SKILL 8

Empathy

WHAT IS IT?

Empathy is the ability to “understand, be aware of, be sensitive to, and vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another,” according to Webster’s (1993) dictionary. The key to effectively applying this skill lies in learning how to give others accurate feedback on what they are feeling and why.

Empathy is the ability to “read” others by getting into resonance with them. The first step is to respectfully focus your attention on the person, seeking to truly listen and understand his or her actions and emotions. It requires applying the same level of awareness that you developed in building your emotional self-awareness and following with genuine curiosity the same lines of inquiry about others—What are they feeling now? How strongly? Why do they feel that way?

Our empathic capabilities begin to emerge when we first learn to distinguish between ourselves and others. As humans, we can look in the mirror and recognize ourselves. Most other animals do not have that capacity. In order to exercise our empathic skills, we must be aware of the differences between ourselves and other people. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. In sympathy we lose that critical distance and become so identified with someone else that we automatically feel the same way that he or she is feeling. If he or she is upset, we become similarly upset. If he or she is highly motivated and gung ho, so are we, and though we don’t necessarily know why, it’s literally because the other person is. This can be very good when we need to respond together to a common challenge, because sympathy is a critical component of loyalty and camaraderie. On the other hand, when it lacks independence, sympathy can degrade into codependency. We lose our objectivity, and with it goes our helpfulness.

Healthy empathy is vital to the ability to develop and maintain deep and lasting interpersonal relationships. It is also at the heart of a well-functioning workplace, community, and family. When we engage empathically, we are motivated to pay attention to other people. We attend to them by noticing their communications from multiple dimensions—by noticing what they are saying verbally as well as tonally and by noticing their nonverbal communications.

Judith Flury and William Ickes (2001, p. 114) state that the “ability to accurately infer the specific content of other people’s thoughts and feelings represents the fullest expression of a perceiver’s empathic skills.”

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT EMPATHY?

In today’s increasingly fast-paced world, empathy becomes more important every day. Paying sufficient attention to other people may take a bit more time up-front, and it definitely takes more commitment and motivation. However, practicing empathy pays off because it leads to dramatically more accurate communications. Productivity is enhanced and conflict is reduced. As Stein and Book state, “When you make an empathic statement, even in the midst of an otherwise tense or antagonistic encounter, you shift the balance. A contentious and uneasy interchange becomes a more collaborative alliance” (2011, p. 112).

Collaborative alliances have resiliency that elevate their strength and productivity. The first step in creating a collaborative climate is empathic interaction. Certainly, it is the beginning of building trust. When you are helping others resolve conflict, your empathic comments will open new lines of communication and bring to the discussion the flexibility that is needed to resolve any concerns. Furthermore, demonstrations of empathy are essential skills you model to the others involved in the conflict.

Scientists are exploring the connection between empathy and our evolution as humans. Natalie Angier reports in the Denver Post that researchers were watching the expression of empathy in chimpanzees in zoos. She writes that the “emotion most akin to gravity, the sensation that keep the affairs of humanity on track as surely as the Earth wheels around the Sun, is empathy: the power to recognize the plight of another and to take on that burden as though it were built to order” (1995, p. 2A).

In a world filled with negotiation challenges, we need all the help we can get. One powerful strategy is to use empathy in the communication. Certainly, advice is more persuasive if delivered with empathy.

Each of the emotional intelligence skills we focus on in this book influences the others, and the extent to which our skills in empathy are developed is intimately connected with skills such as emotional self-awareness, self-regard, reality testing, and self-actualization. As Lane (2000) states, “The ability to be aware of one’s own emotions probably derives from input from others such as caregivers. Over time the representations of the experiences of the self and others become progressively differentiated from one another. With development, the ability to be accurately attuned to the emotional state of others is probably a function of the ability to draw on one’s own emotional experience, which itself is a function of how these emotional experiences were represented and communicated to others in the past” (p. 184).

HOW CAN WE BUILD EMPATHY?

image Learn to read body language. Attend to a person’s facial expressions, breathing, posture, and tonality; then match his or her physical state in your own body and see how it feels to you! This is an easy way of getting into resonance.

A key factor in increasing our empathy includes forming an intention to pay attention to others. This calls for exercising our motivation to really listen and understand what is being expressed by those seeking to communicate with us, rather than projecting our interpretation of reality on them. This and the other strategies listed below are excellent to use with your coaching or team clients.

TRANSFORMATIONAL BENEFITS

Few of us enjoy fighting, but one of the surest ways we stir up conflict is through misunderstanding what another person intended to say. Of course, we can blame the other person, but the most effective and happiest strategy is for us to take personal responsibility for the effectiveness of the communication. Step one is to listen empathically. Not only will we get a more accurate read on what someone is seeking to tell us, but we will in all likelihood help the person to become clearer about what he or she is seeking to say.

For example, Stephanie is carefully listening to Tom describe a difficult situation with one of his customers. Periodically she gives him feedback by repeating both what she is hearing him say and how he seems to feel about it. “So they ordered two thousand units on Thursday and then called up Tuesday morning after they had shipped, to cut it down to six hundred? Man, you must have felt angry—as well as discouraged.”

Tom knew he was feeling angry about this inconsiderate behavior and all the hassles it was going to cause him, but he hadn’t yet acknowledged consciously that he felt discouraged because the loss in volume meant he still hadn’t made his quota. Stephanie’s reflection can help him develop a more effective response to his challenge because it requires different kinds of resources to rebound from discouragement than from anger.

image STAR PERFORMER

Mother Teresa, as she is lovingly known around the world, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. She felt a deep calling to serve in the ministry of Christ, so at eighteen she joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. In 1950, Mother Teresa received permission to start her own order, “The Missionaries of Charity,” whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and is well known for the unquestioning care and compassion she gave to so many in painfully poor circumstances.

image REEL PERFORMER

In Terms of Endearment, many of the actors worked empathically with the challenge of a young mother dying from cancer. Even Jack Nicholson’s character, who was most inclined to be a curmudgeon, became an empathic and helpful neighbor. This greatly expanded his connection with and appreciation for life, as he was able to experience a wider variety of his own feelings more deeply.