Possibly the single most important skill if you want to understand the people in your teams and their behaviours. This also makes it arguably THE most transferable skill with regards to your personal and family life.
To call ’empathy’ a skill is too much of a simplification. It is rather the outcome of using a whole bunch of different skills. It is also the least ‘completable’ skill there is as its success isn’t just dictated by your abilities but more by every other person on the planet’s experiences. So long as people are having new experiences, your skill set that enables you to be empathetic will have to keep evolving.
So what is empathy? For me, it is really important that we start with what it isn’t. It is NOT sympathy. Sympathy is a step in the right direction and I would go so far as to argue that if you can’t be sympathetic, you definitely can’t be empathetic but, sympathy and empathy are very different.
The difference is subtle but has a profound effect on those involved.
Most people are familiar with phrases like ‘put yourself in their shoes’ or ‘don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes’. These come close to describing empathy but actually describe sympathy more accurately.
In both these examples, we are told to put ourselves in someone else’s position or even into someone else’s shoes. Empathy has nothing to do with you and your experiences though. It is to do with the other person, in their own shoes. What we need to understand is that to be empathetic, we have to judge a situation from the other person’s frame of reference, not our own. Using their experiences to guide us the way they have guided them.
Knowing how we would feel in their situation may well be useful (and it may be all we have to work with) but they may feel completely different for any number of reasons and your sympathy could end up feeling patronising or could demonstrate a lack of understanding.
Demonstrating true empathy has two fantastic benefits for you as a leader. Number one is that when your team (or friends and family) need you the most, they feel like you truly understand what they are going through. They have to explain less, justify little and it is as though you are already a part of the conversation they are having in their own heads. Number two, is that in order to get to this level of understanding, you have to build genuine, honest, deep and meaningful relationships with those around you. This is not only enjoyable, it means that you are more likely to be there for someone before they know they need help, rather than taking a purely reactive approach to things.
This can be hard. Building relationships takes effort and energy. This is why it is sensible to nurture those which are most important to you and be prepared to distance yourself from the people who don’t encourage you to be your best.
Have you thought about empathy like this before? Have you thought about empathy at all? What do you think is more important, sympathy or empathy? Drop some comments or send me a message – there is so much more to be said!
Keep your eyes open for my next blog which looks at instant gratification and ties in nicely as an example of the difference between superficial and deeper emotional connections.
Hope you enjoyed the read and remember
#communication_is_king #understanding_is_everything
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