Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Mimi Nicklin, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill Podcast Day maximum episode.
Mimi Nicklin [00:00:07]:
Thank you so much for having me, Bernie. It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to be here all the way across the ocean. Lovely to see you today.
Bernie Borges [00:00:13]:
Yeah. On the other side of the world. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I really, really appreciate it. I wanna introduce you to my listener. I’m gonna ask my listener to be a little patient with me if I sound a little nasally. It’s because I am nasal. So we I hope to get through this podcast without, too much nasal interruption.
Bernie Borges [00:00:30]:
But to introduce you to my listener, Mimi, you are an internationally best selling author. You’ve written three books. I heard you say in a podcast recently, you’re already thinking about your fourth book.
Mimi Nicklin [00:00:43]:
Yes.
Bernie Borges [00:00:44]:
And you are the multi award winning founder of the world’s widest reaching organizational empathy training and engagement platform called Empathy Everywhere. We’ll talk about that. You’re the top five rated podcast host. Your podcast is called Mimi You You, and you are everywhere in the media as well as on event stages literally around the world, and you specialize in listening led leadership, psychological safety, and diversity and inclusion. And you’re also an experienced organizational coach. You’re just a a well recognized thought leader advocating for the global movement to balance humanism and capitalism in our workplaces and well-being. I love that. And you’ve you’ve won awards, but, Mimi, here’s my favorite part about your bio.
Bernie Borges [00:01:36]:
I didn’t tell you this beforehand. Here’s my favorite part. You are as charismatic as you are passionate, and you are set you are set. You are committed to reconnecting the corporate world one organization and one audience at a time, and I love that. And I’m so glad that you accepted my invitation to come on the Midlife Hithold podcast to talk about empathy. Empathy is rising, and that’s a good thing. So let’s just begin with, what is empathy, Mimi? What is empathy?
Mimi Nicklin [00:02:12]:
Well, I mean, it’s, you know, probably one of my most frequent questions, and so it should be. Because as you as you said there, Bernie, it is rising, and yet so many of us are not quite sure what empathy is. We might confuse it with other things like sympathy or pity or a soft skill, and we can talk about that today. But fundamentally, at its simplest, empathy is just perspective taking. It’s the ability to see the world, to understand the world as somebody else does, perhaps at the same environment that you’re in. So perhaps you’re in a meeting or you’re an event together. And, of course, you’re all seeing the same thing physically, but the experience of that environment, the experience of that moment is very different depending on the person you are, where you’ve come from, how you see the world, the experiences or memories that you’ve had. So to be empathetic as a leader, as a friend, as a parent, is simply about being really intentional about taking the perspective of other people.
Mimi Nicklin [00:03:10]:
And that’s that’s really as complicated as it gets.
Bernie Borges [00:03:14]:
Now, Mimi, you’re located in Malaysia. Right?
Mimi Nicklin [00:03:18]:
I am. Yes.
Bernie Borges [00:03:19]:
Okay. So that is literally the other side of the world for me in Florida and The USA. So you are very much a a global citizen. And so I’m wondering, in your travels, have you experienced empathy to be different from one region to the next, one culture to the next, or any kind of demographic or psychographic? Because I’m only exposed to USA, which is a big, big country, but it’s still just one region of the world. And America have not been exposed to the regions that you lived and worked in. So what’s your experience been?
Mimi Nicklin [00:03:55]:
Look. I think, Bernie, it’s firstly, it’s a fantastic question. And it’s a question that we should be able to answer better than we can because there isn’t really any data yet that really maps the world in terms of the most empathetic cultures or countries. And, hopefully, watch this space. I’m gonna try and get that done this year, but that’s a side note. Fundamentally, the way that we can see that really kind of coming to life is the difference between very collectivist versus very individualistic societies. So, generally and this is a huge generalization. But, generally, the western markets, so The US, Canada, Europe, Australia, they tend to be far more individualistic countries and societies.
