Developing Empathy to Understand Others

We all know individuals who lack empathy. Be it for their insensitivity when they make requests, or because they don’t listen to others, or for their intolerance towards other people’s ideas, or because they are always ready to argue. They simply cannot create a pleasant environment at work. Do you have such customers or colleagues? Or, are you this way?  

People who lack empathy often find themselves at the center of conflicts, quarrels and incomprehension. This can be tiresome and stressful for all parties concerned, and can destroy relationships with clients, colleagues, superiors, and service providers.  

An excellent starting point to improve one’s relationships is to develop one’s ability to empathize with others. 

What is Empathy?

The root of the word comes from Ancient Greek « Pathos » which means “what we feel and how it affects us”. The suffix “pathy” is used to designate emotions and feelings and is preceded by a prefix which indicates the attitude which takes – or doesn’t – into consideration the emotions and feelings of others.

Therefore: 

• • A-pathy = Does not perceive the emotions and feelings of others
  • Anti-pathy = Minimizes / rejects emotions and feelings of others
  • Sym-pathy = Shares emotions and feelings of others
  • Em-pathy = Understands emotions and feelings of others

Empathy is the ability to see the world with the perspective of another person, to sync to their emotions and feelings, to be sensitive to what other people might think or feel towards situation. It’s knowing how to adequately perceive, without interpretation or judgment, what the other thinks or feels. 

Developing Empathy 

Empathy is a skill that can be taught and learned, and which is very useful in interactions with others. Here are a few tips to show empathy: 

Examine your attitude

Often empathy is necessary when we are less inclined to use it: when we are stressed, misunderstood, irritated or defensive. In these situations, are you more preoccupied with winning or being right? Or is your priority finding a solution, establishing relationships and accepting others? Seeking to understand sometimes implies the changing of a well-established paradigm. Generally, we first seek to be understood, we tend to argue our position, defend our behavior and attack the other’s. 

Put aside your point of view, and try to see things from another person’s 

If you can integrate another person’s point of view, accept it – which does not mean you share it – or understand from within what the other is thinking, you will realize that other people are not necessarily ill-intentioned, mean, hard-headed or unreasonable, and that they are simply reacting to the situation based on the references they have. 

Show some flexibility – be ready to accept a different perspective, to see the world with the eyes of another person, to understand their frame of reference. Without the right attitude and an open mind, you will not have enough room for empathy. 

Show your interest in understanding 

Show a sincere interest by actively listening to the whole message the other person tries to communicate.  

• Listen with your ears – notice keywords and expressions people use. 
• Listen with your eyes – what the other person is doing while talking, their expressions, their gestures, their posture.
• Listen with your heart – What emotions does the other person express? By their tone, their volume, their debit.
• Listen with your instinct – Do you feel that the person is not communicating something important?
• Ask questions – Support and encourage the other by showing them that they are worth taking the time to understand. 

Validate your understanding

Once you understand why the other believes what they believe, it is important to show your understanding and to recognize their point of view. It’s knowing how to objectively express to the other person a just understanding of what they said or they feel so that they feel understood. Remember that recognizing something does not mean to agree with it. You can accept that people have different opinions than your own, and that they can have good reasons to stick to them. To show that we understand, we can use techniques such as elucidation, paraphrasing, rewording, and self-revelation. 

Ask for help

In doubt, ask a person to explain their situation. It’s probably the most efficient, simple, and direct way to understand the other person. A simple “Help me understand why you see it this way / why you want this” is enough. Yet, it’s probably the least used method. We try guessing as if we were going to win points to have discovered it on our own. 

A Last Word

Developing empathy requires a continuous effort, as well as conviction that it will contribute to improving your relational skills. To be ready to see the world from various perspectives is an enviable skill, and you can use it at all times, in any situation. Practice these techniques when you interact with people and show interest towards what the others think, feel and live. 

When people feel understood, they are more incline to want to understand you – and that’s how you can introduce a cooperative and collaborative climate. 

The term “presenteeism” has been used widely in management magazines recently. It describes a situation in which we show up to work in a state where we are not able to work (physically or psychologically). It is omitting to absent oneself, even if we have a good reason to do so. According to the experts, it’s a common phenomenon that is spreading on the workplace. 

Presenteeism is the result of the valorization of diligence at work aimed at reducing absenteeism, in comparison to which it is still excessive – proportionally and inversely opposed. It is the flipside of the coin.

