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Being empathetic to your customers‘ frustrations and pain points can reveal gaps in the market. The ability to put ourselves in our customers‘ shoes is key to recognizing, sharing and experiencing their emotions. Being empathetic to your customers‘ frustrations and pain points can reveal gaps in the market. Empathy is fundamental to understanding your customers; without it, no amount of analysis, documentation, engineering or management will give you the next big growth idea. Direct observation and engagement with your customers can lead to trends in the buyers’ behavior that unlock unexpected growth opportunities. 1. Observe…to better understand customer behaviors and motivations. Observations reframe possibilities and translate new ideas into great customer experiences. 2. Engage…to quickly prototype and validate ideas by collaborating with your customers to truly understand their pain points and needs...
People took to Twitter, Facebook and Google to share -- and to help -- following the explosions. Experts examine the reasons why we feel the need to connect. Can we empathize beyond our own borders? Even so, questions were quickly raised concerning the nature and scope of the empathy on display, especially considering the attention paid to Boston in the midst of a shocking degree of ongoing violence in a host of foreign nations. “I'm up for us ‘All Being Bostonians Today,’” wrote Gary Younge, a journalist for The Guardian, in a well-received tweet. “But then can we all be Yemenis tomorrow & Pakistanis the day after? That's how empathy works.” Younge made clear that the concern shown to the Boston victims was absolutely warranted, but said he wanted to highlight problems in other places as well.
Is our ‘selective empathy’ as U.S. Guardian columnist Glen Greenwald so astutely put it, limited only to those we can relate to? Only to those who look like us, talk like us, dress like us, and potentially think like us? For all intents and purposes, could have been us?
Are we unable – or unwilling – to feel the same kind of empathy for those unlike us? Iranian best-selling author of Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi, calls the type of universal empathy I’m referring to as 'the shock of recognition.' When, despite the distance, the differences, and the linguistic, cultural and religious divide, you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes and deeply feel for their loss – as if it were yours. That’s how real, conscious empathy works.
A question. What are the limits of human empathy? 3 people were killed and many dozens injured and maimed by the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday. By comparison, many more people are killed by American drones and other weapons of war on a weekly, if not daily basis, across the Middle East and in other parts of the world. The language of "war" and "terrorism" deems these people not human, but rather "targets" and "terrorists" to be "neutralized." The CIA and other organs of the United States government admit that their targeting procedures are imprecise, and that in killing one "terrorist" many more people who are guilty of nothing more than being nearby are also annihilated, broken apart, burned alive, and shattered.
by Chauncey DeVega
For years scientists have been puzzled by those among us who seem to overcome the fear of self-preservation in order to save others. Emma Seppala, the associate director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, is just one of several pioneers in this relatively new field of study. And the way she sees it, the interpersonal connection that occurs during times of crises may one reason why humans have survived thus far. ' Researchers Markus Heinrichs and Bernadette von Dawans of the University of Freiberg, Germany, conducted a study in which male participants were assigned to two groups, one that evoked stress and another that did not. By Tamarra Kemsley
As we age, we can rely more on middle aged friends and family who, studies show, are more empathetic. Understanding empathy is necessary to us as we age. Many times we have discussed the importance of having younger friends. This is so not only because many of our peers have already died, but because younger people also provide more of a challenge for us. They are out in the community, working, interacting with a variety of folks. They bring stimulation of the world out there to an ordinary conversation. And now we learn they have empathy to spare..
By Agnes Herman
img http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing
As usual, the limits of selective empathy, the rush to blame Muslims, and the exploitation of fear all instantly emerge There's nothing wrong per se with paying more attention to tragedy and violence that happens relatively nearby and in familiar places. Whether wrong or not, it's probably human nature, or at least human instinct, to do that, and that happens all over the world. I'm not criticizing that. But one wishes that the empathy for victims and outrage over the ending of innocent human life that instantly arises when the US is targeted by this sort of violence would at least translate into similar concern when the US is perpetrating it, as it so often does (far, far more often than it is targeted by such violence).
Glenn Greenwald:
In this post, Ken Moriyama, an MPP student at the University of Oxford, reports from the Skoll World Forum. ...So what does this all mean and which skill do we need to develop to make it happen? According to Ashoka, empathy is the foundational skill that every individual has to relentlessly cultivate, if he or she hopes to drive impact beyond the sectoral level—direct service or pattern change—and achieve framework change at a global scale.
