The way companies have developed does not allow people to apply their natural capacity for empathy, says marketer and lecturer Nikolaos Dimitriadis.
“We are all hard-wired to operate through empathy,” he says, “but corporations are built to kill empathy. They are not human-centric.”
Mr Dimitriadis, who was speaking at the advertising festival Dubai Lynx earlier this month, says the so-called scientific management model applied in most businesses is outdated and created for a different, older era of companies and people.
While he does not believe that a fifth of bosses are truly psychopaths, he says they are forced to behave that way to "gain access to promotion and success".
Mr Dimitriadis, author of Neuroscience for Leaders, is a certified neuro-marketer, which means he applies "brain science" to marketing research.
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Suzanne Locke expands on the importance of empathy in modern corporate culture:
When do we develop empathy?
We are all born with the same brain, says Mr Dimitriadis, with 99.9 per cent of DNA the same – then neurons start connecting and creating networks. The first eight months are particularly important, he says.
Is empathy different for different cultures?
Until the age of six, western children show equally high empathy to Asian children, Mr Dimitriadis says, but then it changes – because the western culture focuses on the individual, while traditional Asian societies have emphasised the wider well-being of society.
Which are the most empathetic companies?
Digital firms including Facebook, Google and Netflix top the Empathy Business’ Global Empathy Index, when reviewing their ethics, leadership, culture, brand perception and social media messaging. “These are the companies that retain the best people, create environments where diverse teams thrive,” says study author Belinda Parmar.
So psychopaths are bad for an empathetic culture. Anyone else?
Narcissists also tend to have little empathy and there are signs such self-indulgent admiration is on the rise. A 2015 study on Facebook and narcissism published in the journal Social Networking found that posting, tagging and commenting on photos on Facebook was associated with narcissism for both men and women.
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