Mimi Nicklin [00:04:39]:
We see higher proportions of people living in single households. So in some of our developed cities in the world, we see up to 42% of a city, and there’s many of these are in The US, in solo households. In the East, we call that the lonely generation because there’s so many people just living totally alone. In the Eastern side of the world, and I’m gonna include Africa as a continent in that, kind of on the other side, we see far more collectivist societies. Again, I’m generalizing, but overall, people tend to live in larger, more connected groups. And in those societies, we do see higher levels of natural empathy because empathy is a skill set, Bernie, and it’s one you are born with. It is built literally built into the prefrontal cortex of your brain. But because it’s a skill set, the more you practice it, the more permanent it becomes.
Mimi Nicklin [00:05:36]:
And when we live in very isolated or not really necessarily isolated, but just solo individualistic living, we practice that skill less because we have less people to empathize with. So in that case, I would argue that in those collectivist, societies, we do see higher levels of natural empathy. And the last thing I’d say, you mentioned the word demographics, I believe, children. Children have huge amounts of natural empathy, and they totally get this. You know, if you ask a child about it, they just think this is really obvious. They’re like, well, of course, you should listen to people, and, of course, you should understand your your friends and family, but we lose it as we age.
Bernie Borges [00:06:14]:
Yeah. You know, you said something that actually blew my mind. Thank you for the the the global perspective on empathy, but you blew my mind when you said that empathy is a skill set. That is not what I was expecting to hear. That’s not when when I think of empathy, I don’t think of it as a skill set. I think of it as something that we develop. So I’m wondering, is there any connection between empathy and emotional intelligence?
Mimi Nicklin [00:06:41]:
There is. Empathy forms part of emotional intelligence. And in my opinion, the very fundamental baseline, not every emotional intelligence specialist would, agree with me on that necessarily. But for me, the reason I think it’s so integral is because emotional intelligence is, of course, about those emotional social skills that allow you to engage with yourself and with others. How are you ever gonna do that if you don’t first understand people? So for me, empathy is the core to all connection. In fact, it’s the core to all relationships. Because how can you build any trust, any rapport, any camaraderie, collaboration, teamwork, relationship with your kids if you don’t understand them. Right? So, yeah, it’s a really interesting question.
Mimi Nicklin [00:07:26]:
And I think, as I said, for me, empathy no one’s gonna debate that empathy is part of emotional intelligence. For me, where I would come at that is to say is the absolute pinnacle foundation to all other sort of EQ skills.
Bernie Borges [00:07:39]:
Okay. Now I said in the introduction that you have a platform called Empathy Everywhere. Yes. Tell us about that. What is it? But also why? Why did you develop it?
Mimi Nicklin [00:07:51]:
Thank you for asking me about my passion. I mean, it really is a passion. Empathy everywhere is, is a platform I created about five years ago, and it really was just a passion project. You know? Today, in podcasting, in the world, we talk so much about finding our purpose. And I think so many people, perhaps some of your listeners, are looking for that purpose. I was very lucky and that I felt that my purpose really found me, and it found me in the form of of empathy and in really believing that the world needed more of it. And I’ll tell you a tiny version of that story. So I was at the time, I was living in The Middle East in Dubai, which is a very modern, capital city.
Mimi Nicklin [00:08:33]:
I was running a a marketing business there. You and I share that background, Bernie. And I was trying to overcome some significant issues in the company that I had moved to moved there to run. And I saw a business coach in that period, and I said, you know, let’s talk through this business that I’ve taken over and why it’s so chaotic. What’s going on in this region, talking about culture, and that type of thing. And she was asking me about my leadership style. And I was talking at the time about intuition. And she stopped me, and she asked a question that changed my whole life because she asked me, Mimi, are you sure? Is it intuition, or is it empathy? And at the time, I really had never thought about empathy, certainly as a leadership skill set, certainly not as one I was using.
Mimi Nicklin [00:09:23]:
But she prompted me to leave that, lunch meeting and research empathy. And I discovered something called the empathy deficit, which is the lack of connectivity in our world. It’s the lack of the ability to understand others that are not necessarily like us. And that is an evolutionary reality because this is an evolutionary skill set. Empathy is prosocial. It quite literally keeps us alive. The human race needs this to survive. So as I unpack that, and this, as I said, was five years ago.
