Excellent.

I had a difficult time when I moved from hands-on work to true consulting, which is trying to help others. In a way, a consultant is a "rented smart friend". We put your interests first, we know stuff you don't, we try to watch out for you for things you wouldn't think about.

Why did I have a hard time? Because I had the wrong model of empathy and caring. Like most of us, my initial model for "how not to be a dick" came from my family. The lessons I learned there lasted a lifetime. They were about empathy, sharing, caring, listening, and so forth. As I got older, I involved myself in larger and larger social groups.

What nobody told me as I grew up, was at the same time I was learning all of these great lessons about being a good person, I was also learning in-group, out-group behavior. Nobody ever looks at that directly. Instead it's always in the context of some greater good. Sure, the SWAT team accidentally set fire and burned down that person's house, but they were doing meth, and the babies needed to be saved. Sure, our family loves others and is kind to others, but we keep the doors locked and we don't make eye contact with people on the street asking for money (or whatever might the case). The idea of being a good person was taught inextricably with the idea of being a social person. Social people have hierarchies and other folks they are wary of. You can't be a human without having in-group, out-group behavior. It's part of the basic package.

So when I got consulting, I tended to view things the same way. You are my friend, we are doing this one thing (say coding). Those folks over there, the marketing dudes? You gotta be careful around them.

I was teaching empathy and caring the same way I was taught. There is really no other way to do it. Not unless you want a society that involves direct violence to organize.

As I saw more and more teams and how organizations actually worked, to make my consulting effective, to be part of the solution instead of just another part of the problem, I had to replace that internal mental model with the doctor model. I am a doctor, I am still a smart rented friend, but I have a lot of patients. In general they are all good and bad in various ways. I have no desire to sort all of that out. Instead, I'll help you as best as I can, and then I won't worry about you again. We are no longer in a tight social group, but neither are you in the out-group. I have learned clinical empathy.

So when I see people argue politics online, or org structure in a big company, I have to back out of being part of their social group and think about being a doctor. Heck, I might agree with you and still tell you that the things you are doing will not help you reach your goals. Or I might find you morally abhorrent and encourage you that this education you're picking up after work will eventually help out in your career a great deal.

What I can't do is sort the world out into some higher-level categories and then pronounce judgment on which people are in which categories and which I agree with and which I don't. Not and do a good job. I can have personal opinions, sure. I keep them to myself. That's part of being a professional.

That's not being cold, that's actually trying to help as many people as possible. To do this any other way is the exclude from helping a huge number of people simply because of my social preferences. I don't feel I have the right to hurt that many people based on my broken-ass brain, which tends to be inconsistent and change-up which groups are I like and which groups I don't like depending on what I had for breakfast.