Presenteeism in All its Forms

Martin Lauzier and Éric Gosselin, of the Université du Québec en Outaouais, LAUZIER M. et É. GOSSELIN. (L’ABC du présentéisme : le côté obscur de la présence au travail, Effectif, vol. 14, n° 3, 2011.) have identified different factors weighing in on the choice of coming to work at all costs. They include: 

The gravity of presenteeism can only be measured by its duration. Most of the time, presenteeism is short-term, often only a few days. There are reasons to worry when an ill employee comes to work for two weeks, a month, or more. Long term, omitting to take the time to care of ourselves worsens the problem. 

Beyond the Limit of Definition

The definition of presenteeism itself requires that there be “presence of a health problem” – psychological or physiological – entailing reporting to work even when ill. However, based on experience, there is an ever subtler form of presenteeism with an indicator one should give proper attention to, as it is precursory to presenteeism. I often observe it among participants in Time and Priority Management training sessions – an excessive presence at work! Often, they confuse efficiency and effectiveness. 

They say that: 

These people are not sick. However, pushed by a desire to prove themselves, to look good, or by a fear of losing their job, by devotion to their responsibilities, by a feeling of guilt, by loyalty to their organization or by a simple love for their work, they unconsciously favor quantity to quality. They adhere to a culture where the value of their work depends on the number of hours invested. But this omnipresence does not guarantee performance! 

The Ilich law states that beyond a certain threshold, human effectiveness decreases, or becomes negative. After 90 minutes of continuous concentration, we are no longer effective. Ideally, we should take a 15-minute break (relaxing, taking a walk, going out for fresh air, etc.) before going back to work. However, even after taking these breaks, we cannot work restlessly for 12 hours a day. For some, it’s their modus operandi, their way of doing things and not a temporary or unusual situation. 

A Last Word

The added value we offer as a worker does not reside in the number of hours we work, but in our ability to be proactive rather than reactive, to take initiative and decisions, to think outside the box and get out of our comfort zone, to be creative in our ability to solve problems. In short, it’s all about the quality of our work! 

When we persist being too present, we risk being less effective, less focused, more prone to make mistakes and finally demotivated and disengaged due to the fact we are exhausted. Professional overinvestment results in a general increase of the stress level and in a decrease of the productivity level. It increases risks of professional exhaustion. 

Presenteeism, in all its forms, greatly contributes to the deterioration of work performance and quality and causes ineffectiveness. Its secondary effects are preoccupying, as its collateral damage is silent and will guide us to the flipside of the coin – absenteeism! 

Our brain is wired to imitate others – when we are in the presence of people, our mirror neurons (our learning neurons functioning by imitating and sharing with people around us) activate, and allow us to simulate in our brain the emotional state of the interlocutor, which makes us inclined to imitate and adopt the detected emotion ourselves (positive or negative). For example, when we see someone smile, we are likely to smile as well. Emotions are contagious.

This ability to sync with others is a sub-product of the way our brains have evolved. By copying emotions, attitudes and behaviors of those around us, we are in harmony, and get along better – a very useful practice in the past, when belonging to a group meant the difference between life and death.

This emotional contagion happens within a few milliseconds and is one of the many processes executed instinctively and unconsciously by our brain.

This tendency to sync our emotions is not always beneficial in the workplace, especially when we are surrounded with colleagues with a negative attitude, or if we work with unpleasant clients.Since we are born to emulate the emotions of those around us, we risk adopting toxic feelings (anger, cynicism, irritation, etc.) which we will then pass on to others, by activating their circuits. It becomes a vicious cycle which has a negative impact not only on our attitude and performance but also on the work climate and on the customer service quality.

Let’s picture for a second that your desk neighbor is in a bad mood this morning – as usual. You feel his bad mood immediately (he just contaminated you) and you decide to go get a coffee so as to walk away. While walking towards the coffee machine, you think about how unpleasant it is to work with him. Absorbed in these thoughts, you walk by a colleague whom you quickly and absent-mindedly greet.

Your negative emotions are then perceived by this colleague (you just contaminated him), who walks away thinking about why you were so unpleasant to him this morning. Preoccupied by your behavior

towards him, he is distracted and doesn’t notice the customer waiting at the counter, who becomes irritated from having been neglected (he has just been contaminated). This is an example of how a workplace climate can be ruined and the service quality therefore downgraded, without anyone understanding why.

Our emotions condition our interpersonal relationships, they have a big impact on other people’s mood and they have the power to positively or negatively influence our way of interacting and communicating with our environment.

Customer service is an emotional industry and not only accepts emotional expression, but demands it, as customer satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) largely depends on the emotional climate of the exchange with the service provider and organization.

We have the power to “contaminate” others. But we also have the “professional responsibility” to develop our emotional management skills and to define how our emotions can be put to the service of our relationships with colleagues and customers, and how they can contribute to their satisfaction, rather than hindering it.

The Management faces numerous challenges when implementing a customer service improvement process. Some of the most common difficulties are: