On Empathy with Patty Smith, Co-Founder of Managerie & People Analytics Partner at Cruise
Patty Smith is one of the most welcoming people I’ve met in my life. Unsurprisingly, this affability was baked into the company she co-founded, Managerie. Managerie humanized the recruiting experience and created career matches between candidates and companies by connecting the job seeker’s broader motivations to the context of the role. When I reached out to Patty to request an interview on empathy she told me that she and her co-founder decided to close the business at the end of last year. Since that aspect of entrepreneurship is not often discussed, we decided to wrap it into the larger one. We spoke about how empathy informs Patty’s professional life, and how it was an integral part of her reason for starting her business, as well as for ending it.
I’m going to start with your definition of empathy. What does it mean to you? How would you define it? How have you experienced it?
I’ve been reading a lot of Brené Brown, so my definition might be pretty similar to what she talks about for empathy. Empathy to me is when you are “sitting on the same side of the table as someone” and understanding and owning their emotions. It’s when you can sit in someone’s shoes and not just look at it from a pedestal.
Do you consider yourself empathetic?
I do, but I know that there are so many times in life where I wish I could have been more empathetic, but it’s usually out of the moment. I know that I have the capacity for empathy, and it’s something that I am constantly working to become more and more so.
What does that look like in practice for you? Where, if you’re open to sharing, are the places you think, “Oh, I could be more empathetic”. And where are you seeing yourself successfully being so?
It’s really easy to be empathetic when someone is coming to me directly with something they’re trying to sort through, and it’s a very obvious moment to say, “Hey, Patty, now is the time that you put on your empathetic hat”. You listen, and you help them in whatever way they need to be helped. Sometimes that’s just listening.
There’s a big tie between presence and the capacity to be empathetic. Step one is presence. Step two is empathy. Step three is then executing on what you need to do at the time, which could be [giving] advice, it could be listening. And, obviously, people can’t be present a hundred percent of the time. When you’re not present, you don’t have the opportunity to be empathetically attuned to the situation.
Say you’re walking around the street and see somebody getting in your way and you get bothered by that. That could be a moment where, depending on how I’m feeling, what else was going on in my life, or how present I am in that moment, I could go one way or the other [with empathy].
What’s so good about empathy, why should we be practicing it? And why have you been reading Brené Brown and implementing empathy in your own life?
I enjoy understanding people. Empathy is the ultimate version of understanding another human being, because you’re putting yourself into their skin and trying to engage with what they need. The need portion of that is important because it’s not saying, “Oh, this person is talking to me about something and I’m engaging with it from my perspective.” You can’t really know what someone else needs without actually understanding and living it in an empathetic way for them. But once you can, there’s so much power in understanding what someone needs and the choice you make in how you accommodate those needs.
Moving into your business, how did empathy look like in Managerie?
It’s something that is a core value of both Sam’s (Patty’s Managerie co-founder) and mine, and therefore is kind of a no-brainer that it would be something that our business is setting out to do. Sam and I viewed our role as primarily storytellers, but we’re telling someone else’s story. In order to do that, it takes that deep understanding, safe space, and container to open up a place where someone can speak truthfully about who they are, what brings them joy, where they get their energy, their motivation. This is such a key component to how you show up at work and the teams that you’re going to perform well on. And then, when you think about an organization having any empathy, it’s actually just the empathy in that population of the multiple people that make up that organization.
What was your experience with empathy as you decided to close Managerie?
It can be difficult trying to make that hard call. Do we close this down or do we not? It was thinking about what mattered most to each of us in terms of how we wanted to serve the company as well as our careers. It is kind of a meta thing, because we were spending so much time building other people’s careers. How do we then reflect this back on ourselves? And for both of us it was this moment where we realized even Managerie’s mission itself — to help people find strong career fulfillment — could be better served in a different format.
How has your experience with empathy changed through this process?
I grew so much more with my empathy. Sam and I were fundraising, and we’re talking to a lot of investors, and we’re talking to a lot of candidates. There’s a lot of potential to get both excited and disappointed by the people that are coming in contact with the business. It is a very vulnerable time to be building a company and putting yourself out into the world; your whole world kind of becomes that company.
For instance, there might be a time when an investor doesn’t email you back, or something else happens that’s disappointing. Over time I grew to understand that they are dealing with the hundred thousand other things that are going on in their life.
They might be equally, if not more, underwater than I am and Managerie will always mean so much more to me than to them.
When I was able to extend empathy to the other counterparty there, it made me feel less negative, and it also made me feel even more grateful when good things would happen in the business.
At the same time, Sophie, [this attitude] was nowhere near how I was all the time. In the moments where I could get there, I was, like, “this is the stuff, man. I feel like such a grown up right now.” I wish I could be in that space all the time. I absolutely would get disappointed still and take for granted certain wins. But when I could be on my A game, that’s why.
Do you see any drawbacks to empathy?
Absolutely not. I will say that it might be easy to conflate empathy with caring too much about what other people think. Human beings have an infinite capacity for empathy that we can and should be tapping into. There’s no limit. At the same time, if you construe empathy as always being in someone else’s head, that might not be a good thing. When you are putting yourself out there there will be people that don’t like what you’re doing. Empathy in that situation is not about listening to them and doing what they want. It’s hearing them, understanding where they’re coming from, and then continuing to do your work. That’s an important distinction and I have gotten caught in that trap many times. The empathy there is understanding where they’re coming from. But stopping at that point.
What’s next for you?
I’m joining Cruise, a self-driving car company. I’m joining a role on the people analytics team, which is a relatively new role that’s popping up in HR organizations. It’s helping the broader HR team make stronger data-driven decisions. It’s so perfect because it’s allowing me to continue some of the work that I’ve been so excited and passionate about [at Managerie], but in a much larger context, and larger organization, with the support of a super strong team there. I feel both incredibly grateful and incredibly excited to be joining up.
Anything else important you want to share to anyone reading this?
One question I get asked a lot is, “what did it take for you to know that you were going to start a company?” And my answer is very simple: starting a company is a decision. It’s not a lightning strike of inspiration. I’ll relate it back to empathy. Like anything, starting a company, starting to be more empathetic, starting to change your mindset around something, it’s really just a decision. If you decide to do it, you’ll find a way. That’s what it is to be human. If someone out there is reading this and is excited or thinking about starting a business, you can do it, just make the choice and it’ll happen.
Thank you.
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