 11:18
Yeah, and it’s such I find it such a rewarding role, and you’re right, it has such an integral part of what military leaders need to do, not only for creating teams that are resilient and inclusive and connected, but also for how they understand and know what it is that’s needed in any operation, whether that is a conflict zone or is a humanitarian relief space that understanding your audience, knowing how to connect, build relationships, and really understand what’s at the heart of an issue is is vital to do those kind of roles well. And I found that one of the things I find very rewarding is that the people I work with are intrinsically very curious. They’re very disciplined. They work really hard. They want to improve, get better, become the best leaders that they can. And so I find it’s a bit of a journey, because ideas like empathy, as I’m sure you know from your own work, can feel quite abstract to people. Maybe they do it naturally and they don’t think about it, or maybe they see it as a concept that’s a little bit soft, it’s a little bit fluffy. And so there is that sense of journey for some people, of, oh, I now see what you mean. So it becomes about learning that skill set, understanding the kinds of environments you have to create, both for yourself and for your team, so that the right kind of questions can be asked, that you can process more nuanced information and make the right decisions. I found that it’s been a really receptive audience. And what’s been really encouraging, at least in Australia, is there’s a lot of talk about strategic empathy, and there’s a lot of talk about its value. We’ve got people in very senior positions, including the Governor General, who talk about empathy as a vital leadership skill, and so that sets the tone where people go, Okay, this is something we need to get better at, and especially in transforming military culture, ensuring that you don’t have some of those more harmful elements that we have sometimes seen with the rates of, for example, in Australia, of suicides among veterans and those who are enlisted. It’s a way of trying to address some of those elements that are not as conducive to a healthy and effective force. So, yeah, I’ve been encouraged, and I think it is growing,
Maria Ross 13:30
yeah, well, and I think a lot of it probably your work. I know my work is about busting the myths that are out there about what it means to be empathetic. I mean, one of the biggest ones we talk about a lot on this show is that empathy is a sign of weakness, and there couldn’t be something that requires more strength, right than being able to listen to another person’s experience or point of view without defensiveness or fear. You have to have your own house in order and be incredibly strong in your own values and your own thoughts and your own boundaries to be able to even make space for that, because if you don’t, you’re too porous. You’re going to take on all of their issues. And so I just find it laughable that people say, oh, people are going to see me as weak. I’m like, actually, you need a lot of strength. And I think you kind of in what you were saying, I feel you answered one of the first questions I was going to ask you, which is, why do we even need empathy in our politics? And maybe we could take it a step further. I mean, you talked about the need for collaboration and problem solving and changing cultures and changing systems. But also the second part of that is, what should that look like, regardless of country, what are some examples, or what does that look like to have empathy in our politics?
Dr. Claire Yorke 14:46
Yes, and there’s many reasons, and I’m sure we could talk for hours about why we need it. There is, as you rightly pointed out earlier in our conversation, this disconnect right now between the public and politicians. There’s a lot of growing mistrust. And distrust about politics. I think we’re seeing people feeling apathetic about their capacity and their ability to affect change and to see something different at the top. And for me, empathy and politics is very much about putting people first. We need to change our politics. So it’s much more about building relationships, building that sense of connectedness, both between politicians and the public, between citizens and their communities, seeing this as an ecosystem. And in the book, I talk about politics as an ecosystem, and empathy has to operate as part of an ecosystem. And it’s not enough for us as citizens to wait for an empathetic leader. And I know we spoke earlier, before we went live, about some of those leaders who inspire us, and there are people like Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who’ve shown that empathy is possible and can have a real impact at a leadership level. But we also shouldn’t be waiting around in our politics for that one leader who decides to bring care and empathy to their role and need empathy in our politics so that we can have those harder conversations. What does a good society look like to you? What does it mean to bring in more people who are maybe isolated or marginalized into how we create that idea of a vibrant, resilient society? How do we make sure that we’re addressing the problems and not sweeping them under the rug, that we’re actually giving voice to people who say, Look, this vision you’ve given us isn’t working. This is what we need. This is what we want to see transform. It’s about making people feel in that very way that we define empathy, like they are seen, like they are heard and like they matter, which is a vital skill of empathy, and building that into a system and a structure so that we start to feel a part of our politics again, we start to trust that those people in power are operating in our best interests right, and that they know that we understand what’s required to lead a country or to lead a community, and that we also step up and engage and participate.
