Empathy Is Deeper Than We Can Imagine

We talk about empathy a lot in business, in leadership, and in life.

But most of the time we talk about it like it's a skill you can just decide to have.

What I've learned is that empathy is much deeper than that.

It has layers, and some of those layers aren't available to you until life hands you the responsibility and something real to lose.

Becoming a father changed my understanding of empathy in a way I never expected.

And it forced me to rethink how we show up for other people, especially in business, and especially when we truly don't understand what they're carrying.

And that is what today's episode is all about.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 307 of the Business Development Podcast and I want to start today's show by providing you all a show update.

We are sitting at 302,000 downloads and very quickly closing in on our 36th month of operation.

Operation.

We have 4,642 followers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Your follow is also greatly appreciated and 3, 500 followers on our LinkedIn page.

And the reason I've been doing this for a while, guys, we've actually been doing show updates from the very beginning.

If you've just started listening, I think that podcasting has historically been quite secretive with numbers, growth rates and things like that.

And from the very beginning of the show I wanted to bring all of our listeners along our journey.

We've been doing this since before we had a thousand downloads and today I'm super proud to be able to do it with you guys with over 300,000, which is pretty frigging incredible.

I would like to thank all the rockstars out there who continue to make this show possible week over week, month over month and year over year.

Please do continue to talk about us and tell your friends and do let me know how we can make this show better for you in 2026 and beyond.

Okay, let's do just get into it.

Many times on this show the topic has become painfully obvious.

Sometimes it feels like it just jumps out and slaps me right in the face.

This week is one of those episodes.

Guys, I was not planning this week's episode.

Something happened on Monday.

We're going to talk about it.

But when it happened, I dug deeper because it impacted me in a way that honestly, as you'll see, was visceral and deeply meaningful.

And I think it taught me lessons regarding empathy that I had never been taught in my life before.

And we are going to get into it.

It's funny how much growth has happened for me over the short life of this show.

When I started the Business Development podcast back in 2023, I was not a dad yet.

The BDP started in February of 2023 and while I was dating Shelby and was becoming a stepparent to her three boys.

At the time I did not and could not understand the very real biological changes that you go through when you become a parent for yourself.

Ten months later, Jet arrived and, well, my world, internally and externally changed forever.

My first experience that maybe not everything was the same and happened about one year after Jet was born.

We were having a family movie night at the theater watching the Wild Robot.

For those of you who have seen this movie, you might know where this is going, but for those of you who have not yet seen it, the movie starts with a shipwreck in a wild hurricane and a robot named Roz washes up on the shore of an island.

After being activated accidentally by some curious otters, she finds the animals are afraid of her.

They call her a monster.

Over time, she observes the animals and learns to communicate with them.

Later on, there is a tragic accident and Roz becomes the adoptive mother of a gosling goose named Bright Bill.

Guided by a sly fox named Fink and the other island animals, Roz learns to override her programmed logic to provide care for this little gosling.

She teaches him how to swim and fly so that he can survive the long coming winter migration.

Their bond transforms the entire island and well, now you're just going to have to go home and watch it.

But there is a moment in this movie where Bright Bill has to leave Ra's behind and go on this migration with the other geese.

And well, this was the moment when I realized I was no longer the same Kelly.

I felt immense sadness for this robot.

My eyes were watering uncontrollably.

My normally strong, steadfast exterior collapsed like a house of cards.

I was experiencing a Level of empathy I was unable to experience before becoming a parent.

A knowing impossible to understand, truly, until the time comes.

When Jet was born, Shelby was not the only one who changed.

I changed on a biological level.

Turns out when a child is born, a network in the brain called the Parental Caregiving Network becomes highly active.

The network exists in all humans, not just mothers.

In fathers, it's activated and strengthened through bonding, presence and responsibility rather than pregnancy.

This network links several systems together.

Attachment, threat detection, empathy, emotional regulation, protection and provisioning instincts.

Once it's online, your brain literally prioritizes another human at the same level that it prioritizes your own survival.

That's the shift.

Possibly one of the largest in a father's life.

And yep, research for this show was the first time that I heard about it too.

Thanks, grade 10 health class.

