Q&A with Karen Faith

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Karen Faith, a renowned ethnographer and empathy expert who shared powerful stories and insights on empathy, communication, and human connection.

Dec 01, 2024

Karen Faith is an ethnographer and strategist whose work has guided teams and initiatives at Google, Amazon, Indeed, The NBA, The ACLU, Blue Cross Blue Shield, The Federal Reserve Bank, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and more. An alumnus of the Hyper Island Business Transformation course in Stockholm, Sweden, she has taught her approach to students at Penn State, Juilliard, KU, Chapman University, and the National University of Singapore. She lives in New York, where she is the CEO and Founder of Others Unlimited, an empathy training company. Her TEDx talk on Unconditional Welcome has received over 2M views.

Your website notes that "Ethnography is a style of research done by walking in someone else’s shoes–literally, where possible." Could you share an example of a surprising or powerful insight you've discovered through your previous work as an ethnographer that might not have emerged from more traditional research methods?

Oh, honestly, that is all of them. I have never even once conducted an ethnography that didn’t reveal stunning, groundbreaking, or simply fascinating truths. There are no boring problems as an ethnographer, because all problems are people problems, and people are a subject where deep curiosity really delivers. An example:

Some years ago, I conducted discovery research for a client–a massive health insurance provider–who wanted to rebuild the healthcare experience from scratch. Because they were willing to scrap all legacy baggage (an incredible bonus), we were able to be very broad with the research. So, instead of limiting variables as one might do in a tighter scope, we expanded them, looking not just at the directly relevant aspects of the customer experience, but many peripheral aspects which may (or may not) have touched them.

That meant that we spent time with people, having conversations about anything and everything, touring their homes, and taking photos. Two of those photos stunned the client. The first was of a pile of medical billing paperwork kept in a laundry basket, and the second was a ziploc bag of prescription bottles next to a handgun in a safe. The intense stories behind both images conveyed the customers’ damaged trust, but seeing those photos moved the client to experience their betrayal deeply, which changed everything. We knew–and could have easily confirmed with traditional methods–that customers do not tend to believe their insurance provider has their best interest in mind, but to understand the meaning and implications of trust, we needed every member of the client team to feel that, which is what those images and stories gave us.

From the highly specific, quirky details of individual stories, we were able to excavate the foundations of trust, the role of transparency, and the relationship between power and consent in the patient-provider-insurer triangle. This became our blueprint for the strategy and creative (and it was a hugely successful new brand, if that kind of thing matters to you).

In your incredibly popular TEDx talk which has now been viewed over 2 million times, you describe having multiple 'selves' that sometimes conflict with each other. How can people develop healthier communication between their different 'selves' when they experience internal conflict, especially with the parts of themselves that are hardest to accept?

There are so many good answers to this question, so I’ll stick with my own experience. The single most important thing to know or believe or even just pretend to believe, is that every part of my self is me. No matter how mean or destructive a part may seem. They are all me, and they all want me to thrive, even if their idea of “thriving” is a little unbalanced or twisted.

When I acknowledge and accept all my parts–every voice in my head, every impulsive urge–as a real and valid part of myself, not phony characters, outside influences, or cruel invaders, then we can have honest, loving, useful, productive dialogue. This is what I call Unconditional Welcome - the idea that absolutely everything in my body, mind, heart, and spirit is entirely acceptable as is. That doesn’t mean that I give in to my impulses, or let distorted perspectives guide my choices. There are certainly boundaries to hold, and improvements to make. But they begin with acceptance of what is. Always.

Now, there are some different schools of thought on this, and I’ve experimented with some of them. I’ve practiced regarding my trickier parts as flimsy, illusory inventions of my own fear; I’ve practiced regarding the destructive ones as malicious outsiders; and I’ve experimented with the idea that perhaps my body contains multiple consciousnesses. And it is of zero concern to me whether one or all or any of these ideas are factually true. I am not convinced it is knowable, or important to know. I practice on a usefulness-only basis. If an idea is helpful to me, I use it. When it ceases to be helpful, I toss it.

