How To Improve your Empathy Skills

The Third Building Block of Emotional Intelligence

Empathy is the ability to recognise and understand the emotions of others.

Empathy is the fuel of human connection. This skill is our capacity to sense the emotions of our teammates, friends, and family, as well as understand why they might be feeling those emotions.

In this article, we explore the third building block of emotional intelligence; empathy, and look at the ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of this skill. For those of you short on time, here are the spark notes:

• What? Empathy is our ability to read and understand the emotions of others.
• Why? Empathy is the fuel of human connection. This skills helps us relate to one another, understanding each other’s perspectives so that we can work together towards a shared purpose.
• How? Emotion Observations Exercise | Perspective Taking | Examine an Actor | Shadowing

What is Empathy?

Empathy is the ability to recognise and understand the emotions of others. We can break this skill down into two lenses:

1. Recognition (Emotional Empathy) is about connecting to the emotions of others - picking up their mood. You may have heard the term, reading a room. This skill is about sensing and feeling the emotions of others.
2. Understanding (Cognitive Empathy) is about exploring why a person might be feeling a certain emotion or behaving in a certain way. This skill is the ability to stand in the shoes of others, thinking through their perspective, looking out of their eyes, considering their background, and exploring the lead up to the emotion.

Why is Empathy important?

Let’s start with an analogy.

Imagine you are on a Zoom, Teams or Whatsapp call. When all parties have a strong internet connection, the call runs smoothly, facilitating effective communication and great collaborative progress.

Now, imagine a situation where one of the people’s connection is unstable - the frustration, annoyance and uncertainty that that creates - it is still possible to work together, but haltingly and out of sync. One step further, imagine none of the parties having a strong WiFi connection; it is hopeless. There is no connection. There is no chance of working together.

I see empathy as a strong WiFi connection. Just as strong internet allows devices to connect and share information, strong empathy fosters seamless connection, effective communication, and a sense of understanding among teammates, regardless of their differences or distances.

Now, let’s look at the difference between empathetic and unempathetic people.

Unempathetic

• I don’t feel like I am connecting with any of my teammates.
• I feel like I keep on missing social cues - embarrassing myself as a result.
• I struggle to understand the perspective of my colleagues.
• I never understand how other people are feeling! 
• I don’t have a clue how my emotions affect my friends, family and teammates.

Empathetic

• I have built trust with my teammates.
• I am able to read the room; understand my coworkers and clients so that I can respond accordingly.
• I get the perspective of my colleagues.
• I understand the way other people feel.
• I am able to positively lift the emotions of my friends, family and teammates.

Empathy is the fuel for human connection. It is a vital skill because it allows us to profoundly understand others, pick up social cues, read a room, and respond wisely. This willingness to see someone else’s perspective, without judging them, as well as connect to their emotions, is the bread and butter of building trust. It shows our friends, family and teammates that we don’t assume our approach is the only way, and are instead prepared to bridge the gap and acknowledge other ways of thinking. 

Tools - How to Improve our Empathy

Take a peek at this Emotional Intelligence Workout that has a focus on Empathy:

Other Tools

• Emotion Observation Exercise: At the end of a day or a week, we can take a moment to reflect on the emotions we observed in others. Thinking back over the different experiences and exploring the range of feelings you saw in friends, family, teammates, colleagues or whoever else you came into contact with. This exercise is part of the workout above.
• Shadowing: We can observe the daily doings of someone else, be that a colleague or a teammate, to understand their perspective. Through shadowing, we can empathise with their colleagues by seeing the pressures they face, understand the nuances of their role, and appreciate how their contributions help the team.
• Examine an Actor - while watching a movie or TV, analyse how the actor is expressing themselves verbally and non-verbally. (Mute for additional challenge). Take a look at this Emotion Identification Playlist or my YouTube Channel to test your empathy skills.
• Perspective Taking
• Author - write a scene. By writing the characters in a scene, we are forced to imagine what they are feeling and experiencing, which helps us identify the possible emotions that a person would have in a given situation.

Further Reading

Brene Brown, ‘Dare to Lead’. Pages 136 - 156.

For Coaching in Emotional Intelligence, get in touch with Jono at jono@teamimprovus.net