Mimi Nicklin [00:09:57]:
It was around 02/2018. I couldn’t believe that no one was talking about this empathy deficit, that businesses and leaders and governments hadn’t seemed to understand this data that I was finding. So I wrote my first book, and I created this platform, Empathy Everywhere. I don’t think I had any idea that it was gonna grow to what it is today, but I just, you know, fundamentally wanted to have a a website, basically, a website and a book that spoke about this phenomenal human skill set that we have lost. Over the last thirty thirty years, we’ve lost 48% of it. And as I said, this is pro evolutionary. It literally keeps us alive, and it grew from there. And today, we we train all kinds and teach and inspire all kinds of people in businesses and societies and communities all over the world.
Mimi Nicklin [00:10:51]:
But, I would be lying if I said it was a really intentional business plan because, that absolutely wasn’t wasn’t the case.
Bernie Borges [00:11:00]:
Okay. There you said a lot there. There’s a couple couple thoughts I wanna share with you. First of all, isn’t it fascinating how sometimes we can experience life change, not by what someone says to us, but by a question someone asks us, which is the experience that you just shared. That question was life changing for you. So thank you for sharing that, and and that’s a great story. So, you know, if you look at the alphabet, the letter e is followed by the letter f. And, of course, my world, I talk about fulfillment.
Bernie Borges [00:11:35]:
This is the Midlife Fulfilled podcast. Right? So I feel like we’re kinda cousins, you know, in the alphabet and in and in our philosophies, you know, toward life. So tell me a little bit about how is business and society embracing empathy? Again, you’re on global stages, and you’re, you know, bouncing around the world, speaking, consulting, coaching. How is society and business embracing empathy?
Mimi Nicklin [00:12:04]:
Well, really positively, I’m glad to say, again, if I look back to that that moment in, you know, sort of 02/1819, no one was talking about it. So it was very hard. It was very hard at that time to rise up in this conversation. I felt often that I was just posting or sharing or speaking kind of to a black hole, you know, and maybe nobody was listening. But now, you know, as we head into 2025, this conversation is trending. I get people from all different countries saying to me, in my country, empathy is everywhere now. You know, America, this happens all the time to me in The United States. People say, gosh, Mimi, You know, I spoke to you once, and now I see it everywhere.
Mimi Nicklin [00:12:46]:
Someone in India yesterday said to me the same. So empathy is rising, and it’s not just rising as a leadership skill. Although if you Google that, you will find now endless entries. But in the kind of more, country leadership level, you’ll see it in a lot of newspapers and lifestyle media. You’ll see it in kind of relationships and coaching. You’ll see a huge amount coming through the education system. Again, depends on the country where we talk about social emotional learning, teaching our children empathy to understand each other, and all the way through to kind of peacekeeping, you know, war zones and conflict and that type of thing where people are really recognizing these skills in in, you know, discussion, dialogue, collaboration, that type of thing. So it is definitely trending and thank golly for that because our world needs it.
Mimi Nicklin [00:13:35]:
So, I’m really excited to be part of that that movement.
Bernie Borges [00:13:40]:
Okay. Fantastic. What about, as you travel the world and you encounter leaders, are leaders, embracing this? And I’m specifically referring to business leaders because Yeah. In business, as you know, business is exists to make a profit. And so employees, their job is to continue contribute to the business on a daily basis. So what’s your experience with leaders embracing empathy?
Mimi Nicklin [00:14:11]:
I think, Bernie, it’s been slow, but it now feels quite fast. And the reason I mean, in my very small world, really, but I can feel that because people now come to me for this. You know? And, again, years ago, nobody ever did. So there’s definitely in my own small universe, there is I can feel that wave, of interest. But if you have a look again on online, you will see it everywhere. You know, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, what whatever you read in the business world, it’s there not just once, but all the time. You know? I have my Google alerts on as we all do. Right? All good entrepreneurs with our Google alerts.
