Personal Branding & Leadership Coaching

Empathy is a quality that is integral to most people's lives - and yet the modern world makes it easy to lose sight of the feelings of others. But almost everyone can learn to develop this crucial personality trait, says Roman Krznaric.

 

Make a habit of "radical listening"

"What is essential,' wrote Marshall Rosenberg, psychologist and founder of Non-Violent Communication, "is our ability to be present to what's really going on within - to the unique feelings and needs a person is experiencing at that very moment."

 

Listening out for people's feelings and needs - whether it is a friend who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer or a spouse who is upset at you for working late yet again - gives them a sense of being understood.

 

29 June 2015
Roman Krznaric 

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathy
It's the solution to everything, and despite what it looks like, we have more of it than we have ever had in the history of the our civilization.

Do we really have more empathy than ever before?

Think about it. Not so long ago, being treated as less than human based on your race, gender or sexual orientation was widely considered acceptable. Some were murdered and some were denied freedom, some were ignored and others were considered unnatural perversions.

 

These kinds of atrocities still occur, but our response to them, to a large extent has changed. I know there are still racists, homophobic and misogynists, but large portions of the population do not accept or encourage these actions. Terrible things that used to go ignored are now brought into the spotlight where we can engage with them from across the world.

Why is empathy the solution?

When we are able to truly see others the way they see themselves, we understand what made them who they are, it becomes impossible to continue to see them as "the other" and bridges can begin to form where walls once existed. Trust can begin to form and interdependent relationships will develop as a result. 

Via Edwin Rutsch

A Customer Empathy Map is an incredible tool that helps organizations to unlock greater power in the customer experience. It can be used by itself or be used in conjunction with other cx tools including customer journey maps, customer personas, service blueprints, motivation matrix, mind maps and more.

This human-centered design tool helps you to obtain great clarity and understanding of how to get into the hearts and minds of your customers. You dramatically increase your individual emotional intelligence about customers when you use a Customer Empathy Map. This enables you with the opportunity to raise organizational emotional intelligence.

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathy has gone mainstream. Now more than ever, parents and teachers are trying to foster empathy in kids, and citizens are advocating for a society and for leaders who are more empathic. But why are some people more empathic than others, and what is the best way to cultivate empathy?

Being empathic means being able to sense someone else’s emotions, and imagine what they might be thinking or feeling. Previous research has found that people with certain personality traits, such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, are more empathic. And we can increase our empathy by practicing mindfulness, listening actively, or reading fiction, among other things.

 

Via Edwin Rutsch

5 Talks on Empathy That Will Change How You Connect and Create
The world might always have a shortage in empathy.

To understand someone’s worldview that is foreign to yours is the hard work of being human. We need space to critically think and also have the support of people who possess a compassionate understanding so that our assessments aren’t entirely self-serving.

Empathy is a conscious choice—a decision to hit pause on our emotions, say hello to our hidden biases, and acknowledge the information that we’re not seeing or are choosing to ignore.

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathy is defined as the ability to “feel along with” another person. It is to “walk a mile in another person’s shoes,” and it is a skill that needs cultivating if we are going to design interfaces and applications that become part of our users’ everyday life.

 

To do this is to step out of our collective bubbles and into the heads of the people for whom we are designing. It takes a good amount of effort, but is always well worth it. 

 

Jon C. Wretlind

Graphic Design and Web Development

Via Edwin Rutsch

 

Why Practice Empathy?

Why should you explicitly work to enhance your ability to empathize with others?

• You will be more likely to treat the people you care about the way they wish you would treat them.
• You will better understand the needs of people around you.
• You will more clearly understand the perception you create in others with your words and actions.
• You will understand the unspoken parts of your communication with others.
• You will better understand the needs of your customers at work.
• You will have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work.
• You will be able to more accurately predict the actions and reactions of people you interact with.
• You will learn how to motivate the people around you.
• You will more effectively convince others of your point of view.
• You will experience the world in higher resolution as you perceive through not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you.
• You will find it easier to deal with the negativity of others if you can better understand their motivations and fears. Lately when I find myself personally struggling with someone, I remind myself to empathize and I immediately calm myself and accept the situation for what it is.
• You will be a better leader, a better follower, and most important, a better friend.

Chad Fowler

Via Edwin Rutsch

Too rarely in our schools do we give our students a chance to prepare for the leadership roles we need them to take on someday. This role-playing exercise was a reminder that empathy isn’t only about social-emotional skill-building. It’s also a way to envision yourself in another person’s position — in a leadership position. You can’t aspire to be the mayor if you haven’t had practice thinking like a mayor. And English class is as good a place as any for that to happen.