Evidence shows that empathy is wired into our brains evolutionarily, biochecmically and neurologically. Two scientists join us to discuss the latest research on empathy. Empathy seems like a simple concept and an uncontroversial virtue. People use meditation to try to develop more of it. But empathy has stirred up disagreement about its origins and its nature, and even whether the ability to share the feelings of others is a good thing. Author and essayist Phillip Lopate far prefers the idea of sympathy to empathy. "To me, sympathy suggests a humane concern for others' positions or plights, based partly on a general ethic of compassion for all living things," he writes in his essay "The Limits of Empathy." "Empathy conveys, to my mind, a stickier, more ghoulish shadowing that stems from the delusion that one can actually take on oneself, or fuse with, another's feelings."
Emma Seppala explains how compassionate workplaces are good for employee health and the corporate bottom line.
Managers often mistakenly think that putting pressure on employees will increase performance. What it does increase is stress—and research has shown that high levels of stress carry a number of costs to employers and employees alike...
But there’s a different way. A new field of research is suggesting that when organizations promote an ethic of compassion rather than a culture of stress, they may not only see a happier workplace but also an improved bottom line.
A Halifax girl is allegedly raped by four boys, and her peers use social media to spread a photo of the incident throughout her high school. Haunted by the pain and humiliation, she ends her life. “What is wrong with kids today?” Perhaps the problem is what we are teaching them or, more accurately, what we are not teaching: compassion. CRAIG & MARC KIELBURGER
Western Connecticut State University is holding its second Compassion and Creativity conference Friday and Saturday at the Portuguese Cultural Center in Danbury.
The Compassion and Creativity in the Community symposium takes place at the Portuguese Cultural Center, 65 Sand Pit Road again on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event is focusing on how community leaders and organizations, including those in education and business, can develop an understanding of people’s need for compassion and kindness in today’s busy world.
Why Would Meditation Make Us More Willing to Act Compassionately? At this point, we don’t know exactly why meditation is increasing compassion. My suspicion is that it’s one of two mechanisms. The first has to do with its ability to increase attention. The world is full of distracting stimuli—the game on your iPhone, the replay of a date last night running through your head, and the like—that often prevent us from truly recognizing what’s going on around us. Meditation has been shown to enhance attentional processes, and so it might just be that the people who had been meditating were more likely to notice that the other person was in pain. Another possibility, and the one that I favor, is that one goal of meditation is to break down categories. It’s meant to help individuals realize that everyone is linked and similar in some ways. David DeSteno
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Q: Dear Dr. Fran, my wife and I are worried about our 16-year-old daughter. At times she can be cold, callous, and mean to us. Compassion does not seem to be part of her personality. Can this be taught? Please help us! -Jason E. A: Dear Jason: empathy and compassion are learned best by experience. If the child is treated with warmth, empathy, and compassion, she has a high likelihood of becoming an empathic adolescent and adult. Of course, this empathic relating must begin at birth when the new mom responds to each of her infant’s cries/needs. This warm maternal response should carry through into the early and middle childhood years.
In the spirit of Mark Twain who famously said he never let his schooling interfere with his education, Bill Drayton grew up enthusiastic at school, but not so much about school. He enjoyed a few subjects, but he admits, his energies were in things like, starting a series of newspapers or being an active member of the NAACP. Now, Drayton, who is credited with having coined the phrase “social entrepreneur,” hopes to create a network of global changemakers (empowered with skills embracing empathy, teamwork, leadership and problem-solving) with his organization Ashoka: Innovators for the Public to reshape education all together. For more than a decade, Ashoka has partnered with young people with its Youth Venture program, but it’s only in the past year that it began partnering with schools to introduce the concept of empathy into the curriculum. Dozens of schools in the U.S. are already on board and, according to Drayton, “Last week, Scotland said, this is going to be in all of our schools and even though the Irish Ministry is cutting back, they’ve just made a huge commitment.”
In early January, I wrote a post on six serious ideas for 2013 that included the concept of SED, which is short for serendipity, empathy and discovery... For association leaders committed to building their organizations to thrive in the years ahead, empathy is anything but a threat. Empathy imbues the work of innovation with greater meaning, and surfaces richer insights into the best opportunities to co-create radical new value with passionate stakeholders. Along with serendipity and discovery, empathy is a critical driving force of association success in the years ahead, and now is the time for association leaders to capitalize on its extraordinary power.