Mimi Nicklin [00:14:47]:
And every day, there must be at least eight or 10 pieces that come through from, you know, really top publications like HBR, like Forbes, the really big guys that are talking about these things. So it is shifting. And even in the organizations where it is not there you know, often I will go into these teams and maybe do a a keynote or a workshop. And you go into the room, and you can tell these people are thinking, you know, who is this, and what is she here to do? You know? What what does she wanna talk about? Especially because often, there’s a lot of cultural divide between me and my audiences. You know, if I’m in India, you know, I might go into a room that is still 90% male, probably slightly older than me. Definitely, we look different. We believe different. You know, we have a lot of things that are different between necessarily me and my audience.
Mimi Nicklin [00:15:35]:
And we never have a challenge at all, bringing people on board to this by I would say by the end, but I think quite quickly in those sessions. People don’t debate the need when you explain it to them. There is so much data. There is not one single business indicator that does not improve when you increase your empathy because people need to be seen and heard. So when you do, they perform better. We see 23% higher profit, 17% higher levels of efficiency, 68% higher levels of engagement, 48% higher levels of innovation. I could go on. I won’t.
Mimi Nicklin [00:16:12]:
But, you know, the business indicators are so strong. Fundamentally, when people feel that they belong, when that they feel they’re connected to your vision as a business, you can balance humanism and capitalism. Everybody should make money, but there should be a way to make that money whilst really bringing your people with you. Not just because it’s nice. Please be nice, but not just because it’s nice, but because the, you know, the sustainability of our workforce needed, and your bottom line does too. So it sometimes can be a bit of a tumultuous, journey to get there, but I feel now that leaders on the whole are on board. And some of our biggest organizations in the world, Microsoft, Standard Chartered Bank, Google. They’re just names that come to mind.
Mimi Nicklin [00:16:58]:
I have no affiliation with them, but who talk about empathy. So, certainly, it’s changing.
Bernie Borges [00:17:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s so much that you’re saying that we’re you know, we that I’m saying the same thing in slightly different words. For example, maybe I say that everybody, especially in the workplace, wants to feel like they’re valued. Like, they they mean they’re they’re they mean something to their immediate team and to the organization, but they they wanna feel valued. So I have to ask you the question that’s been on my mind since the beginning of our conversation, and that is the connection. What is the connection between empathy and fulfillment?
Mimi Nicklin [00:17:39]:
I again, similar to what I said earlier about emotional intelligence, I doubt there can be any fulfillment if there isn’t first empathy. And, of course, we don’t have time for an empathy masterclass. But fundamentally, I say that in two areas, whether that’s self empathy, which is the ability to understand yourself, how are you ever going to achieve fulfillment if you don’t know what fulfillment means to you? Right? What do you value? Where do you wanna be? How do you wanna succeed? What do you need in your life to be fulfilled? So self empathy as a skill set is that process, that ability to know yourself and what you need to thrive to be fulfilled. But, equally, from an external point of view, from a relationship point of view, as you just touched on on there, Bernie, we need to be connected. We are, as I said earlier, a prosocial species. So we can never actually achieve full full fulfillment, that’s a tongue twister, if we don’t have relationships in our lives. We are living through a loneliness epidemic. Right? And and we hear a lot about that in in The US.
Mimi Nicklin [00:18:42]:
Fifty Two Percent of the world are lonely, and loneliness is quite literally killing us. You will die statistically eight years earlier if you are chronically lonely. We know you can’t survive illnesses as easily. You have lower immunity, higher chance of recurrence. In fact, in many countries, this is the highest cost to our health care system, not cancer, not heart disease, not diabetes, disconnection, loneliness.
Bernie Borges [00:19:15]:
Mhmm.
Mimi Nicklin [00:19:16]:
As people, as you touched on just then, we need to be connected. We’re not meant to be alone. And empathy is that path. Right? Empathy is the ability to connect with others, whether it’s the person in your coffee shop this morning, you know, your Uber driver, your family, or your colleagues, but all levels of fulfillment, and we know that from neuroscience, are embedded in connection. So I think our work is not only connected in the alphabet, but it’s connected in the very core of what what we’re trying to do.