For me, I found the usefulness of other frameworks to be limited in a way that Unconditional Welcome isn’t. So I stick with that one. It is simple and deep, and graspable without a lot of complex ideology involved. The idea is: you are entirely worthy of welcome exactly as you are. Including the flaws. Including the dark and twisted stuff. Including the fear and pain and failure. Everything that is must be accepted as it is, because it is.

Sometimes I am asked how to do that, or why to do that, and all I can say is: what’s the alternative? Show me another way to be and I’ll try it. I mean that. Until then, as far as I can tell, being has to start where you are, as you are. And my goodness, I’m grateful for that.

Can you briefly explain what you mean when you say that empathy is amoral?

Yes! This is essential to Unconditional Welcome. Empathy is the practice of perspective-taking. To try on another perspective, we must be curious, and to be curious, we must be non-judgmental. Even anti-judgmental. Why? When we embrace what we believe to be right, and reject what we believe to be wrong, we mess up our view. To receive ourselves and one another in our totality, we have to drop the evaluation altogether.

Important to note: I am not saying that “good” and “bad” don’t exist. I’m saying that, because they are relative, they are unreliable measuring devices.

Recall the parable about the farmer who had to set his sick horse free. His neighbors said, “oh how sad, what bad news” but the farmer said, “might be good, might be bad, we’ll see.” A few days later the horse returned rested and well, with twelve wild horses following behind him. The neighbors congratulated him, “you must be happy for such good news” and he said, “we’ll see.” When his son broke his leg training the new horses, the neighbors were back to their chatter, but the farmer insisted, “we’ll see.” Then a war broke out and all able-bodied men had to fight, but his son’s broken leg saved him. The farmer’s neighbors, having learned nothing, congratulated him again… the story goes on but you get it.

Rather than calling things good or bad, right or wrong, I evaluate them in terms of their helpfulness or usefulness toward a specific aim. When I find someone’s actions or beliefs contrary to my own, I ask, “what is the role this action or belief is playing for them? How does this serve them, help them, protect them?” When I consider the functionality of a person’s decisions in their own life, I’m often gifted a heap of insight–not just about them, but about myself, the moment, the world.

Now, this is a practice, not an ideal state of being. Moral concerns are real concerns, and there are undoubtedly moments when moral judgments MUST be made. Amorality is a tool I use to stretch my ability to see and understand another person in a moment. Removing our moral compass for the duration of an inquiry is akin to removing one’s clothes before a bath; we wouldn’t live our entire lives in the nude, but it’s pretty important in the bath or we can’t do what we came to do.

You emphasize that empathy is crucial for building relationships between communities, companies, and consumers. Can you share an example of how practicing empathy has helped bridge the gap between communities or groups that initially seemed disconnected or at odds?

Sure. I once conducted an ethnography for a major art museum, in order to help them better connect with their local community. Like a lot of classical art institutions, the museum had a strong upper class membership, but was itself physically located in a financially depressed area, creating a tension around who the museum intended to serve.

In designing the inquiry, I ask the client to delay the question of how we might inspire their neighboring community to become members, and instead, to ask first what role the museum is already playing to the people nearby. (This is empathy practice, by the way: to resist the urge to figure out what I might do to bring you closer to me, and instead to be curious about where you are now.)

What we found amazed us. My client’s local, non-paying neighbors used the museum’s lawn, gardens, and structures for family reunions, wedding proposals, fitness classes, photo shoots, meditation groups. To them, the museum already functioned as a community space, a betterment space, a contemplative space, perhaps even a spiritual space. Their disconnect happened at the entrance to the buildings. Inside, the neighbors didn’t feel invited to participate. So we knew how to begin.

