In that case, it’s important to approach this step from a place of curiosity – asking someone how they might be feeling rather than assuming that you know. Important caveat: this part of empathy can be tricky, especially when we’re trying to consider the perspective of someone with a different background and set of lived experiences. You might do this as you try to figure out the right question to ask, or the right thing to say, to a coworker who is upset.
The first way we connect is through emotional empathy, which is the experience of feeling someone else’s emotions.According to Zaki, who is an empathy expert and the author of The War for Kindness, empathy is a term that describes three ways we connect with others and what they are experiencing. While there are many definitions of empathy out there, at the core, many of them surface the same concepts. That’s still a fairly accurate definition, but some modern definitions have a little more nuance. Later, the psychologist Theodore Lipps extended the concept to knowing people, using it to describe, “feeling one’s way into the experience of another.” In the mid-19th century, aestheticians first introduced it when they used the word “Einfühlung” to describe the experience of feeling an emotional connection with art – a kind of “knowing” it from inside themselves.
Like many of the best concepts, the origins of empathy are in the German language, explains Helen Riess, MD, the Director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. So what is empathy, really? And what can prevent us from valuing and cultivating it, as much as we do other workplace superpowers? Empathy, defined According to the State of Empathy 2021 report, only one in four employees thought that there was a “sufficient” amount of empathy inside their organizations – a number that hasn’t budged since 2020. What’s more, many workers say their employers aren’t always walking the talk of empathy. “When leaders model, elevate and value human connection, their teams, customers and bottom line thrive.” Research suggests that when leaders demonstrate empathy, their workplaces see higher levels of performance, innovation, productivity, and engagement – along with increasing retention.īut even though many leaders and organizations pay lip service to empathy these days – especially post-pandemic – it’s also a term that is often misunderstood, and may not be taken as seriously as other “hard” skills in the workplace. “Empathy is an organizational superpower,” writes Stanford Assistant Professor of Psychology Jamil Zaki. It may be the closest thing to enabling your organization to become like members of the Avengers – a team that can take on any challenge. Here’s one suggestion based on decades of scientific research: empathy. Maybe you’d choose to fly, or to be invisible, or to breathe fire.īut what if you were selecting a superpower for your entire workplace? Which one would you choose? In a culture that’s obsessed with Marvel movies and superpeople, most of us have likely answered this question at least once: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
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