Bernie Borges [00:19:45]:
Well said. In fact, you you speak of self empathy, and I speak of self awareness, meaning being aware of how empathetic I am, being aware of where I’m fulfilled, where I’m not fulfilled. And if I’m a leader in any capacity, whether it’s is in business or outside of business, but as a leader, I need to first be self aware. Right? You call it self empathy. I think I think we’re saying the same thing. If I’m self aware, then I have the potential to lead with empathy. I have the potential to authentically be empathetic in my relationships, in my connections. So so, yeah, we’re, we’re singing from the same sheet of music, so to speak.
Bernie Borges [00:20:31]:
What about as we go through these phases of midlife, you know, I I loosely define midlife and, of course, the Internet, agrees with me as over the age of 40. And, although I have I have built a case that it can begin in our thirties, but that’s another conversation for another day. What’s the connection there? Do we have more empathy when we go through our midlife phases, forties, fifties, sixties? I’m in my sixties. Right? So am I going through a different phase of empathy than I was even twenty years ago in my forties?
Mimi Nicklin [00:21:04]:
Look, I think, there’s many parts of this, and it’s it’s quite a multifaceted reality. But one of the things that really comes to mind is is the role of time and stress. So empathy has two great enemies, really. One is low time, and the other is high stress. So when we are at the stage of our lives where we have the least time and the highest stress, which I would argue is probably probably thirties and forties because you’re, you know, climbing the ladder in the workplace. You’re taking on more responsibilities. You potentially have small children or or growing children and pets and houses and mortgages. Yep.
Mimi Nicklin [00:21:42]:
And, you know, suddenly you’re the same. Stress.
Bernie Borges [00:21:44]:
Stress. Stress.
Mimi Nicklin [00:21:45]:
Very much stress, and so little time. You know, it truly is our most sort of scarce resource. And these emotionally intelligent skills, these human connection skills often fall off. So I don’t have data for this, but from all the work I do, I I believe it very firmly to be true. This time is the hardest time for us to really have that empathy. And, ironically, it should be the time where where we’re really growing it because it is where we are most responsible for the most amount of other people, whether that’s at work, in the community, with families. You might have aging parents when you’re in your thirties and forties, that type of thing. So I would I would say that this is where we struggle the most with it.
Mimi Nicklin [00:22:23]:
What I hear from my audiences and my senior leaders all the time is, I don’t know if I have time for this, Mimi. And we do various sort of exercises together where we show that that listening right? Because you mentioned in the intro, I specialize in listening led leadership. Listening is the backbone to empathy. It doesn’t take long to listen, but you have to actively listen. And what I show those audiences, you can actually do that in less than two minutes. If you have a a child or a teenager in your life and they’re, you know, busy chatting away about their day, you might not have in your working day an hour to listen to their entire school day. But if you truly listen to two, three, four minutes where you are completely distraction free, connected to them, interested in them. That connection is physiological as well as emotional and mental.
Mimi Nicklin [00:23:16]:
So it is a it is a connection, and it will change how they are. So I think that in this midlife, maybe the the earlier parts based on your definition of midlife is the hardest time. And I also feel with the the people that are slightly older that I work with, maybe at the, more senior end of their career, they’re more open to reassessing relationships, roles of relationships. Who’s in my life? Why are they in my life? Let me be a bit more intentional about this. And also that role of community. Again, I’m generalizing, but there is a bit of an arc in our life where we’re connected to our communities. We tend to be more connected as children because we’re in a school and the playground and the soccer team and all those things. Then we get into this middle sort of early middle stage of our lives where we become a bit more individualistic.
