A few months ago I was leading a day-long program on trust-based selling to 26 men and women at a global market intelligence firm. We were knee-deep in a conversation about empathetic listening as a primary driver of influence.
Listening with empathy is how you earn the right to be right, not to mention how you learn what is deeply valued by the person you want to influence—while building a whole lot of trust in the process.
Keiko Krahnke is Associate Professor of Management; Business Communications at University of Northern Colorado in the Montfort College of Business.
Areas of research interests include spirituality and business, systems thinking, Appreciative Inquiry, and corporate citizenship. Currently interested in learning about human consciousness and teaching empathy and compassion.
She says, Empathy is wholeness and knowing that we are all part of one field and are interconnected. The opposite of Empathy is being trapped in narcissism.
EMPATHY Empathy is the ability to put oneself into someone else’s mind, to truly feel with and for them. And indeed, if we humans are neurologically as Dev Patnaik asserts, then organizations need to be wired to care, too.
This requires an emotional understanding of the sentiments, dreams, desires, and ambitions of their employees and customers.
From a time-management perspective, the community association manager who recognizes resonate empathy at work will spend less time overcoming their own negative emotional state caused by the angry, agitated homeowner and less time having to overcome the communication obstacles caused by initially reacting to the anger and agitation and not the reason for it.
Saving time is all about taking the path of least resistance. Working from a perspective of any negative emotion is all about resistance.
These probably aren't words that you were expecting to see in the same sentence — Harvard Business School and empathy. But as I reflect back on my time as a student there, I've begun to realize that more than anything else, this is one of the the most valuable things that the school teaches...
It's a trait that is sorely lacking at the moment. There's a case to be made that the American political system is suffering at present because empathy has been almost entirely exorcised from within its walls....
The place for me, however, where an appreciation of empathy is most undervalued, is in business.
Empathy is at the foundation of both altruism and collaboration. Thus, while it does consume scarce resources, empathy confers important evolutionary advantages both from the individual’s point of view (cooperation) and from the species’s (altruism.)
Yet, we are witnessing a marked decline in both the ubiquity and utility of empathy. The decline in physical violence is not a good proxy to a supposed rise in empathy: aggression and narcissism merely mutated into non-physical forms enabled by technology.
Whatever happened to empathy?
Where have solidarity, charity,
and compassion gone?
By Sam Vaknin Author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"
“Become the other person and go from there.” It’s the best piece of coaching advice I ever received, coming from Tanouye Roshi, and it applies equally to influence, negotiation, conflict, sales, teaching, and communication of all kinds.
To become the other person is to listen so deeply that our own mind chatter stops; to listen with every pore on our body until we can sense how the other’s mind works. To become the other person is to feel into her emotional state, see through her eyes, think like she thinks, and see how she views us, our proposition, and the situation at hand.
To write it out or read it in serial fashion makes it sound like a lengthy, time-consuming process, but in fact,
deep empathy conveys its insights in a flash, and our ability to empathize deepens with practice, as we learn to quiet our own inner state.
Empathy is the missing ingredient in your social media strategy. Find out how to use empathy to make your social strategy work.
If you have read any social business articles, whitepapers or blogs lately you probably read that you need to have a plan, deploy the technology and engage the users. Such advice barely scratches the surface. It fails to advise how to plan, how to deploy and how to engage. It is like describing the ingredients to a gourmet dessert but failing to explain how to make a mousse.
What guides successful planning, deployment and engagement is something much fuzzier and difficult to nail down: empathy.
What causes this loss of empathy and compassion for others?
First lets define the term empathy as our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion...
Business owners and supervisors that show appropriate empathy toward their employees often catch problems before they get out of control. Yes, empathic supervisors can resolve unempathic employee issues! ..
Now you may be wondering; what does empathy have to do with business? Quite a lot, actually. In fact, some researches (as discussed later) suggest empathy can make or break a business’ success.It is easy to understand why this holds true simply by looking at some of the characteristics that empathetic people tend to possess.
Empathetic people are able to get inside other people’s heads – and this makes it easier for them to relate to others, solve conflicts and present difficult issues in a way that people understand and appreciate.
And in a world where your competitors are just a click away, that ability to empathise is arguably more crucial than ever.
How can empathy assist you at work? Recently, we held a workshop about managing change at work — a place where decisions and hearing others and being heard can feel loaded with additional pressure, making connecting to our source needs and feelings more of a challenge.