So what the heck happened to me?

That was the question that I found myself asking.

Why was the idea of this little cartoon goose leaving its mother robot turning me, a strong grown ass man, into a pile of mush?

Turns out five things were happening.

Number one, my attachment system expanded.

My brain formed a non negotiable attachment bond.

This bond increases oxytocin, the bonding hormone, increases vasopressin, the protective and territorial behavior in men, and deepens emotional memory encoding.

Once this bond exists, imagining harm to a child no longer stays hypothetical.

Your brain treats it like a personal loss.

That's why once you're a parent, stories that involve children bypass logic and they hit you right in the heart.

Number two, my threat system recalibrated.

Fatherhood rewires the amygdala, the threat detection system.

Before I was a father, threats to children were abstract and they were processed intellectually.

After becoming a father, threats to children are processed as immediate danger.

Your nervous system responds as if your child could be at risk.

This is why even historical atrocities involving kids now feels unbearable instead of just tragic.

Number three, my emotional regulation threshold dropped temporarily.

Men often experience a reduction in baseline testosterone after becoming fathers.

This is not weakness.

Instead, it's adaptive.

The lowering of testosterone reduces aggression, increases emotional sensitivity, and increases patience and attunement.

At the same time, the oxytocin rises.

The combination creates easier access to tears, stronger emotional resonance, less emotional buffering.

This can lead men to ugly cry moments instead of a normally controlled or even masked reaction.

Hold on, I'll get to this moment.

Number four, my empathy became embodied.

Before jet, empathy lived mostly in cognition, imagination and my values.

After jet, empathy became somatic or body based.

My body now carries a reference point for Attachment vulnerability and irreversible loss.

So when I was watching the Wild Robot, my nervous system was not watching a story.

It was running a loss simulation with real emotional stakes.

My body reacted first and my mind tried to catch up.

Number five, my identity expanded.

This is the quiet part that us men are not warned about.

You didn't just add a role, you restructured your entire identity.

Part of yourself now exists outside of your body.

That means suffering involving children becomes existential.

Your moral lines sharpen, responsibility feels much heavier, and indifference becomes impossible.

You can't just not care.

This is why fatherhood produces both tenderness and resolve.

And yes, this can be extremely, extremely overwhelming.

At first, your system has not fully integrated the new depth yet.

Early on, fatherhood often brings emotional flooding.

Moments of grief without a clear cause, intense reactions to injustice, and heightened sensitivity to vulnerability.

This stabilizes over time as your brain learns how to carry the expanded empathy without overload.

Turns out I was not losing control.

I was adapting to a new version of me.

Now, I promise this is going somewhere business related, but you have to understand why empathy became the topic of the week after the Wild Robot fiasco over a year ago.

I thought I was home free.

That was until Monday when Shelby recommended that we watch One Life with Anthony Hopkins.

Another incredible movie, but has some really hard moments.

There is one moment in particular where parents are loading their kids onto a train, not knowing if they will ever see them again.

There are many aspects of World War II films that I've always found very hard to watch, but this one in particular broke me.

I ugly cried.

Guys like bad.

The thought of putting your kid on a train and hoping they survive was just too much for my young fatherly brain to take.

It was this moment I knew that I had to do this very show.

My understanding of true empathy changed, and now I believe it is deeper than I ever could have imagined.

Let's dig into it now.

We cannot do a show on empathy without defining it first.

According to Merriam Webster, empathy is the action of understanding.

Being aware of being sensitive to and viscerally experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another.

It's the ability to share someone else's feelings by stepping into their shoes and understanding their perspective, making it deeper than sympathy, which is more about feeling sorry for someone rather than feeling with them.

Once you define empathy, most people stop there.

But what I've learned is that empathy has real depth.

And that depth is not something you think your way into.

It's something that life unlocks for you.

Before I became a dad, I Understood fear for children.

Intellectually, I could explain it, I could respect it, I could even feel sad about it.

But I did not feel it in my body and bones like I do now.

The day Jet was born, everything changed.

Not because I learned something new, but because my attachment changed.

My nervous system changed.

Suddenly, stories involving children were not just tragic, they were truly unbearable.

