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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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>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>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>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

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

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

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

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

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

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

leadershipandmanagement

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

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

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

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

<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

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

mentalhealth

Mental Health

4 Tips for Building a Healthier Relationship with Your Emotions - Nick Wignall

Researchers acknowledge the consequences of negative emotions and the benefits of positive emotions on our physical and mental wellbeing. Studies in positive psychology prove that people who react in a positive manner in the workplace have stronger relationships, greater psychological safety, and enhanced learning, creativity and motivation. 
Ultimately, employee and organizational performance improves when positive emotions (i.e., optimism, gratitude) are more prevalent.

Being Positive

Positivity was never meant to exclude the experience of negative emotions. Toxic positivity is defined as the denial, suppression or _ignoring _of negative emotions. 
It’s happiness at all costs and the belief that our interactions with family, friends, and coworkers must exclude anything that doesn’t feel positive.

It’s difficult to divulge how we are feeling in an honest way, especially when we feel pressured to confess an unpleasant emotion to our coworkers. Maybe we view this reaction as a sign of weaknesses or vulnerability, or maybe we are in denial about our true feelings. So, we put on a happy face and turn it towards the world, all while churning inside with anger, fear, shame, sadness or disgust.

Emotional Complexity

When we suppress negative emotions, we fail to give ourselves or others a chance to grapple with them. The more we can improve expressing and receiving emotional responses, the more we can authentically share our positive and negative feelings in a healthy way. Managing emotions comes from building emotional intelligence (EI). It’s a skill that is honed over a lifetime. One <a href="https://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/AL(2007).pdf">study</a> found that the mere act of labeling our feelings (a common EI technique) helps us release them.

The Role Of Emotional Intelligence

The perspective we take is that some emotions are good, and others are bad. We convince ourselves that that if we can avoid the bad feelings and force the good feelings, everything will just fall into place. Actually, emotions are neutral. We label some of our emotions negative because they are hard for us to process, they feel unpleasant, and they require a great deal of our energy.

The Value Of Negative Emotions

Cultivating a growth mindset starts with believing that we can change and grow over time to be better. Use this strategy to acknowledge that, in this moment, you are sad, angry, or fearful, but that you will work through it and come out better for it.
It is an internal dialogue that says, “I have dealt with hard things before, and I will again.” The difference between this mindset and toxic positivity is that you do not deny the negative, you just embrace a paradigm that allows you to feel the emotion and move through it.

Cultivating A Growth Mindset

If we want to allow for a better expression of emotion, we need to move beyond basic questions such as, “How are you?”, “Are you ok?” or “What’s wrong?” While these are common phrases, they don’t allow people to express what they are truly feeling. Consider the following alternatives:<ul><li>It seems you are (angry), what happened that led you to feel that way?</li><li>Tell me more about what is going on for you right now?</li><li>This project will bring up a lot of unknowns. Let’s talk about everyone’s fears if we move forward.</li></ul>

Ask Thoughtful Questions

The real emotion (fear, anger, sadness, contempt) is often the very one we want to avoid. They often feel painful, and we lack the skills to proactively manage them. Holding space allows us to process and express our feelings when we are ready. When we leave room to recognize our feelings, we might ask a question, share a compassionate perspective or just be in silence. Getting more comfortable with negative emotions ensures that you are not countering every difficult feeling with a positive response.

Recognizing The Real, Natural Emotions

One of our previous consultants used to remind us: “You can’t tell your story while you are in it.” We often try and understand our situation too soon. Sometimes, we just need to be in the moment. Be okay with feeling sad. Be aware of our fears or recognize our anger. The lessons unfold over time.

Jumping To Conclusions

“Should” is a trigger word. When we say that we “should” or “shouldn’t” be feeling something, it is a clue that we are not ready to move forward from our emotional state. Stay with what is. Avoid shaming someone (or yourself) for feeling a certain way or brushing things off when they really are a big deal to youWhile “don’t worry and be happy” is great advice, don’t allow it to come at the expense of your true feelings. Emotions are your greatest teacher.