Maria Ross 17:01
So I love that thought of like we can’t wait for that empathetic leader, so we need to be creating those spaces and those places. And what are some things you’ve seen that have worked? I kind of think of this almost as like Citizen politics. And by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book citizens, but it’s profound. It’s amazing. I’m going to put another link to put another link to it, because I mentioned it all the time, and just the hopeful examples that they had of groups of people coming together to make change, and they weren’t waiting. So can you give us some examples from your work or your research that you’ve seen about groups that didn’t wait for the empathetic leader to show up? What did they do?
Dr. Claire Yorke 17:39
Yeah, and this is a quote. There’s a whole chapter in the book on this idea of what citizens do, what communities do. And John Alexander’s book on citizens is such a great book for detailing this power. I’ve actually seen it all over the world, and it’s something that’s really gives me that sense of hope and that sense of people want change. I was living in Denmark for two years. And there, there are a huge number of organizations that are very citizen led. So in the book, I detail this example in Aarhus. And any Danish speaker, I’m very sorry for my Danish accent, but saya de zamla And there, it’s very much about creating this hub where citizens in the city of Aarhus can come forward to the team and say, I’ve got this problem. I’ve got this idea. And they would then do initiatives. They would have support to launch their ideas to show, for example, how the streets in our house are maybe not disability friendly. They’re not very good for wheelchairs. So someone would take politicians out and say, Did you realize that actually it’s not very convenient for people who are in a wheelchair to get into the shops and do their daily shopping. They also have, for example, someone who said, We need to have a better sense of connection between city design and architecture, that urban landscape and the animals within it. So they then bring forward this kind of Council of Animals, where people imagine they are one of the city’s animals, and talk about, what does it mean if a building is this high, if you’ve got barbed wire on the top, what would it be like if you are an animal? So that’s, I think, one way where citizens are saying, This is what our community and our city looks like from us. How can we do something different in America, in Canada, there’s some really great citizens assemblies going on. Oregon, for example, does a number of these great citizens assemblies, which really gives citizens the chance to say, this is what we want to see changed and transformed, and to be a part of a dialog with people who are maybe across the aisle from them and how they vote. But through that dialog and understanding, they get a sense of the complexity of an issue, and that’s been very effective in places like France, where citizens assemblies in Paris have had real impact on policy, there’s a great organization called democracy next, which I think is well worth people looking up if they’re interested in that. Because they have guide books and advice for how people can go about doing this. But also it’s about creating change at a local level. I think some of the initiatives around library spaces and civic spaces, and I write about this, are vital for creating that connection in community. Your general, Surgeon General in America, a few years ago, wrote about the loneliness, yes, and Dr Murthy, exactly. That’s one of the challenges we’re seeing is that we spend so much life, so much of our life online or at home or in our small bubbles, we’re not getting out, and we’re not seeing that even people who think differently to us or who vote differently to us actually have a lot in common with us, and that’s one of the key pathways to building that empathy and building that societal resilience. We’re all in this together. We all want to see our communities safer, healthier. We want to see children in good schools, parents being looked after when they reach old age. You know, share those kind of similar values, so civic spaces are vital for that.