Now I realize something fundamentally true about empathy.

There are forms you can understand and forms you can only feel once responsibility and attachment exist.

Empathy is not a one size fits all.

You can understand something without feeling it.

And when you have lived something, your empathy moves from your head to your nervous system.

That doesn't mean people without that experience don't care.

It means their empathy operates only at a certain depth.

This is why parents understand parents, founders understand founders, and leaders understand other leaders.

Shared responsibilities unlocks shared emotional depth.

It's not about being better.

It's about having access to a deeper layer.

And this matters in business more than we could ever realize.

Because real empathy in business doesn't start with pretending we understand someone's risk.

It starts by admitting that we don't and acting with humility and care because of that.

Empathy deepens with attachment, responsibility, and experience.

And only life decides when those doors open for you.

In business, real empathy isn't about proving that you understand.

It's about protecting people when you don't.

And the reality is, most of the time, in business, we don't truly understand what the other person is carrying.

We have not lived their role, carried their risk, and we have not paid their price.

So the real question becomes, how do you act empathetically when full understanding isn't actually possible?

So instead of teaching you to be more empathetic today, here are seven principles for acting ethically when you cannot fully empathize.

Number one, admit the limit of your understanding.

This is the foundation of real empathy in business.

Say plainly, I have not lived in your seat, so I don't want to pretend that I fully understand.

This creates trust by removing performance and false certainty.

Number two, replace certainty with curiosity instead.

Empathy doesn't start with statements.

It starts with questions.

Ask what's really at stake for you here?

What happens if this goes wrong?

Curiosity keeps you honest when experience is missing.

Number three, let the other person define what truly matters.

Never assume their priorities.

What looks like a small risk to you may be career ending to them.

True empathy listens for impact, not just inconvenience.

Number four, reflect risk and consequences, not emotion.

You don't need to mirror feelings that you don't feel, reflect instead.

It sounds like the risk here isn't the cost, it's your reputation.

Or it sounds like this decision follows you personally.

This shows understanding without overclaiming empathy.

Number five Change your behavior, not just your language.

Empathy that doesn't alter behavior is sympathy at best.

Slow things down, reduce the commitment.

Be transparent about downsides.

Action is your proof.

6.

Use shared experiences carefully, only where earned.

If you have lived something similar, reference it lightly.

When I was in a similar role, what surprised me was never collapse experiences into equivalence.

No two experiences are ever the same.

Number seven Default to protection when understanding is incomplete, when the stakes are high and understanding is limited.

Err on the side of safety.

Protect their time, protect their reputation and protect their options.

This is what ethical leadership looks like in practice.

Before I became a dad, I thought empathy was mostly about understanding.

I believe that if you listened well enough, asked the right questions and cared, you could empathize with anyone.

What fatherhood showed me is empathy is deeper than that.

There are levels to it.

Some you can reach through thought and intention, and some you can only reach when life gives you responsibility, attachment and something to lose.

I didn't become more caring after Jet was born.

I gained access to a depth of feeling that I did not have before.

And once you feel that, you realize how much of empathy is shaped by experience.

That relationship changed how I show up in business, leadership and relationships.

It taught me that the most respectful thing you can do isn't to pretend you understand someone's experience, but to admit when you don't and act with care anyways.

Empathy is not one size fits all.

It deepens as your life deepens.

And when we lead with humility instead of performance, we create trust, safety and better outcomes for everyone involved.

Remember, you don't find true empathy, it finds you.

Shoutouts this Colin Harms, Janice Baskin, Lauren Graf, Carmen LaBelle, McKinley Hyland, Marshall Stern, Gary Noseworthy, Trevor Muir, Jamar Jones, Matthew Amoyette, Daniel Levarson, Stephen Langer, Bradley Perry, Lesay Jorgensen, Chris Marks, Rico Baffa, Gillian Shekar, Shelby Hobbs, Mike Walker, Steve McKinney, Randy Lennon, Chris Young, Corey Seller, Chris Friesen, Vajrayan Swaminathan, Tatsiana Zamettalina, Simon Osler, Jordan Braz and Susan Paseka.

Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we'll catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

see you next time on the Business Development podcast.