My team worked to bring that same sense of belonging, ease, and ownership their neighbors felt on the lawn, into the museum, and it worked. The insights we gained during the ethnography allowed us to go beyond programming choices and really look at what welcoming is made of. Entryways were reimagined. Membership was restructured. Sightlines were designed to affirm, reflect, and celebrate visitors as they moved through the spaces. We identified and dismantled the ways the institution's norms and legacy practices had been designed to humble and silence guests, and we chose to uplift them instead.

You describe feedback as something that should happen 'shoulder to shoulder' rather than 'eye to eye.' How can individuals shift their approach to feedback to make it more collaborative, especially in high-stakes or emotionally charged situations?

I have a strong beef with common feedback practices, especially in personal relationships, as they tend to consist of “my view of you vs. your view of me.” In my experience, this gives little opportunity for common ground, as the two points of view definitely have no overlap.

In collaboration, in discovery, and in creativity, this is a benefit. We ask, “what do you see that I don’t?” to get more insight, more visibility. But there are moments, like the feedback moment, where the distance between perspectives might feed conflict. At those times, we might first ask, “what are we facing together?” In a performance review, we are facing the goal together. In a creative critique, the work. And in a personal conflict, we face our future together.

Once we are shoulder to shoulder, we are set up to serve our shared aim. And that aim helps us choose what and how to share. All of my thoughts and feelings are not useful to the aim, after all. And this gets in the way when we are face to face. When we are eye to eye–literally or figuratively–there can be an intimacy which invites some to share openly, and prompts others to cover and protect, creating a hundred new ways things can go sideways. Shoulder to shoulder gives us both structure and emotional distance–two things which support safety.

You’ve highlighted the distinction between a person’s ‘climate’—their enduring characteristics—and their ‘weather’—the temporary states we observe in the moment. How can we train ourselves to be more aware of this distinction in our everyday interactions and avoid the pitfalls of rushing to judgment based on immediate impressions?

When I’m teaching, I often ask people to compare their current state–their feelings, mood, decision-making, mindset–to what they know of themselves, and I invite them to give it a numerical rating, from 1 to 10, with 1 being entirely as expected, and 10 being completely unrecognizable. For extra-credit, they might also consider why they are feeling so close, or far, from their baseline.

It is a super simple check in that, when done regularly, builds my awareness that what I regard as “me” is not a fixed thing. My traits are not a static fact, and neither are anyone else’s. If I am intimately in touch with the causes and conditions of my state, I’m much more likely to be curious about the causes and conditions of others’. And practicing with myself first is great because, firstly, I have unlimited access to myself; I can be vigilantly, courageously honest with myself in a way I could never ask or expect from anyone else. And secondly, knowing my wiggly nature reminds me that, even when I do jump to judgment about someone else, it more likely reveals something going on with me than any hard fact about them.

I really like your observation that "What I meant, what I said, what you heard, and what you understood are 4 different things in every communication. When things go well, they are four similar things. When they don’t, they are worlds apart." How can we become more mindful of the moments when our tone or technique distorts what we’re trying to communicate, and what steps can we take to repair misunderstandings in real-time?

Firstly, it is great to build a reflection step into an exchange, even if things seem to be going well. That sounds like, “what I am hearing is…” or “can you tell me what that sounds like to you?” It may feel redundant or awkward, but hearing a restatement can do a lot to understand another person’s world. It’s a delivery confirmation that corrects all kinds of trouble.

That said, prevention beats correction every time. To keep things from going sideways, consider the other person’s state of mind, emotional landscape, current “weather’, and cultural norms before communicating… What might they be able to hear and receive right now? How might your message land with them in this moment? If you don’t have a clue, then the first step is obvious: ask. Learn more about their world before attempting to deliver your POV. It may slow down your exchange, but informing yourself first helps your message get through, or better–it might transform your own perspective with a deeper understanding of theirs.

What are the best ways for people to explore your research and current projects? Are there particular platforms or social media channels you suggest for staying up-to-date with your work?

www.othersunlimited.com

https://www.instagram.com/othersunlimited/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/others-unlimited/