Led by Marie Miyashiro, a change management and organization development consultant who works with CCC regularly on Organizational Communications Trainings, with CCC’s Dian Killian, the workshop went through many aspects of workplace challenges and focused on one method of successfully negotiating workplace needs: using empathy.
As for defaults, Karlgaard pointed out that lots of companies and governments have defaulted on loans — sometimes more than onc
e. But defaults are often followed by restructuring of loans, and during those restructuring periods, some companies have done very well, he pointed out.
For now, in these confusing times, he urged U.S. businesses to focus on working smarter, faster and with empathy.
The greatest thing we can do and offer is to be great listeners and have to have empathy for your culture to understand what is the truth.” — John Jay, global executive creative director at W+K
Dev Patnaik, founder and CEO of Jump Associates, maintains that the ability to understand the feelings of your work colleagues is key to innovation and success.
How many leaders do you know (yes, please count them and let me know!) have the ability to understand another person's point of view? What happens at your boardroom table when it comes to differing perspectives?
By the age of two, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person. Sometimes, toddlers will comfort others or show concern for them as early as age two.
So, why do adults in the workplace show little or no empathy to others? Many executives seem to have no concern for the people that work with them, in fact, their emotional response sometimes is more like a two year-old having a tantrum. What happened to their cognitive capability for empathy?
Ashoka: You spend a lot of time helping companies leverage human capital, corporate diversity, and corporate social responsibility as strategic business drivers to generate new business opportunities. What tips would you offer business leaders looking to follow your lead?
Leaders often become so consumed with their own day-to-day experiences and perceptions of their environment that they forget that other people exist and have needs too.
This behavior leads to a communication style based on a lack of meaningful connection and understanding between leadership and employees.
A frequently overlooked element of effective
communication is empathy; the ability to
understand what other people are going
through from their perspective.
When you master this skill,
you communicate on a much
deeper level because you’re
connecting below the surface.
It’s the difference between having civil but superficial conversations and genuinely understanding people.
What do today’s leaders need to create lasting impact in the world?...
..empathic connection can then help us transition from “doing for” others – such as developing a set of well meaning interventions that are imposed upon a community – to “doing with” others.
In the latter, change comes from within the community. For instance, a city could collectively embrace an effort to reduce gang activity through alternative community outlets such as a basketball league and employment opportunities....
We need more opportunities to foster these types of relationships and problem solving strategies. In an interdependent, global world, our ability to create lasting positive change will come down to our ability to work together.
The more we understand each other, the sooner we can solve some of our toughest challenges.
A paper titled “Empathy in the Workplace: A Tool for Effective Leadership” by William G. Gnetry, Todd J. Weber and Golnaz Sadri, presented on behalf of the Center for Creative Leadership some years back at the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology Conference in New York, says the ineffectiveness and underperformance of many managers can be traced to a lack of essential skills which include empathy, a key part of emotional intelligence which is fundamental to leadership. It says transformational and authentic leaders need empathy in order to show their followers that they care for their needs and achievements.
According to the paper, the nature of leadership is shifting, placing a greater emphasis on building and maintaining relationships...
Think about what it’s like to start and run a small business. You will understand why entrepreneurs have a natural dislike of lawyers, bureaucrats and April 15, Noam Neusner writes.
Jewish professionals, including rabbis, are increasingly taking the food stamp challenge. For a week or even a month, these individuals spend no more than what the federal government gives the needy in food stamps — $5 a day — for all their nutritional needs.
As exercises in empathy go, it’s impressive. I have known several individuals who have done it, and they are powerfully changed by the experience.
For the past fifteen years, Mike Klingler has been researching, coaching and leading a movement within Internet Marketing with the core emphasis on thriving in an empathy-driven economy.
What sets him apart from all the other business marketers, self-help teachers and online schools is that Klingler’s intention is one of pure selfless passion with a business edge. He brings the best of both worlds together.
“Our world needs more empathetic marketers, coaches and business leaders to be financially empowered (and to gain influence by refining their communication & marketing skills). In fact, it’s among the most practical, “grounded” plans for securing a brighter future,” says Klingler.
Empathy is the word of the day when it comes to great customer service, and I have mentioned in times past the importance of putting yourself in the customer’s position, and treating them the way you would hope to be treated in their situation.
This is summed up in Hess’ article as:
How does the person I'm trying to help feel?
How would I feel if I were that person?
No matter the request or the "rules," is there something I can/should do to help?
What would I expect to be done for me if the roles were reversed?
In the end, what would make this customer satisfied or (better yet)
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