“I think I used to be a shark” And Other Adventures in Cognitive Empathy

“Granda just said something crazy!” Jack says when I get in the car. We have a two-hour drive to LegoLand and my coffee’s kicking in. Give it to me, Jack. “He says I used to be a monkey!” “Not YOU, you Jack,” says dad. “You evolved from a monkey.” You know when a job is so clearly your job that it fills your whole being with energy? I’m a connector of minds. There was a rift here. 

While affective empathy is understanding how others feel, cognitive empathy is understanding how they think. Without it, we end up telling six-year-olds they were born in the jungle. 

Before I discovered coaching, what I wanted most was to be fully understood. In my freshman year class on empathy at Sarah Lawrence, our professor first laid out precisely how difficult it is for us to understand one another. I felt shot into space. At Thanksgiving, I cried. “It’s heartbreaking,” I said, “that no one will ever understand each other completely.” My grandpa looked at me with loving eyes and said, “It’s because you’re young that that’s heartbreaking.” Far from feeling condescending, the moment gave me hope. Grandpa was pointing to a world he inhabited, too wonderful to be completely understood, and promising treasure in the mystery.

I found this treasure when I first began coaching, over 15 years ago. As I learned to ask “thinking questions,” questions about how others think—or metacognition—I was enraptured. Rather than feeling shot into space, I felt like an explorer of universes. Life’s richer since. 

“I think I used to be a shark, because I’m a really nice guy, but sometimes I can be mean,” says Jack. We’ve moved on to passed lives, with ninety minutes to Legoland. These are the conversations I’m here for.

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