Look For Small Clues And Triggers

Here’s a leadership lesson you don’t often hear: “While ‘don’t worry and be happy’ is great advice, don’t allow it to come at the expense of your true feelings. Emotions are your greatest teacher.”


How to handle negativity without being annoyingly positive

It means an absence of interpersonal fear. When psychological safety is present, people are able to speak up with work-relevant content.
For many people during the pandemic, the explicitness of the physical lack of safety has been experienced as a shared fear, which has allowed them to be more open and intimate and more able to voice their thoughts and concerns with colleagues.
This collective fear thus becomes a potential driver of collaboration and innovation, further contributing to an open environment for producing and sharing ideas that under normal conditions may have remained unshared.

Psychological safety

Even though face-to-face interactions allow for a level of intimacy and understanding that may be lost online, with video formats you can still pick up cues and detect whether someone’s in some period of mild distress.Leaping into task orientation too quickly may almost feel like a violation to the person on the other end of the call. Taking a pause to acknowledge where the person is and what they need can build trust over time and make the shared interaction emotionally less risky. Yet this might also make the exchanges themselves even more draining as you pause to doubt the interactions.

Building trust and confidence

What makes management by wandering around so successful is the ability to make a genuine link between a task or job and a larger overarching purpose.
Although not as spontaneous as walking around, video calls and chats, when kept to relatively small sizes, can still develop the connective tissue linking actions to a shared vision for the future.

Management by wandering

With tools like Zoom, communications have become more explicit and structured; leaders must ask direct questions about what’s working and what isn’t.

The degree to which leaders can manage their own stress and feelings, and the reason why emotional self-awareness and mindfulness are so important in times of crisis, is because leaders become emotional contagions, inflicting positive or negative feelings on others.And, although sometimes leaders may want to induce some stress into a situation to insert new energy and momentum, most of the time it’s better to engage people in positive pursuits to retain a higher level of creativity, productiveness, and engagement.

Emotional contagion in the workplace

We can’t be positively infectious with others unless we’re feeling inspired and sustained ourselves first. That’s what leaders managing high-stress positions need to do to take care of themselves and to then involve and take care of others.

As a leader in this point in time, you don’t want to be faking your emotions. There is an enormous need for genuineness and transparency. And that means some leaders might have to actually train themselves to be caring, curious, and positive, which is hard to do when you’re in a state of threat or fear when self-protection becomes an overwhelming instinct.
There is a strong temptation to just dive right into business without acknowledging what others might be up against. Best practice is therefore to stop, pause, breathe, and remind yourself to be interested in what’s going on for others.

The need for genuineness

A shared vision or shared sense of purpose is the strongest predictor of organizational-leadership effectiveness, engagement, organizational citizenship, and even product innovation. This is a time for leaders to try to invoke or provoke a degree of reflection, spending the time to talk about a shared sense of purpose and core values while also spending the time to emotionally check-in. Purpose and vision are critical today, but only to the extent that both are recognized as updatable, and reflective of a continuous learning process.

A shared sense of purpose

Want to build a high-performing team? Start with creating a safer work evironment

books

Books

teamwork

Teamwork

Fostering Psychological Safety In The Workplace

Psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and leadership in a time of flux

The process of becoming a leader is a demanding journey of continual learning and self-development. The trials involved in becoming a first-time manager can have serious consequences. The organisation can suffer human and financial costs when an individual with strong performance and qualifications is promoted but fails to adjust successfully to management responsibilities.  The failures are not surprising, given how difficult it is to transition. Many books describe successful leaders, but few address the challenges of learning to lead.

Transition into management

One of the first things new managers discover is that managing is far more demanding than they'd anticipated. They're surprised to find that there is a huge gap between the skills and methods needed for success as a person and those required for success as a manager. Success for the individual is mainly dependent on their personal expertise and actions. But as a manager, they are responsible for setting and implementing an agenda for the whole group. Learning to lead happens by doing. A new manager has to unlearn habits that served him in his early career, which can be stressful.

