The 3 types of empathy you need to improve your business — Part II
Last week we began to talk about the meaning and importance of Empathy.
Now, we will concentrate on exploring why is important to build and implement it in the workplace.
In their 4th annual empathy study, Businessolvers’ report shows that:
👉 72% of CEOs say the state of empathy needs to evolve
👉 58% of them struggle with showing it in a consistent way
It is clear that there is still a lot to be done. Even though corporations are aware of the importance of incorporating empathy into the culture of the organization, there is still a gap between the intention and the action.
Making empathy part of the company’s culture calls for a conscious effort.
Why is it so important to build emotional empathy and implement it?
Research has already proven that empathy, among other things:
📌 boosts productivity
📌 accelerates innovation
📌 increases loyalty and customer satisfaction
📌 creates long term bonds and cooperation
So, given that there is still so much to do in this field, let’s take a look at simple but effective solutions that we can implement right away:
• Show gratitude: say thank you more often, appreciate the time and effort that others invest in you, your product and your service. Give credit for the things well done. Being grateful not only creates bonds but also shows respect and helps with dignity.
• Show you listen: practising active listening restores confidence and helps build loyalty. A high percentage of employees, as well as customers, feel their opinion doesn’t matter. Make yourself available: create surveys, ask direct questions, handle 1-to-1 meetings, be sure that your customer service is giving the needed assistance.
• Share stories with a positive outlook, whenever you can but especially before beginning a meeting. Sharing creates a bond and helps to set an ambience of collaboration and willingness, openness and receptiveness.
• Listen to your co-workers and team members. Make some extra time to give others the opportunity to share. Make room, physically and emotionally, for the others’ experiences. Let people talk and listen to their stories.
3 top tips to improve your empathy
👉 Know yourself. Self-awareness and self-management are the first steps that will help you improve empathy. Both will help you with: knowing yourself, your emotions and reactions, and also, being ready to manage your own feelings, creating, with confidence, a space to listen carefully to others.
👉 Practice active listening and connect with the other person. Be interested in speech but also in body language. Open yourself up to understand and if you don’t, ask questions, be curious and willing to learn and understand new perspectives. Focus on understanding the situation (cognitive empathy) and how the person feels (emotional empathy).
👉 Open up space for reflection and practice self-awareness. You can relate to the others’ experience if you have had a similar one, but you can also imagine how it looks if you don’t. Explore your own feelings and emotions and ask yourself what you would do in a similar situation. Get ready to implement a solution and take action, showing compassionate empathy.
👉 Simply, ask: how can I help?
The post “3 types of empathy for a better life and business” originally appeared on Maitén Panella’s website at https://maitenpanella.com