Maria Ross 21:02
I mean, everything you’re saying sounds amazing, and I’m guilty of it too, of being too busy to be involved in local politics or find out what’s going on. But I think, and I don’t know if this is true in other countries, but I know in the US, that kind of momentum, except in pockets, it feels like the people that get involved in local initiatives are either the people that are just the rabble rousers, right, who are kind of off, you know, their their ideas are a little bit out there, right in terms of what they want to do, but they seem to be the only ones that show up to the city council meetings or to the school board meetings or no one else is spending that time. And I it’s almost like I’m thinking about my brand strategy background, like we need to rebrand civic engagement because it’s so not sexy here in the US. It’s seen as fringe. It’s seen as you don’t have anything else to do with your time but go and cause problems for the City Council, right? So there’s this, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the American TV show Parks and Rec, but that’s a very good glimpse of what goes on sometimes within local government and local city councils. And it’s a humorous take on it, but it’s also very based in reality. And so I feel like we need a whole rebrand and reset of what it means to be civically engaged. And that starts with the fact that, at least again, in the US, so much of civic education has been taken out of schools. Right when I went to high school, we took a government class. We took a class that taught us how the three, you know, parts of government are supposed to work together, and how laws are enacted, and how, you know how everything kind of works. And even then, that was just a primer that wasn’t, you know the details. So it feels like there’s a, I guess what I’m saying is it feels like there’s some headwinds against this ability to get everyone involved. Because there’s a there’s a jadedness and a pessimism around if it’s going to even make a difference. So how have you seen groups or, you know, again, anywhere in the world, overcome that, overcome that, that pessimism and that defeatism around it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t matter if I go to the city council meeting. It doesn’t matter if I go lobby for the for the civic spaces. It won’t make a difference. How do you How have you seen groups combating that apathy? Yeah, I
Dr. Claire Yorke 23:27
think for me, it’s about being those groups being taken seriously by people who can then affect that change that people know it’s not just going for a talking shop, and it’s not going to lead to anything. That means leaders who can take decisive action who are invested in engaging with citizens, and that’s a problem, because you sometimes see that sense of mistrust working the other way, where politicians maybe don’t trust citizens, don’t trust them with good decisions, don’t trust that they’re going to know what’s in their best interest. And we have to transform that narrative. Actually, citizens are far closer to the solutions to the problems realize because they’re living it, and they need to be involved. And we need politicians who will go out there and say, What do you need from me? How can I use my office or my role to make change? One of the countries I found who does this really well, and I featured there in the book, is Finland. They do a lot of civic engagement, and I spoke to one of the people who actually writes the textbooks there for the high schools, and it’s built into education from a very young age. And they will admit it’s not perfect. You’re still going to have people who are very jaded with politics or who just prefer to, you know, go on social media in class. But actually what it does is it says to people, look, politics is not a passive activity. You have to be active agents within it. And these are your rights, but these are also your responsibilities. You know how you show up, how you take part, and this is what is needed, and they do really well. For example, countering. Misinformation and disinformation, which is a problem in the country, given it borders Russia, but they also do a good job of building that sense of connection, and I saw that in a lot of the Scandinavian countries I visited, that there is a sense of social responsibility that means that people feel like they can affect change, even at a local level, yeah, and that’s also part of the change. Is we don’t need to a small, small action to translate into a big policy change. Immediately those small, micro actions add up,
Maria Ross 25:33
right, right? I was looking as you were talking, because I recently had the chance to speak to Sam Daly Harris, who wrote a book called reclaiming our democracy, and he had a very similar hopeful viewpoint on the possibility of what happens when people engage with empathy, when people engage with to your point, it’s, you know, politics is not a spectator sport. It’s being able to get involved and and have have the conversations, but also have the uncomfortable conversations. And I think that kind of the same traits that enable you to strengthen your empathy muscle can be really valuable to you in that forum as well, because it’s about learning about someone else’s experience, lived experience. It’s about keeping an open mind. It’s about saying maybe you don’t have all the answers, maybe other people collectively can come up with the right answer. And so there’s a, you know, putting the ego aside. All of those things are things I talk about in terms of strengthening your empathy, but they also are handy tools when it comes to creating a a political system that works for everybody. That’s kind of what I’m I’m hearing from you, what? What do you what are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Claire Yorke 26:42
Yes, absolutely. And that’s really about the skill that’s both what we want to see from our leaders. So we want leaders who demonstrate that they’re not swayed by every passing emotion that they feel, that they can hold space for different conversations and bring people in and say, I’m here to serve not just the people who voted for me, but for everybody within this community or society, right or this nation, we need to see that, and that requires that kind of strength and that courage and that decisiveness and emotional agility. I love the work of people like Susan David on emotional agility. You know, knowing what it is you’re responding to and what you’re feeling and how that affects how you show up and engage with people. And I think then for us, we can practice that the citizens at the local level, around the dinner table, at family events, or, you know, in class, when we’re engaging in topics and someone disagrees with us. And there’s organizations in America that are doing a really good job, yes, like bridge USA, like brave, braver angels.