Why learning to manage is so hard

The transition to manager is often harder than it needs to be because of misconceptions and myths new managers hold about their role. The incomplete and simplistic views lead new managers to neglect key leadership responsibilities.

A New Manager's Misconceptions

New managers typically focus on their rights and privileges. They assume the position will give them more authority, freedom and autonomy to do what they think is best for the organisation. Instead, new managers find themselves hemmed in by interdependencies. They feel constrained. They are entangled in a web of relationships, from subordinates to bosses, peers, and others inside and outside the organisation, who often place conflicting demands on them. Only when they replace the myth of authority with negotiating interdependencies will they be able to lead effectively.

Managers wield significant authority

New managers do wield some power, but they mistakenly believe their power is based on formal authority. This cause many to adopt an autocratic approach they believe to be effective. New managers soon learn that direct reports don't necessarily respond when they are told to do something. After painful experiences, new managers learn that their authority emerges only as they earn the respect and trust of subordinates, peers, and superiors by demonstrating their character (the intention to do the right thing), competence (knowing how to do it), and their influence (the ability to execute it).

Authority flows from the manager’s position

Most new managers desire compliance from their subordinates from the start and often rely too much on their formal authority. But compliance is not the same as commitment. If people aren't committed, they won't take the initiative. And if subordinates aren't taking the initiative, the manager can't delegate effectively. New managers should exercise influence by creating a culture of inquiry. This will lead people to feel empowered, committed, and accountable.

Managers must control their direct reports

Managing interdependencies require new managers to build trust, influence and mutual expectations with various people. This is often achieved by establishing personal relationships. However, simply focusing on one-on-one relationships with members of the team can undermine the process. New managers often attend to individual performance and forgo team culture and performance. However, supervising individuals is not the same as leading the team. Instead, new managers should focus on shaping team culture to harness the collective power of the group.

Managers must focus on forging good individual relationships

This managerial myth is partly true yet misleading because it tells only half the story. Ensuring an operation is operating smoothly is a challenging task, and maintaining the status quo can absorb all of a junior manager's time and energy. But new managers also need to realise they are responsible for recommending and initiating change. This means challenging existing processes or structures beyond their area of formal authority. New managers need to see themselves as change agents within and outside the areas of responsibility in which their teams operate.

Managers must ensure that things run smoothly

New managers will make mistakes and feel pain as their professional identities are stretched and changed. In the struggle to learn a new role, they will often feel isolated. Few managers ask for help, believing that they are supposed to have all the answers. But seasoned managers know that no one has all the answers. New managers should be creative in finding support, such as seeking out peers outside their region or function or in another organisation. However, they may find their own superiors more tolerant of their questions and mistakes than they had expected.

New managers aren't alone

The earliest test of leadership comes with that first assignment to manage others. Most new managers initially fail this test because of a set of common misconceptions about what it means to be in charge.

Becoming the Boss

<ul><li>Today, AI(Artificial Intelligence) can diagnose disease, translate languages, provide useful customer services, and drive a car for us.</li><li>Many companies use AI for automation, but to do that to displace human employees can backfire in the long run.</li></ul>In extensive research involving fifteen hundred organizations, it is found that companies with the most significant improvements are those which join humans and machines to work in sync.

Transforming The World With A.I.

Humans and AI can complement each other's strengths. Humans have certain skills that machines cannot match:<ul><li>Leadership</li><li>Teamwork</li><li>Creativity</li><li>Social skills</li></ul>Machines have certain areas where it outperforms humans:<ul><li>Speed</li><li>Scalability</li><li>Quantitative capabilities(analysing trillions of data entries)</li><li>Raw horsepower</li><li>Doing repetitive, monotonous work</li></ul>An organization requires both kinds of competencies to thrive.

Humans Beings And A.I.: A Match Made In Heaven

We created machines, computers and A.I., and need to program and sustain them to get the best outcome.To make the best use of highly advanced A.I. machines, we need to do extensive training and programming to get the best possible results while avoiding errors, controversies and any potential harm to ourselves.

