There is a lot of value in empathy at work. Understanding your colleagues' situations can help you work more effectively with them. Understanding customers and clients can help to provide better service. Some people naturally consider other people’s perspectives and emotions when interacting with them, while others can be oblivious to their goals, motivations, and feelings.  If empathy doesn’t come naturally to you, there are some ways to learn to show more empathy and make a habit of it.

The value of empathy at work

Reading transports you into the mind and situation of someone else who is likely to be different from yourself. Experiencing their world for a while gives you insight into the variety of ways that other people’s lives and thought processes differ from your own.

Read novels

If you want to show more empathy, you have to notice what is happening with the people around you and then incorporate it into your interactions.  It is helpful to remember the following three questions:<ol><li>What does this person want? Thinking about their goals is important. The emotions people experience is directly related to how things are going for them motivationally.</li><li>What situation are they in? When you understand what they are dealing with, you can better empathise with them.</li><li>What are they displaying to you? Watching them closely will give you a sense of what is landing with them. </li></ol>

Have three questions and a statement in mind

If empathy doesn’t come naturally to you, an effective strategy is to simulate the situation and play different roles in it.  Empathic design makes use of this simulation. With this technique, a team uses a product or service while simulating conditions a particular kind of user might experience. This first-person perspective can lead to new insights about flaws in an existing product or service.

Practice

Empathy is an essential workplace skill, whether you want to be a good coworker, a strong leader, or build a robust client base.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Is empathy something you can learn?

Identify: Find your fatal flaw. Whether it’s hostility, withdrawal, compliance or whatever, identify that bad social habit that always causes you grief.The Moment of Choice: Next time you reflexively want to engage in that bad coping behaviour, all you have to do is nothing. There’s a moment of choice in there, shimmering. You can choose to do something else.You’re not the weather; you’re the sky.Defuse: When the thoughts and fears run rampant through your head just say, “Thank you, Mind.” Those thoughts are advisors, not dictators. Then choose to act on your values.

How to Free Yourself from Those Bad Interpersonal Habits

This is when you respond as you normally respond but instead, this time you need to do something different.All you have to do right now is... Nothing. Don't do the bad thing. Just stop. Observe what's going on in your brain.Defuse<ul><li>Do not engage the thoughts; observe and label them to get some distance.</li><li>Reframe the thought: "If I don’t give in, they’ll hate me."</li><li>Respond: “Thank you, Mind.”</li></ul>

Notice The Moment Of Choice

When we deal with others, we aren't thinking; we're just reacting.Often we know these interpersonal habits are bad, but they're wired deep from years of "practice".We learned these "lessons" about how to deal with people and stumbled on "solutions" that helped at that time, in that context - but they've been more harm than good over the long haul.If we try to resist that programming, it gets very uncomfortable. It's like trying to break any bad habit or addiction.

Emotionally Intelligent Relationships: What We Do

<ul><li>We get better by learning to deal with the difficult moments in life.</li><li>You can't quell all the pain in life, some of it is unavoidable.</li><li>The real problem isn't the schema-related discomfort; it's your attempts to avoid it.</li><li>Bad feelings are like bad weather - they're temporary and pass if you let them.</li></ul>

The Real Problem Is The Avoidance

We all have reflexive bad habits in relationships. They're due to what psychologists call "schema." Here's how we can fix them...

This Is How To Have Emotionally Intelligent Relationships: 4 Secrets - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Emotions are energy in motion. Without them, we wouldn't feel compelled to act, create, or move an inch. This is why they are so vital, not just in our personal lives, but also in the workplace. A company's formal organizational structure is always invisibly overlaid with an informal network of relationships fueled by emotions.

The Motion Of Emotions

<ul><li>Emotions occur along a gradient and are not sharply distinguishable or mutually exclusive.</li><li>For a considerable period, common wisdom held that there are a base set of six "classic" emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. Other studies point out that there are only four basic emotions.</li><li>Dissection and identification of emotions isn't possible as they are not crystallized to a single tone.</li></ul>

Emotions Overlap and Mash Together

<ul><li>The pandemic has made us reassess our relationships, and what truly matters to us.</li><li>We feel strongly about work, and if this sentiment is not recognized by our employers, we quit.</li><li>Often the fear of organizational backlash prevents us from pursuing a more emotional life at work, very much at the expense of more fulfilling and effective work cultures.</li></ul>

Toxic Positivity

<ul><li>Empathy is the foundation for emotional intimacy within workplaces</li><li>Difficult times must be met with the courage to meet difficult emotions in an effort to connect better with ourselves and others</li><li>Facing-and living-all of our emotions, rather than just "managing" them, is the difference between a merely productive workplace and one we wholeheartedly want to be at</li></ul>

Self-Empathy

A truly human workplace is not one that wants to make us happy all the time, contends Tim Leberecht, the cofounder and CEO of the House of Beautiful Business. 


personaldevelopment

Personal Development

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

Why we need ’emotional diversity’ at work right now

A 2020 study found that people with lower levels of emotional intelligence are more likely to misread the signals in their bodies. They may mistake their body's "warning sign" for excitement. When you have years of experience and thousands of hours of practice, your intuition will be more efficient.