Maria Ross 27:43
I was gonna say we had Monica Guzman on our show once before. I’ll put a link to her episode.
Dr. Claire Yorke 27:49
Yeah, and who were doing a really good job of saying, We all occupy this space. Let’s get comfortable talking to each other across our differences. And that’s a muscle that we can flex and that we get better at. And I think the more we do that, and the more we start to see that people we disagree with have the same sense of humor as us. They support the same football team, or, you know, they love the same place for their annual holiday, or whatever it is that makes you connect the same music. It helps you realize that this shouldn’t be so combative that there are ways through and we get better at that art of conversation, and that’s politics. Is about dialog. It’s about how do we learn to coexist with each other, exactly, and that’s what we have to keep practicing and showing up for
Maria Ross 28:35
so good. So tell me about the challenges that leaders face when they are choosing to lead with empathy. And what do you find marks the successful ones? Yeah.
Dr. Claire Yorke 28:47
Oh, great question. I think the challenges are manifold. One, as you’ve already mentioned, is that it can be seen as a weakness, and there can be a gendered component to that, that often we reward male leaders who express empathy in a different way to how we might reward women leaders who express empathy because we don’t trust that it is going to be matched by strength or decisiveness, which is doing a disservice to both genders. We should have people in power of all genders who show care as a matter of priority, because you are there representing people. So I think that problem with weakness, some of it is also the way that our politics works, and it depends partly on the political culture. So in countries like America, the United Kingdom, where you have much more adversarial setups, where you have one party who dominates the political system at the expense of another, it then becomes harder to demonstrate the kind of bipartisanship or the cooperation and collaboration that we want in the current culture. That’s not to say political leaders could not say, I’m going to do things differently, right? But they tend to conform to that party politics that tribal. Them at the expense of setting up commissions to address welfare or health or whatever it is, where they bring a lot of people around the table from across the board. And I think countries where you have more collaborative and consensual, consensual politics, they are more used to consensus based, sorry, politics are more used to that dialog. Where do we find compromise? Where do we bring in a little bit of that minority party into what the major party is doing? Because we need to find a way through this collaboratively and collectively.
Maria Ross 30:34
What are some examples of countries that have that kind of setup?
Dr. Claire Yorke 30:37
So countries like Denmark, Germany, wherever you have kind of coalition politics where people have to come together again. Scandinavia is another example where they do this quite a lot. You find that then there is more of an incentive to work with parties that are maybe more on the fringes or smaller, right green,
Maria Ross 30:58
instead of discounting them, you bring them in.
Dr. Claire Yorke 31:01
Yeah, yeah. So like in the United Kingdom right now, the Green Party is seen as a very small party, even if it collects quite a few votes. The same with the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, they get, may get a lot of votes nationally, they’re very small in terms of how that translates into seats. But in a place like Germany or Denmark, where you would have more coalition style politics, they might be the king maker in terms of those few seats actually tip the balance so but you still then have to meet parts of their agenda. Right, right?
Maria Ross 31:33
Yeah, this is the challenge with the with the US system is there’s so much money in the party system that even if some politicians wanted to break away from what their party is saying or doing, they literally can’t, because of their funding running dry, right? And that’s the sad part. Is when you know money gets injected into the equation, it’s then you create a power block, or, you know, you create a cartel, basically, of, you know, then no, you’ve got to toe the party line, or we will not support your primary bid. We will not support, you know, we will. We will take our money somewhere else and put it somewhere else. And so we really just need bravery. I mean, when it comes right down to it, we need people that are, getting involved for the right reasons and saying, you know, if it’s funny, in my naive childhood thought process, when I was a kid, I never understood, you know, well, if you’re a politician, you just say what you believe, and if people agree with what you believe, they vote for you. And if they don’t agree with you, then they don’t vote for you. And that sounds really good in a Pollyanna way, but then you put into impact, the power and the money, and yeah, all the other and it’s like, no, I’m going to tell you what you want to hear so that I get into the position of power, and then I’m going to do what I want anyway, right? Yeah, so,
Dr. Claire Yorke 32:59
and that’s, yeah, yeah. That’s a key weakness, and that’s the key obstacle to empathy, because then you’re having politicians who are bought by lobby groups who can no longer be the authentic self that they wanted when they went into it. Yeah, and America, particularly is has a huge problem with lobbying, and there’s efforts in Australia right now and other countries to limit that impact of big money, because we should have politics that’s much more about the people where it doesn’t matter your background, whether you’re from, you know, a poor neighborhood or a rich neighborhood, you should still be able to get into politics to represent your interest in your community. And the moment you get lobby groups, it silences people. It means people are worried about upsetting the status quo, and that makes it very hard for that more natural care, driven, empathy based politics to come through.