Humans Are Needed For Machines

There is a lot of exposition(explaining) that needs to be done by us to other humans on how and why A.I. reaches certain conclusions, which is often based on complex algorithms and ‘black-box’ computations which are not transparent to everyone.A.I. also helps in finding ‘unknown unknowns’ due to their objectivity and transparency in seeing patterns and correlations.

Humans And Machines: Exposition And Maintenance

A.I. can assist us in analysis, decision making, and to magnify creativity, as they are able to upscale and amplify our strengths and cognitive abilities, take care of mundane, repetitive tasks and free up humans for higher-level work activities.<ul><li>Advanced digital entities like Cortana or Aida help humans in collaborating by acting as communication links.</li><li>Customers are assisted with routine queries, no matter how many turn up to ask.</li><li>Many robots have sensors and motors that assist humans in work safety, and actions that require complexity and power, like assembling a car.</li></ul>

Machines Helping Humans

Companies need to redesign their business with a fusion of man and machine(A.I.).<ul><li>Operational areas where A.I. can help need to be discovered.</li><li>Solutions need to be envisioned, keeping in mind the strengths of man and technology(co-creation).</li><li>Scaling up and sustenance of possible solutions need to be planned and deployed, in order to improve five main characteristics: flexibility, speed, decision making, personalization and scale.</li></ul>

Reimagining Businesses as Man + A.I.

Companies that embrace a collaboration of man and machine, instead of focusing on cost savings or laying off maximum number of human resources, will be able to flourish, transform their operations and enjoy the best of both worlds.

The Human-Machine Interface

Humans and machines can enhance each other’s strengths.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

How Humans and AI Are Working Together in 1,500 Companies

A good mentor is a blessing, as most of us need guidance and direction to navigate our lives. Finding a good mentor requires identifying, asking, nurturing and maintaining a relationship. 
A good mentor, if we are lucky, can empower our career and provide us with untapped opportunities.

Navigating Life: The Need Of A Mentor

Most of us are afraid to ask a would-be mentor for an initial meeting, due to a fear of rejection. It can feel intimidating, especially if the person isn’t someone who knows you well.
<ol>
<li>Take some pressure off by reminding yourself that even the would-be mentor could have had mentors in his life.</li>
<li>If you want to connect with someone, start with a simple request, a 20 minute real or virtual coffee break, or even a short Zoom call, as it is low-commitment.</li>
<li>Sending a short email is a good way to request the person, telling them about how you admire their work, and would like to learn from them.</li>
</ol>

Finding A Mentor: The Ask

<ul>
<li>One has to really connect with the mentor and get to know them. You can ask what they do during weekends, what books they are reading, and their hobbies.</li>
<li>Connecting at a personal level is refreshing for most people, who would want a break from their work.</li>
<li>Be career-specific and ask for questions that help you connect and learn. It is a good idea to send a thank-you note as a follow-up, and let them know what all you learned.</li>
</ul>

Nurturing The Mentor Relationship

<ul>
<li>You can build up the case to touch base again in a few weeks in the thank you email.</li>
<li>Make follow up meeting requests informal.</li>
</ul>
In about three to four meetings, you will have a general idea regarding the quality of the mentor and if you want to label the relationship, you can suggest that in the email and see if the person is now officially willing to be your mentor!

Nurturing The Relationship With A Mentor: Sealing The Deal

A few tips on how we can maintain our relationship with our mentor:
<ol>
<li>Let them know how well their invested time is being spent by sending them a summary of what you learn from them.</li>
<li>Keep the follow up emails regular.</li>
<li>While not spamming them, you can send them real time text messages of how their advice is helping you.</li>
<li>Once your mentorship is done, you can keep in touch on a monthly or quarterly basis.</li>
<li>You can offer to help in making a presentation or conducting an online session for them as a goodwill gesture.</li>
<li>Send a heartfelt gratitude as what you have taken from them is priceless.</li>
</ol>

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

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

4 Tips for Building a Healthier Relationship with Your Emotions - Nick Wignall

Melody N.