Empathy is then demonstrated by listening, truly listening. That's where most of us struggle. Are you listening with your ears? What is being said and what tone is being used?
Is the response crafted so that the real answer is veiled for protection? Listen with your eyes. What is the person doing with his or her body while speaking? UCLA Professor Emeritus Albert Mehrabian says the things we say account for only seven percent of the total message that people receive. The other 93 percent of the message that we communicate when we speak is contained in our tone of voice and body language.
One of the four traits of the customer service masters is empathy. In this customer service training video, author/speaker Don R. Crawley shows seven ways to improve your empathy.
In practical, understandable terms, he explains the importance of empathy, the benefits to you in being more empathetic, and how to develop a stronger sense of empathy.
Can you empathize with those who work for you, around you and those you report to?
While many leaders, particularly those who might be labeled the ‘command and control’ type seem to think that empathy is a negative; I think that it is an important habit for any Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance practitioner to not only practice but also master.
Recently there were a couple of articles in the New York Times (NYT) that discussed this character trait and I found them useful to consider for the leadership toolkit of the CCO or compliance profession.
For example, psychopaths on the extreme end of the spectrum lack one of the most important qualities to strong and effective leadership: empathy.
If you can’t relate to others and don’t have a high degree of emotional intelligence, you’re not in a good position to guide other people.
But if you’re on the less extreme end of the psychopath spectrum, you can still exhibit empathy while also possessing psychopathic qualities that present an advantage in terms of leadership.
Earlier in the day, talking about the continuing need to be creative, Evan believes ‘fun’ and ‘empathy’ are two core values which enable his business to move forwards in the right way.
‘We get into groups of ten people to talk about how we feel,’ he said. ‘It’s about empathy and trying to understand the world through other people’s perspectives.
‘It’s about the importance of listening. We don’t do that enough. Sometimes I’m so focused on what I’m going to say next, that I’m not listening. I’m really involved in that.’ Evan has a refreshing approach to running the company, now worth $19 billion and employing 450 people, (last year, the number stood at ten).
‘A key value for me, is about having fun or being playful. Everyone’s so serious in technology.’
And while one might believe his job means he is kept wide awake at night, Evan disputes this and says there are only two things that might get in the way.
The work, led by Robert Eres from the University's School of Psychological Sciences, pinpointed correlations between grey matter density and cognitive and affective empathy.
The study looked at whether people who have more brain cells in certain areas of the brain are better at different types of empathy.
"People who are high on affective empathy are often those who get quite fearful when watching a scary movie, or start crying during a sad scene. Those who have high cognitive empathy are those who are more rational, for example a clinical psychologist counselling a client,"
Empathy, or the ability to experience and align with the thoughts/emotions/experiences of others, is what Annie McKee (author of Primal Leadership) believes is a fundamental construct to leadership. As she explains:
Empathy is a competency that allows you to read people…This isn’t as easy as it seems. Sometimes, the smartest resisters often look like supporters, but they’re not supportive at all. They’re smart, sneaky idea-killers...
Empathy is what separates a good leader from a great leader. Great leaders need empathy in order to show their people that they care for their wants, needs, and development
It’s no secret that the “softer” personality traits aren’t as valued in organizations. Empathy, self-reflection, and goodwill take the backseat to efficiency, results, and profits. What would you say if I told you that fostering the former skills would actually improve the latter?
Jane Dutton, one of the founders of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship and University of Michigan Roth School of Business, has been studying and researching compassion in the workplace. Her research shows that when you train in mindfulness, it has an immediate impact on the quality of your relationships with your colleagues.
Empathy, as it’s been talked about recently, is most often framed as something important to practice for our users. It’s important to make sure we’re helping our users get the content they desire or get through the flow of our site to do what’s important to them.
What is getting lost, though, is that empathy is just as important for us to practice as we interact with our team members—all of us, developers, designers, writers, and project managers, can practice empathy as we work with our teammates.
Empathy is just as much about our interactions with each other while we build our sites, as it is about how we treat our users.
As I’ve thought more about this, I’ve come up with a few ways to practice empathy with my teammates.
People don’t know what they want, we have to understand them, not ask them! Leading with empathy is not a reactive process, but rather pro-active. To understand this lets look at the style of management, it’s totally reactive and expects you to do what you were told to do.
If you fail, the manager reacts and often the manager actually notices that you are about to fail and allows you to fail. Then they react even more and the working environment becomes even more toxic.
Empathy is a vital component for corporate tweeting. "In our view, empathy consists of three components: reassurance, authenticity and emotional connection. Empathy goes beyond simply solving a problem. It involves making a customer feel valued," the HBR study noted.
Why companies like Starbucks are ranked so low on Twitter?
The reason behind this may be because inquiries at Starbucks Twitter account are responded by a presumed bot that simply provides users an e-mail address, idigitaltimes.com reported.
These companies need to spruce up their social media strategies, the report concluded.