Maria Ross 33:51
I mean, yeah, that’s a big talk about the headwinds we were talking about earlier. That’s a big headwind to being to like you said, be authentic with your values. You know, we just one example. And you know this is regardless of listeners, your politics or your stance on things, but there have been many studies that have come out. I’m very involved with Moms Demand Action, which is a common sense gun organization, grassroots, actually taking my son to go to the the advocacy day at the state capitol, so he can see how things work right and be in on conversations with local representatives and things like that. But they’ve done study after study showing that the majority of Americans are for most of these measures that these groups are trying to get across the line in terms of closing loopholes and background checks and safety procedures and banning certain types of weapons or certain types of peripherals that can be added. The majority of Americans are for those things, and yet you’ve got blocks of politicians that are voting no on those things, even though they’re people. People and their constituents want them because of the few that are holding the purse strings. And so that’s that really does get in the way of their values, of empathy, of trying to understand what their people actually want. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy,
Dr. Claire Yorke 35:17
and it would be so easy to sort some of these issues out without that influence.
Maria Ross 35:23
Absolutely, absolutely. So I would just love to hear, you know, do you think it’s possible, given where we are? And you know, I know, again, different countries are at different phases of this, but if you take some of the worst case scenarios, like right now the United States, or is it even possible for us to get to that vision that you’re painting? Because it sounds amazing and it sounds wonderful, and you know, number one, do you truly believe it’s possible? And number two, what needs to happen to make it possible other than what we’ve already talked about?
Dr. Claire Yorke 35:58
Yeah, so I’m a pragmatic idealist. I think it’s important to have a vision and an idea of an ideal end state, but I also know, because I’ve worked in these spaces, that it’s never that easy. So I do think it’s possible. I don’t think it’s going to be within a short timeframe. I think what matters is how we each start to take responsibility and show up and see that change in our communities. Because I do think we talk a lot about trickle down, but I think there is also this kind of feed up, Trickle Up, grassroots initiative and momentum that can change things. At the end of the book, I’ve got this plan of action where I talk about what needs to be done, and it is at a national level, at a community level and at a citizen level. There’s a lot of different points there, but I think at the national level, what needs to change is we need to see leaders start to look across the aisle and build that bipartisan connection, and then also go out far more to citizens and start saying, what is it you need in those citizens assemblies, taking account of that, being active and going out there and listening and learning and taking that back to their decision making role. So we need to see that. We need to see change in political culture, so trying to create political culture that is less toxic that doesn’t burn out our politicians so that they don’t have the capacity for empathy because they’re constantly firefighting or battling with the media that’s trying to tear them down. So there’s questions there about transforming a little bit our media while still retaining its importance of free speech and accurate representation and accountable and holding our governments and politicians to account. I think we also need to start thinking about creating collaborative groups on core issues that matter to everybody. So minimum wages, welfare, health care, education, gun crime, violence. You know, let’s start to have some collaboration, yeah, and then I talk about the community level and how we change that is reinvesting in these civic spaces, community halls, town halls, libraries, sports centers, trying to there’s some really interesting movements going on in places like the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, getting people offline, getting people to connect in the real world, over sport and hobbies that I think are really important, and then getting people to volunteer and see their role and see more civic education in schools as part of that. And then at the citizen level, just how do we reflect on how we show up with empathy, so that we model it and we get used to seeing it and used to seeing its value across dinner tables. Yeah. Also, one of the big ones is transforming our media diet, stepping away from new cycles that are just toxic and doom scrolling. But also not just reading the same feed that is fed to you because of your algorithm, read around it, read what other people are thinking, and start to engage far more with curiosity. When you encounter someone who thinks very differently, without becoming defensive and putting up your walls and arguing your case, lean in. What is it you think? Why do you think that? Where have you come from with that view? Right? What isn’t working? And then see if you can find common cause, even if you’re still able to express that boundary, like we spoke about empathy, should have boundaries. I don’t agree with you on this. I don’t believe in this kind of language, or I don’t subscribe to views that are racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever, but tell me where maybe we might find something, and I think that’s how we start to see it is across those different arenas. It starts to become a norm, and it starts to grow and amplify.