Add Some Emotional Intelligence

WIthout knowingly thinking about it, your unconscious brain starts working on a problem or decision. When you then try to make a conscious decision, your brain compares that decision with the one it already made. <ul><li>If your unconscious agrees with your conscious decision, your brain gives you a reward response that feels good.</li><li>If your unconscious doesn't agree with your conscious decision, the decision seems logical but it doesn't feel right.</li></ul> Intuition is when you make the right decision and your body knows it. If you make the wrong decision, your body knows it but you often can't explain why.

How Intuition Works

The better your emotional intelligence, the more likely you can accurately interpret your intuitive response. Ask yourself these questions to see if you should feel confident about a particular intuition."<ol><li>Is this a regular, predictable environment? When something happens regularly, the outcomes become more predictable.</li><li>Do I have extensive experience or practice? Accurate intuition comes from considerable practice.</li><li>Have I gotten plenty of feedback? Without feedback, you won't know if intuition was right or wrong.</li></ol>

When to Trust Your Intuition

According to economist Daniel Hakneman, "Intuition is thinking that you know what you know without knowing why you know it, and high emotional intelligence can make intuitive decisions even more accurate." For example, scanning long checkout lines at the supermarket and deciding, without thinking too hard, which is likely to be the quickest. Or listening to someone speak for a few minutes and deciding if they are smart or not. Depending on your level of emotional intelligence, your intuition will be more accurate.

Intuition

Experience matters, but research shows high emotional intelligence can also make intuitive decisions even more accurate.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

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Leadership & Management

How the Smartest Minds Use Intuition and Emotional Intelligence to Make Better Decisions, Backed by Science

Most of us try to either escape our emotions, or try to fix them. The healthier way to manage difficult feelings is to change your relationship with them.
Instead of treating painful emotions as enemies to be avoided or eliminated, you can learn to treat them as friends to be understood and accepted.

You And Your Emotions Are Friends

Pain is the messenger. Pain is your body’s way of signaling that there is something very wrong with your wrist that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.Sadness is uncomfortable but not bad. It is a normal response to the loss of something valuable.The next time you experience a difficult or painful emotion, try to remind yourself that just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad.

Just Because It Feels Bad Doesn’t Mean It Is Bad

<ul><li>You can't expect to become an expert at managing hugely painful emotions if you haven't practiced</li><li>The best way to practice is to start small and work your way up</li><li>Social anxiety is a skill like anything else, so practice on smaller, easier situations first</li></ul>

Practice with Small Emotions

Most people have developed an unconscious habit of <a href="https://nickwignall.com/intellectualized-emotions/">intellectualizing</a> their emotions—using highly conceptual and vague language to talk about feelings rather than plain straightforward words.When you acknowledge how you're feeling in plain, simple language, it helps reduce the intensity of the feeling and teaches your brain a valuable lesson: emotions aren't things to be hidden or covered up-they're a normal, if uncomfortable, part of the human experience.

Name It to Tame It

Replace your instinct to be judgmental about how you're feeling with the habit of being curious about it.If you can cultivate a habit of cultivating a curious about difficult feelings, rather than judgmental, not only will those feelings subside more quickly, you will also be fostering a much kinder, gentler relationship with your own mind.

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

You can't get rid of painful emotions like anxiety or anger. But you can learn to build a healthier relationship with them.

Is empathy something you can learn?

This Is How To Have Emotionally Intelligent Relationships: 4 Secrets - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Why we need ’emotional diversity’ at work right now

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

How the Smartest Minds Use Intuition and Emotional Intelligence to Make Better Decisions, Backed by Science

CURATED BY

Is empathy something you can learn?

This Is How To Have Emotionally Intelligent Relationships: 4 Secrets - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Why we need ’emotional diversity’ at work right now

It's time to Read like a Pro.

How the Smartest Minds Use Intuition and Emotional Intelligence to Make Better Decisions, Backed by Science

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.