Empathy Continued: Head, Heart, and Hands in the Flower Shop
Part two of the empathy series opens with a status report: pickleball lesson number one is complete, Lori liked it, and yes, she's buying the five-lesson package — because unlike her just-get-out-there-and-play husband, she wants the foundations before the bad habits. Which turns out to be a decent metaphor for this whole episode. If you saw people leaving Lori's AIFD Symposium class tapping their head, heart, and hands, this is what that was about: the three types of empathy, and where each one shows up on an ordinary day in a flower shop.
Head: cognitive empathy
Cognitive empathy is putting yourself in someone's shoes and understanding their perspective without feeling their emotions — intellect, perspective-taking, curiosity, and active listening. Think of a triage nurse: she has to understand every patient's situation without taking on every heart attack in the waiting room.
In the shop, it sounds like this. A caller is furious that a delivery hasn't arrived, and your honest first thought is "the driver's ten minutes behind — chill." Cognitive empathy asks why they're panicking: maybe the flowers are for a funeral and they're already grieving, or the surprise recipient is about to leave town. So the response becomes "I can hear how frustrating this is — hold on, I'm going to find out exactly where your order is." No fault admitted; a solution found. Or a customer walks in saying "I have no idea what I want." Without empathy, we lead with "how much do you want to spend?" With it: "No worries — that's why I get paid the big bucks. Who are the flowers for? What's the scoop?" You're reducing their overwhelm and getting them talking. Vonda's reaction says it all: she'd have called that sales training, people 101 — which is exactly the point. We use empathy every day without naming it.
The watch-out: cognitive is the "head" empathy, and used coldly it reads as not caring — psychiatrists note that narcissists can be excellent at cognitive empathy, reading people precisely in order to manipulate them. And in leadership, knowing exactly why your employee is upset while doing nothing about it leaves them less heard, not more.
Heart: somatic empathy
Somatic empathy is when your body mirrors what another person feels — the stomach that tightens at someone else's bad news, the tears at every soldier-homecoming video, the anxiety you feel walking into a tense room. This is Lori's home turf. At Flower Clique photo shoots, she can walk in a day late and feel instantly whether Vonda and Ellie are at odds over an arrangement — nobody has to say a word — and her first move is to check in, calm the room, and get everyone back to "this is about flowers, we've been here before, and we're all going to dinner after."
In the shop, somatic empathy is the radar. A sympathy customer says only "I need something simple," but you hear the tremble in their voice. And it's not always heavy: the man who's proposing tomorrow comes in bouncing, and suddenly you're smiling and bouncing too. The gift of somatic empathy is connection; the risk is absorption. Without boundaries, you pack everyone else's troubles into your backpack and haul them home — exhausting, and it helps no one. Lori's filter, from an earlier podcast that stuck with her: is this something I need to absorb, or can I observe it and let it go? In Sales Prep School terms: after the angry customer, take the walk around the block, drink the Diet Coke, and remind yourself this is not about me.
Hands: compassionate empathy
Compassionate empathy is the all-encompassing kind — it understands (head), feels (heart), and then acts. Think Mother Teresa, Habitat for Humanity, or the shop that donates a weekend's proceeds to a cause it believes in. It doesn't ask "do you need help?" It says "I can see you're overwhelmed — I'm taking this off your plate."
Two shop examples. A widower comes in unable to decide what his wife would have liked. Instead of "she probably liked pink," compassionate empathy sits down and says, "Tell me something about her. What was she like?" — and lets him talk. Vonda got emotional here, because every shop owner knows the truth of it: the family you sit with during grief becomes your customer for life, and so do their kids. Both hosts were shocked at an SAF session when longtime owners admitted they're uncomfortable talking with grieving families — the industry teaches sympathy design beautifully, but rarely teaches the conversation. The second example: a designer who's uncharacteristically falling behind. Compassionate empathy doesn't wait to be asked — it starts processing, cleans her buckets, preps her flowers: "I see you're struggling. You're not alone."
The pitfall is dependency: keep rescuing someone who's learned to be rescued and you're enabling, not helping. Lori borrows Bob Goff's phrase — boundaries, not barriers. "You're having a bad day, I'm right here" is a boundary. Day ten of bad days in a row is a different conversation.
All three live in all of us — Lori leans somatic, Vonda cognitive — and awareness of your tendency is the first step. Next week: the hard, humbling part — examining your empathy blind spots.
Key takeaways
- Head, heart, hands: cognitive empathy understands, somatic empathy feels, compassionate empathy acts.
- Ask "why are they reacting this way?" before responding to angry callers and overwhelmed walk-ins — it changes your script.
- Feel the room, but don't take it home: observe what you don't need to absorb.
- Sitting with a grieving family is some of the most important work a florist does — teach your team the conversation, not just the design.
- Help without enabling: boundaries, not barriers.