Maria Ross 39:51
I mean, I love it. It all comes down to, you know, how we show up and how we interact, and, to your point, how we model that for others and for ourselves and the people around. Around us. It’s really interesting, because one of the things you you spoke about is these, you know, collaborative groups, and there’s a group near me starting up around getting together parents not to be part of the school board, but to create a coalition that influences the school board and so in and keeps them accountable and make sure that there’s parents weighing in. And it’s a model that someone developed, and it’s being brought to my community, and someone locally is spearheading that model implementation here, and I’ve been roped into that of just as a parent of a future high school student, and I, I’m just, I’m want to get involved, even though it might be very, you know, stressful for me and heartbreaking, because I’m just curious about the process. And from what you’re saying, it sounds like that’s exactly the kind of thing. I think what’s overwhelming is there’s so many causes you want to get involved in, and you feel like, if you pick one, you’re making just like, it’s like a drop in the bucket. But then I tell myself, and you know, I invite listeners to understand this too, we have to start somewhere. And I had someone on my show in the past. Elisa came Hort Page, who wrote a wonderful book called roadmap for revolutionary. She co wrote it with two other women, and one of the things she spoke about was this idea of activist triage. I don’t know if it was called activist triage, but it was this idea of triage, of like you can’t solve all the problems, so build communities for yourself of people that are committed to action in different ways, and then you can sort of feel like an Avengers team, like you feel like someone’s on it, right? Like, whether it’s immigration or gun control or, you know, whatever it is, you know, the economy. And I just love that idea of, let me create my own little superhero team. And it’s like, Okay, I’m going to focus on this thing, because this is important to me. But I know that Claire and Jane and Bill are focused on this other thing, and so between us, we can feel like we’re making a difference on all the issues that we care about.
Dr. Claire Yorke 42:12
Yeah, I love that, and it speaks to that core idea of start where you are. It’s so tempting to want to go right to the end and go big. But so much is done when you start where you are with the power and the strength that you have that you then amplify in concert with others and where you also are. The expert. You know your local area, you know your circle of concern, build on that, and then see where it goes, and you don’t know how it will inspire other groups to stop where they are, like you said, I think that’s such a key way of doing this that we don’t get overwhelmed by what right now feels like we are being bombarded by news. To overwhelm us intentionally so we disconnect. We have to just start being active and present where we are and build on that.
Maria Ross 43:01
I love it so much. I would love to talk to you further, because you’re just filling me with hope and energy. And I’m going to put a bunch of links in the show notes for folks about various other episodes, some of the ones I mentioned, and then a few others, one about media bias and our media diet and all that kind of stuff, because I think it’ll be a valuable resource for folks. So I’m going to put those links in the show notes, as well as all your links and the lead link to your wonderful book, which, again, is called empathy and politics and leadership, the key to transforming our world. So we will definitely be digging into that. Oh, I love it. She’s showing it on screen for our YouTubers, but for anyone that’s on the go right now, Claire, where is a good place they can find out more about your work that you can just tell us audibly. Yeah.
Dr. Claire Yorke 43:46
So my website is Claire york.me, Claire with an i and an E. Yorke with an e.me, and I’m on LinkedIn, and I post a lot of the work I do and build a lot of kind of collaborations through that, so I can be found there. Amazing.
Maria Ross 44:02
Thank you so much for your not just your time and insights today, but your work. I mean, your career has been a testament to hope, and we need the light bearers like you in the world. So thank you for doing your work and for sharing it with us here today.
Dr. Claire Yorke 44:15
Oh, thank you so much you do the same. So it’s so lovely to be able to connect like this. Thank you so much for having me,
Maria Ross 44:21 and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share it with a friend and colleague and next time, until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please. Follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
