Skip the empathy, Mr Schultz, and focus on the coffee

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Starbucks boss has no business sending a missive to staff to tell them how to be.

星巴克的老总向员工们发表演讲，强调着“你们就是美国的希望。我爱你们。我们要用热情的服务使顾客们感受到大家相亲相爱一家人，彼此没什么不同。” Lucy认为，身价以亿计的老总，并没有立场去谈自己对员工或是顾客的共情作用，还不如在员工遇到苦难时多宽容，给予要求的假期。在职场上，过多的共情会对公司，或对员工本身有不利影响。

短语句子

strip away the differences v. 揭掉，去掉

on the verge of breakdown 在崩溃的边缘

gain a foothold v 获得立足之地

wind up v 以……结束讲话

For a start 首先

参考文本

Just over a weeks ago, in that innocent age when the prospect of a reality TV host moving into the whitehouse was terrifying yet remote, Howard Schultz sat down to write a note to the 100,000 or so Americans who serve coffee in his shops. "There was a leadership void in the US", the Starbucks chief noted, a void, which he promptly attempts to fill by stepping into himself.

"We've lost faith at what we all know has always been true, the promise of America." He wrote, "But you're the true promise of America. My faith in you has been more optimistic than ever. Today I'm not talking about our business or the Starbucks brand. I'm talking about you as a person."

There's much to admire in this simple, stirring language, yet otherwise it left me puzzled. Why does he have more faith than ever in his employees as people? What have they done to deserve it? He doesn't say. Instead, he goes on, "In the face of this epic, unseemly election, on the lack of truth and void of leadership, we can still make a difference in the lives of the people we touch and influence everyday. Kindness, compassion, empathy and yes, love is what we need."

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, but I read this and felt mildly outraged.

Mr Schultz is quite right that if everyone were always kind to each other, the world would be a better place. But A, that's not going to happen; B, it's certainly not going to happen because a head of coffee company says so; and C, I'm not sure what gives him the platform to talk like this. Mr Schults was not elected, he has a duty to behave decently to his staff and his customers. He has no duty, indeed no business, to be looking after their spiritual lives or telling them how to behave when they go home.

The message goes on. "Start today, by recognising the power we have to demonstrate understanding ", and he strips sway the differences that divide us.
I agree it will be lovely if we could strip away all differences, but one difference that divides Mr Schultz from people making his skinny cinemon lattes is that his net worth is 2,5 billion dollars while some of them get about 10 dollars an hour. That's quite a difference. And free coffee, the tips and other benefits that Starbucks staff get don't really reduce it that much.

He winds up:"On this Sunday, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, know that I send you my love and respect."

It isn't clear to me how he can send his love to about 100,000 people he mostly never met and doesn't even know the names of. This is one of the differences between the deity and mortals. God can love everyone, but for a human loving someone usually means getting to know them first.

And yet this idea of empathy in corporate life is gaining a foothold.Latest this week, the Empathy Global Index is published ranking companies based on their behavior on social networks and assorted opinion polls. There's a lot about this that doesn't quite stack up. Last year, Microsoft came top, but then proceeded to axe several thousand jobs which doesn't strike me as all that empathetic.

Equally, I'm doubtful whether you can mesure empathy in a single aggregated number. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share other people's feelings, and so social networking sides, a not obvious place to go in search of it.

More fundamentally, empathy is not necessarily good for business or for us as individuals. There was a great piece in the Havard Business Review recently pointing out that empathy is dangerous if there is too much of it. For a start, it's exhausting. Jobs that require a lot of empathy, like working in a hospice leave us shattered and on the verge of breakdown. Second, it's a zero-sum game. If you spend all day being empathetic at work, you have none left when you go home. And finally too much empathy can lead to bad decisions.

I don't want my employers to feel my pain. They don't need to love me. They just need to be able to behave decently towards me, respect and dignity go a long way. And in extremis, if say, a member of my family were to fall ill, I would much rather my boss skipped empathy, and went for sympathy, and gave as much time off as was required.