by JEFF DE CAGNA
I remain a staunch apostle of capitalism for the singular reason that it encourages the development of talents and the creation of wealth. But in contrast, it lacks a human face; those empathic ethos that reminds us that we rise and fall together as a people. I agree with a columnist Brian Brown when he argued that ‘’the economic and financial systems can be reformed so the poor and struggling earn their daily bread yet retain some dignity in so doing.’’ We need compassionate capitalism to create an empathy society. Today, our society has lost its communal appeal. It was on that sense of community that our African traditional values were once anchored. A man could freely leave his wards in the sole care of a neighbour while he heads for the farm with his wife. Accounts from my grandmother revealed that giving was a fundamental virtue that thrived in these communities. But the story is not the same at present. BY GILBERT ALASA
Watch the live stream of His Holiness the Dalai Lama give his "The Culture of Compassion" talk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Some people respond to feelings of powerlessness by turning to humanitarian aims, but would-be terrorists draw on violent ideologies. Even though a human (or humans) caused the carnage at the finish line, such acts of kindness, as well as a sense of empathy, are actually hard to overcome — even for the terrorists, psychologists say. "A whole industry of propaganda is aimed" at convincing potential terrorists that their intended victims are worthy of death," said Arie Kruglanski, a psychologist at the University of Maryland who has researched the roots of terrorism.
A class brings together students from across Stanford to create and build products for some of the world's poorest people. Over the last decade, 325 Stanford students have participated in Design for Extreme Affordability, a five-month-long course in which the students learn to design, prototype, and build products for some of the world's poorest people. The students have worked together in teams, traveled to 14 countries and worked on 80 projects in collaboration with 22 global partners. Among the many success stories: That word: empathy. Gorodsky: It’s empathy for the human factor — empathy for yourself, for example. For me, coming into this work and getting to work with a remarkable team, I frequently feel humble. I’ve experienced more doubt, more uncertainty — all the things that students talk about. In getting together and working with this team: “I don’t know what he knows. I don’t know what she knows.” And you get through that. And you break through that because you’re really working collaboratively. That goes on with the students. How do you have empathy for someone you’ve never met and have no experience of in the developing world?
A surprisingly consistent body of research exists indicating that conventional medical training actually reducespractitioner empathy. What is worse, the decline in empathy appears even more pronounced at the time that the curriculum shifts towards patient-care activities.
In one study published in 2009 in the journal Academic Medicine entitled, "The devil is in the third year: a longitudinal study of erosion of empathy in medical school," the authors conclude:
It is ironic that the erosion of empathy occurs during a time when the curriculum is shifting toward patient-care activities; this is when empathy is most essential.
Other studies reach similar conclusions....
"Over the last several months, those of us at Start Empathy – along with a core group of Ashoka Fellows, leading educators and partners – have worked to identify, distill, and categorize dozens of promising empathy building insights and activities. In short, we’ve been asking people: “What works?”
What we’ve received ranges from simple tips to group problem solving exercises to teacher training guides, and they all help advance our central goal: unleashing empathy as both an input and output of our education system.
Now we’ve compiled them into our “here’s stuff that works” guide, which we’re calling the Empathy Road Map. It’s by no means a comprehensive picture but rather a strong first step. It’s meant to be a living document – one that our community helps us enhance and refine over time." By Start Empathy
Compassion -- whether the underlying force in individual lives, for crafting new laws, or for teaching students life lessons -- may be one of the key elements of human civilization we take for granted. In a two-day workshop on Compassion and Creativity at the Portuguese Cultural Center, starting Friday and organized by Western Connecticut State University, doctors, educators, clergy, and government leaders examined how to shift the focus from "me to we," how to turn a destructive event into something constructive and how compassion affects the dynamics of the community. Eileen FitzGerald and Robert Miller
Empathy simply put, is the ability to understand the feelings and perspectives of others, and to use that understanding to guide one’s actions. It is critical both to individual human development and to our collective ability to solve problems and build a stronger society. The world is changing - faster than ever before. In this new world of flux, empathy plays a crucial role in innovation, changemaking, and solving entrenched systemic problems. ‘Start Empathy’, aligned with Ashoka’s ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ (EACH) initiative, envisages a community of individuals and institutions dedicated to building a future in which every child masters empathy and other changemaking skills like teamwork, leadership and creativity. ‘Start Empathy’ is not out to build a single programme or curriculum. Rather, we're working to unleash demand for empathy as a core 21st century skill – collaborating with social entrepreneurs, educators, parents, and key players in the media, business, and academic sectors to make empathy as essential as reading and maths in early education.
Fri, Apr 5: Dozens of the regions young minds converged on the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax to learn how to accelerate empathy. It's a two day conference put on by local not-for-profit The Empathy Factory.
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