Mimi Nicklin [00:24:05]:
We start our careers. We’re running around working fourteen hour days up and down on metros and buses and all that type of thing. Then we become quite connected to our families if we have one. And then in later life, I feel that that connection back to society and and community increases again, perhaps again because we have a little more time. We have a little more disposable income. We feel more empowered and confident over where we want to spend our time. And then, again, empathy grows. So it’s a skill set that at every stage is critical, but those would be my observations of where I’m seeing it to be, let’s say, stronger and weaker, and and the role kind of as we I don’t wanna say age, but as we age, as we grow.
Bernie Borges [00:24:49]:
Sure. Yeah.
Mimi Nicklin [00:24:50]:
Yeah. Yes. It’s okay
Bernie Borges [00:24:52]:
to say as we age because we do. We we all we all age. So there’s no hiding that. I I have what I call age pride. I I never shy away from acknowledging where I am, in in terms of age. You said that listening led leadership is your your thing. And and when when listeners really do a good job of listening, they’re present. They’re connected in that moment.
Bernie Borges [00:25:16]:
And I I just wanna add to that, Mimi, because I think if I’m good at listening as a leader, it’s because I’m self aware. Because the opposite of that is if I’m self absorbed in myself, then I don’t have the capacity to be a good listener. But if I’m self aware, then I can be empathetic and I can be a good listener. Would you agree?
Mimi Nicklin [00:25:40]:
Yes. Absolutely. I think listening is intentional. Again, it is a skill set. And when I do these workshops with tends to be very senior leaders, the the feedback I get all the time is, to your point around awareness, I had no idea I wasn’t listening.
Bernie Borges [00:25:56]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mimi Nicklin [00:25:58]:
So people are going through decades and decades of their lives and then suddenly realizing I’m not listening to anyone. You know, I’m not listening to my team, to my kids, to my husband, wife, sister, brother, mother, whoever. So, yes, it is it is about self awareness and just you know, so much of my work is in that is in just saying to these audiences, think about this. Think about why this makes sense. You know? And people can feel it. It is such a human reality for everyone, everyone that, you do just have to be intentional about using those skill sets and and remembering. But the last three words of my first book was practice creates permanence. So the reason I say that is you have to start intentionally.
Mimi Nicklin [00:26:46]:
But once you do that, it becomes very second nature. Wherever I go, Bernie, people wanna talk to me. Where like, I can’t even get a coffee without someone, like, telling me the story of their, you know, their long lost dog and, you know, what’s happened at the airport in the last week. So the the more habitual habitually, I should say, that you listen to people, the easier and more natural that becomes.
Bernie Borges [00:27:09]:
Okay. Well, I have had many, many meaningful takeaways from this brief conversation, Mimi, but I have to say the biggest one, the biggest takeaway that I’m gonna share with you and my listener is that empathy is a skill set. I had not really thought of empathy as a skill set before, even though I’m very keen on self awareness and, you know, leading and living life through the lens of the five pillars and seeking fulfillment through those five pillars. I had not really considered empathy as a skill set. So thank you for that that light bulb for me. It gives me a different perspective. And I really could continue this conversation and I mean this sincerely, but we’re gonna wrap it here. And of course, I I wanna invite you before we wrap up.
Bernie Borges [00:27:53]:
Where can people connect with you, get into your world, just learn more about you, Mimi?
Mimi Nicklin [00:27:58]:
Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So they can find me at Mimi Nicklin pretty much everywhere. Or on LinkedIn, YouTube, it’s forward slash Mimi Nicklin. My website is www.empathyeverywhere.co..co.
Bernie Borges [00:28:15]:
Okay. Well, my listener knows. Maybe that’s gonna be linked up in the show notes. So and if if you get over to The US, I mean, we’re a big country. So but if you get over to The US, I certainly wanna know about it. If there’s any way for us to meet up, I would thoroughly enjoy that. In the meantime, this, world away Internet connection, works. So thank you so much for joining me on this maximum episode of the Midlife Fulfilled podcast.
Mimi Nicklin [00:28:43]:
Thank you so much for having me, as you said, connecting over the oceans. And I will be in The US a few times this week. This week, not this week, this year.
Bernie Borges [00:28:51]:
Okay.
Mimi Nicklin [00:28:52]:
So we will definitely connect. Thank you for having me.
