The nuances of using empathy are important

In researching this article I have seen references time and time again to the importance of using empathy. I’ve seen lots of encouragement to use more of it, but not too much about balancing it correctly.

The fact is, it’s not just using empathy that is important, but how you use it that’s crucial.

Take the empathy quiz created by The Greater Good Science Centre at UC Berkeley to get an idea of how empathetic you are. I scored 99 out of 110.

Empathy study findings

You can also read up on the results of their own research study. They analysed the answers from over 180,000 respondents and listed their findings as to which groups were more empathetic. In their study results:

• Women are more empathic than men
• Older adults are more empathic
• Middle siblings have more empathy than only children, and,
• Liberals appear to be more empathic than conservatives

Okay let’s get back to our conversation.

Avoid this common mistake

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen is when a manager ‘over-eggs the pudding’ so to speak. They discover that there is an issue and they lay sympathy on so thick it is ridiculous. The only effect that this has is to feel insincere towards the person in question. This type of overly false compassion, does more harm than good.

The other problem with this behaviour is that it leads to a lack of discretion. In 90% of cases when someone has a personal issue they prefer to keep it to themselves. They may tell their manager out of respect (or because they felt they had to) but they certainly don’t want details of their personal troubles spreading around. Being over sympathetic and treating people differently is quickly noticed by those around you.

A far better approach is to be self-aware and avoid having obvious secretive conversations. Ask how they are in private and remember, you don’t need to know the ins and outs of what is happening. If they trust and respect you they will keep you informed and you won’t even have to ask.

Factors involved in using empathy

Whenever I’m working with people who want to improve their relationship building skills, and empathy comes up for discussion, I like to focus on three areas.

Consciousness

First we have to notice there is some kind of issue. We do this by observing behaviour and other interactions. There isn’t one particular warning sign for us to look for, signs can be very subtle and will be different for different people.

If you notice a minor change then you’ll need to be more sensitive to others arising. If you see more departures from the norm, then possibly something is off. Much of this happens intuitively, but, if it doesn’t come naturally the following exercise is invaluable to sharpen your senses.

It’s essentially a data crunching exercise, where you are staying alert and trying to notice anything out of the ordinary. When anomalies pile up something has changed.

If this doesn’t come naturally to you – try this exercise:

• Fire up a Trello list with a card for each person, or grab a notebook and make a list of names, sit down for a few minutes
• Spend half a minute or so per person scribbling down any of their characteristics, for example: always smiling; needs coffee first thing; lots of afternoon energy – in particular think about their facial expressions and body language
• Once finished glance over the list and read it through, add anything that is missing and then put it to one side
• Throughout the day be observant with your list in mind and notice any subtle things that people do, whether they’re smiling when they come in, when leaving
• Set another few minutes the next day and go over the list again
• Repeat this on a regular basis

Understanding

If you notice something is off then the next step is to try get an understanding of what might be the cause. It could be something and nothing. Remember that they don’t have to tell you what is wrong. They will tell you if they want to.

If you have built a strong relationship of trust with your team they are more likely to let you know if they are experiencing any issues and confide in you what they are. If they don’t want to tell you, you must respect that, however you do have the right to ask for a sense of the severity.

It is easier to empathize with someone who looks like us or has the same cultural background. Keeping an open mind is very important, be aware that you may have unconscious biases that you may have to overcome.

When you have a conversation with them:

• Practice active listening, let them do the talking, don’t try to fill every moment of silence, hear what they are saying and really think about it in an effort to understand, repeat back to them to clarify if you are not following
• Be respectful, if someone becomes emotional, give them time to compose themselves
• Ask sensitive and open questions such as ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘what can I do to help?’
• Reinforce safety, be sure to let them know that they can safely come to you if they want to talk things over, or have any other requests. Let them know it’s their choice how much information they share with you
• Be guided by them, ask them how much they want to talk about this, work may be their only escape and they might not want to be constantly reminded about it, on the other hand, it may help them to talk about it
• Avoid steering the conversation around to yourself, empathizing may mean you are tempted to say ‘I know how you feel’ and then follow up with a story of your own – while you may mean well it will come across as though you don’t care and only want to talk about yourself

Feeling

During or after the conversation, you need to imagine what this would feel like for you if you were in their situation. Visualize how it feels and how your emotions would be affected if a similar thing happened to you.

If you can, apply your knowledge of that person – their character, their family situation, anything else relevant – to help you with this. This is empathy happening.

Using too much empathy

I mentioned above that fake compassion should be avoided at all costs. But what about when the empathy is real, but it just gets out of control and starts negatively impacting you? This can easily happen to those who have high levels of affective empathy and compassionate empathy.

“Unbridled empathy can lead to concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, making it difficult to release the emotions.” — Agata Blaszczak-Boxe

Marcia Reynolds Psy.D, author of The Discomfort Zone, and Wander Woman, discussed two questions in her April 2017 Psychology Today article: ‘Can too much empathy be bad for me?’ and ‘Could empathy make me overly sensitive?’

Marcia states: ‘We accept, appreciate, and encourage expression in others by observing our reactions and letting them go.’

We need to feel the emotion, but then find a way to release it, otherwise it can build up and lead to a dangerous blockage.

Simple four step exercise

In her article Marcia includes a simple but effective four-step exercise to help you to do just that. The link to the article is below, but here is a brief summary:

“As soon as you notice that you are emotionally reacting:

Relax – breath and release the tension in your body.
Detach – clear your mind of all thoughts.
Center – drop your awareness to the center of your body just below your navel. Feel yourself breathe. This helps to clear the mind.
Focus – choose one or two keywords that represent how you want to feel. Feeling curiosity and compassion foster non-reactive empathy.”

Not using enough empathy

The main ’empathy related’ complaint is that leaders don’t use it, they are often considered self-centred and that they do not care about their team. The ‘we’re just a number’ mentality. I am generalizing here but this is one of the reasons there are so many articles on the topic.

I know how difficult it is to be in a leadership role, so I do find these generalizations unfair in some cases. However, it is undeniable that low levels of empathy in leaders will lead to lower team morale, reduced levels of trust – or inability to build trust in the first place, and the difficulty in operating at full potential.

The ultimate price you will pay as a leader, and consequently your organization will pay (which does not look good for you) is that the top talent will walk out of the door. This is true whatever the economic climate.

My recommendation is to hone your ability to empathize, maybe dial it up, possibly dial it down. You might need to start with first noticing the subtle behaviours your people have, to give you the heightened awareness you need in order to sense when something is off.

Whatever you need to do, I wish you good luck on your quest!

What do you think?

I would love to hear from you in the comments. Did you do the empathy quiz? Why not tweet me your results?!