Blog

Updated July 3rd 2023

After being invited to provide a psychologist’s perspective on empathy at a business event last year, I began to reflect on something that I had previously taken for granted. I realised that the concept of empathy is becoming increasingly relevant in the business world, yet there are still many individuals who either overlook its importance or lack the knowledge of how to cultivate empathy with their colleagues and clients. Exploring this topic in depth would require multiple blog posts, but for now, I encourage you to contemplate both your own and your colleagues’ capacity for empathy. Do you truly grasp the essence of empathy?

Empathy can be formally defined as the aptitude to recognise and comprehend the circumstances, emotions, and motivations of others. It entails our ability to acknowledge and understand the worries and concerns that others may have. Empathy can be described as “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes” or “viewing situations from someone else’s perspective.”

There are now numerous studies that link empathy to business results, making it no longer a touchy feely topic to discuss in business. At its core, empathy is the oil that keeps relationships running smoothly. Studies correlate empathy with increased sales, with the performance of the best managers of product development teams and with enhanced performance in an increasingly diverse workforce. When it comes to staff training and client retention or customer service training courses, an understanding and development of empathy is imperative. If you are interested in reading into this topic further all the studies mentioned can be viewed here (http://www.eiconsortium.org/).

Empathy allows us to create bonds of trust, it gives us insights into what others may be feeling or thinking; it helps us understand how or why others are reacting to situations, it sharpens our “people acumen” and informs our decisions.

Bestselling author, Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age) predicts that power will reside with those who have strong right-brain (interpersonal) qualities such as inventiveness, empathy, and meaning. He cites three forces that are causing this change: Abundance, Asia and Automation. “Abundance” refers to our increasing demand for products or services that are aesthetically pleasing; “Asia” refers to the growing trend of outsourcing; “Automation” is self-explanatory. In order to compete in the new economy market, Pink suggests six areas that are vital to our success. One of which is Empathy; the ability to imagine yourself in someone else’s position, to imagine what they are feeling, to understand what makes people tick, to create relationships and to be caring of others: All of which is very difficult to outsource or automate, and yet is increasingly important to business.

Dr. Daniel Goleman isolates three reasons why empathy is so important in business today: the increasing use of teams, (which he refers to as “cauldrons of bubbling emotions”), the rapid pace of globalization (with cross cultural communication easily leading to misunderstandings) and the growing need to retain talent. “Leaders with empathy,” states Goleman, “do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways.” This doesn’t mean that they agree with everyone’s view or try to please everybody. Rather, they “thoughtfully consider employees’ feelings – along with other factors – in the process of making intelligent decisions.”

We recently developed some trademarked processes which we use in our staff training and in particular our customer service training courses take “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes” to a whole new level. Let’s have a chat to see how you and your team can work out who’s shoe it is anyway!!.