Empathy isn’t only about social-emotional skill-building. It’s also a way to envision yourself in another person’s position — or in a leadership position.

I’ve been thinking about empathy a lot these days, as I finish the first year of a doctoral program that has me temporarily out of the classroom. This spring, my graduate school dean challenged my classmates and me to come up with a set of light lift, practical activities that a teacher can use in any setting to build empathy in students.

 

In response to the challenge, I created a series of activities that put middle and high school students in the hot seat as important decision-makers. I designed the activities to be implemented as “do now’s,” the five- to 10-minute exercises that many teachers use to start class.

 

Matt Presser

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathy
At its simplest, empathy is the awareness of the feelings and emotions of others. It’s the link between us and others, because it is how we as individuals understand what others are feeling as if we were feeling it ourselves.

 

We all empathise with others; when you know someone is feeling low by their body language or when you are told a sad story and imagine yourself in that position. Some are more empathic than others, some do their best to ignore it or at least choose their moments to acknowledge it.

 

Via Edwin Rutsch

I have seen a lot of versions of the Empathy Map since we created it so many years ago, and they vary widely. The Empathy Map was created with a pretty specific set of ideas and is designed as a framework to complement an exercise in developing empathy.

 

While the success of the Empathy Map is exciting and makes us very happy, a lot of the thinking has gotten lost in translation over the years, and the various versions that have proliferated across the web have somewhat degraded the original concept.

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathic people feel the pain of others acutely. Is it possible to be too empathic? Could feeling too deeply for someone else’s pain or sorrow actually hurt you?   

Indeed, too much empathy can be debilitating. When we become too distressed about the suffering of others, we don’t have the cognitive and emotional resources available to do much to help them. Having compassion, a cognitive understanding how they’re feeling, is better for our own well-being and the well-being of those in need.

 

Via Edwin Rutsch

Learn more about empathy, being aware of the feelings and emotions of others, and experiencing them for ourselves through the power of imagination.

 

Empathy is, at its simplest, awareness of the feelings and emotions of other people. It is a key element of Emotional Intelligence, the link between self and others, because it is how we as individuals understand what others are experiencing as if we were feeling it ourselves.

 

Empathy goes far beyond sympathy, which might be considered ‘feeling for’ someone. Empathy, instead, is ‘feeling with’ that person, through the use of imagination.

Via Edwin Rutsch

Leadbetter describes 'systems and empathy' as the two categories of ingredients that combine to make brilliant cities:

Systems for process, methods, reliability, scale, efficiencies and uniting disparate components with a common purpose.
Empathy as in affinity, human connection, insight, and rapport - in order to understand, come together, find common ground, share and exchange.

A lack of systems leads to chaos, and a lack of empathy leads to incompatibility, discord, coldness. Perkin's simple chart (below) visualises this dynamic.

Via Edwin Rutsch

The ‘core conditions’ are basically attitudes that the counsellor displays that show acceptance of the client, valuing them as a human being of worth.

Empathy
The first condition is called empathy, sometimes referred to as a frame of reference. Try this experiment: with a friend, look at the same object, or the view out of the window. Do you see the same thing?

Probably not; the reason is that we all have our own perception of the world. The counsellor tries to understand the thoughts and the feelings as the client experiences them , sometimes referred to as ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’.

Via Edwin Rutsch

All seven emotional competencies are critical and interrelated. As you can see, empathy is at the very foundation of the Boomerang Leadership Framework, and the rest of the pyramid builds on this fundamental emotional competence. This becomes especially clear in the case of the Uber CEO. Kalanick’s lack of empathy in this specific incident may have been a critical factor

 

How powerful can empathy really be?

To our astonishment, Kalanick treated his driver like an adversary or almost like an enemy. Unfortunately this happens far too often, both in business and even in personal life, when empathy is lacking. On the other hand, empathy can change behavior in a very powerful way, as can be seen in the following example from WWI.

 

Reiner Lomb,

Via Edwin Rutsch

Are We Living in the Age of Empathy?
If you think you’re hearing the word “empathy” everywhere, you’re right. It’s now on the lips of scientists and business leaders, education experts and political activists.

 

But there is a vital question that few people ask: How can I expand my own empathic potential? Empathy is not just a way to extend the boundaries of your moral universe. According to new research, it’s a habit we can cultivate to improve the quality of our own lives.

Via Edwin Rutsch