Many people and a host of commentators instinctively recoiled at the callous management practices described in a scathing New York Times article last month about Amazon. So did Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive. In a memo to Amazon employees, he wrote, “Our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”...
For three years my colleagues and I at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism crisscrossed the U.S. and travelled to other nations asking business leaders what attributes executives must have to succeed in today’s digital, global economy...
Frankly, when empathy kept coming up in our research, I was surprised. All of the people we interviewed were serious business executives. Empathy was not the first virtue I associated with the rough and tumble of today’s highly competitive business world. I expected to hear about boldness, perseverance, and toughness.
So, given our overall workplace culture, where taking the time to connect personally is seen as a distraction from getting business done, how can you add more empathy to your leadership style without sacrificing productivity?
Here are a few simple methods we’ve developed at Business Improv to help our clients lead more empathetically. With this list, I’ve seen leadership styles transform and relationships strengthen, and witnessed the great personal and organizational benefits that resulted.
1. Be present in the moment. 2. Maintain eye contact. 3. Really listen. 4. Repeat back, so employees know they’re heard. 5. Focus on what someone else wants.
Since the Industrial Revolution there have been three central themes in management: execution, expertise, and now empathy, according to Rita McGrath.
According to Psychology Today, Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. We can all use empathy to build a customer base that leads to long-term success. Here’s why:
Insensitive leaders are tolerated in good times but only empathetic leaders can be confident the team will rally in crisis.
Often I am asked if empathy is a desirable leadership trait. My response is always emphatically “yes!”. Empathetic leaders motivate others by cultivating relationships.
In this Harvard Business Review article, theHappy Warrior is the leader who combines empathy and strength. However, it’s a rare breed of leader who does this intuitively.
Leaders naturally fall into one of two categorizes -- task-focused leaders (warrior) or people-focused leaders (happy).
Task-focused leaders score high on strength. Strength is the nuts and bolts of leadership. It’s the determination and perseverance needed to set a vision into motion and achieve results.
People-focused leaders score high on empathy. They exude warmth and understanding, the human side of leadership. This is how they connect and build rapport with others.
What is an interactive business without empathy? What is a business team without an understanding of the employees’ sentiments? What is an organization serving people’s needs without an actual acknowledgement of their needs? What is a company without an understanding of how their service will actually benefit people and their well being?
A business without empathetic traits is a hollow one. Why? Because empathy is a characteristic that most successful businesses inherently require.
A business that demonstrates the capacity to see things from the point of view of the consumer, to put themselves in the consumer’s shoes, is a multidimensional business, a business that can get an accurate idea of consumer’s needs.
Moreover, an “empathetic business” is already putting themselves in a place for success by just genuinely caring for the consumer in this way.
"If you have no ability to empathize, then it’s difficult to give people feedback, and it’s difficult to help people improve. Everything becomes harder,"said Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder and chief executive of Slack.
When we talk about the qualities we want in people, empathy is a big one.
If you can empathize with people, then you can do a good job. If you have no ability to empathize, then it’s difficult to give people feedback, and it’s difficult to help people improve. Everything becomes harder.
One way that empathy manifests itself is courtesy.
Although there are many reasons why empathy is so important, the core reason is quite simple: ultimately, everything in business comes down to relationships.
Training for Empathy
Some of the tools we can employ to develop our empathy skills include the following:
Try to be really curious about other people, imagining what might be going in their lives
Take time to consider what we have in common with people and pay more attention to that, instead of focusing on what makes us different
During conversation, try to ask more questions and spend more time listening
Differentiated customer experiences can’t be created without an emotionally intelligent approach on the part of the business. Rhonda Basler, Customer Engagement Director for Hallmark Business Connections, shares practical tips to foster empathy in frontline employees.
Empathetic leaders share an intuitive sense for what’s going on in the world that helps them identify new opportunities faster than their competitors. They get people to care about their vision by making it a shared vision.
They start by tapping into the psychology of their target audience, seeking their feedback, and scanning for changes in thought or behavior.
When you go a step beyond just hearing words to actively listening to customers, suppliers and employees, your firm will gain a gigantic advantage in creating products that will be in demand.
As leaders, we need to make emotional connections with our target audience if we hope to influence their thoughts and actions. One very important way to connect positively with people is with what I call powerful empathy....
Here are eight key empathy skills you can practice to improve your ability to connect with others:
Curiosity: Take the time to be curious about what other people think. Try to fully understand their point of view.
“Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person’s feelings and of one’s own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.” (Preston, de Waal)
Empathy is more than just seeing the world from the customers’ perspective. It is having the emotional intelligence to choose the right emotional response from a range of potential emotions to improve things for the customer.
Often, organisations believe that Empathy as a soft skill is the preserve of customer-facing staff. Yet Empathy for the customer as a core organisational capability is as relevant for Marketing, HR and the leadership as it is for those who directly serve customers.
Being able to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and seeing the world from their perspective is essential for proposition development, innovation and effective strategizing. In fact, it is a source of customer advantage that most organisations completely fail to embrace.
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