Empathy Blog

Many mistake empathy for softness or permissiveness. However, it’s vital to realize that deep empathic connection and true compassion are not about being nice. Instead, they’re about engendering both personal and group responsibility to effect change and put organizational strategies into actions that get results. Thankfully, putting oneself in someone else’s shoes can be learned. While basic empathy is natural to human beings, actionable empathy is cultivated.

How do you create an emotional connection with your customer? By creating one with yourself first! This is called self empathy and it develops true self confidence. Empathy is about being real and authentic, not about being “nice” or “polite” and you can positively influence the customer experience when you put it into practice. Empathy crosses all boundaries because there is no escaping that we are all human.

Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy focuses our attention on the other person. Sympathy, sharing how we have had similar experiences, draws the attention to us instead.

Empathy is not about being soft or nice. It is about being disciplined enough to listen to what really matters to someone by first putting what matters to us aside temporarily. Second, empathy is not about only listening. Since it is about mutual connection, it is also about having the courage to speak up about what is true for us. Third, empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy happens when we turn our focus to ourselves instead of remaining curious about what is happening for the other. If empathy seems too conceptual, think of it as the ability to be curious. Curiosity and judgement cannot exist in the same mental and emotional space within us. When we are intentionally curious, we are exercising our empathy competence. The good news is that everyone already knows how to be curious.

In every interaction, the empathetic approach is: Connect-Think-Act. In the Connect phase, you discover your values/needs; in the Think phase, you plan strategies based on your needs; in the Act phase, you implement your strategies. Followers tend to work from a strategy-based perspective, skipping the Connect phase; true leaders work from a news-based perspective. This is beneficial because conflict occurs only at the strategy level, not at the needs level. When leaders coalesce people around needs, they decrease the odds of conflict and increase productivity.