Empathy overview

When coaching empathy, it is important to understand the definition of empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand others' emotions and relate to them. The speaker shares a personal story about assuming someone's fear during the pandemic and how it changed when they learned more about the person's situation. They emphasize the importance of recognizing what others are going through and understanding their emotional makeup. Asking questions about how someone is feeling and how you can help is also suggested. When coaching empathy, we have to first start and really understand the definition of empathy. And when you think about empathy, here's a quick definition for you. The ability to understand others' emotional makeup and attributes, skill or with people according to their emotional makeup. Let me share with you just a very quick story as context, and make assumptions in the workplace and just in life really quickly. We tend to do it a lot. And I'll share this with you is when the pandemic hit, I had to have a great employee by the name of Alyssa, who made a comment to me, and I'll never forget it. And she was terrified. She was really scared of the pandemic, as I think a lot of people were. Now, I was not as hyped up for one reason, my wife is a physician. So she was describing the virus to me. And she was reading from medical journals, not watching the TV, and really getting good, accurate information. And I remember her saying something about a family member having a pre-existing condition, who was younger. So I assumed, why are you so scared? I'm older, I should be more concerned. And I went into judgment mode, not judging her, but just judging the situation and saying, geez, you're overreacting. And when she shared that with me, and right around this time, right beforehand, I became certified in emotional intelligence. And I said, wow, I said, how is that? How is that causing you to feel? She said, I'm scared. I'm scared for him. And I said, wow, I never, I never knew that. And it's her husband. I never knew this about him. And so when we understand what other people are going through, it makes a huge difference. Let me share something else with you. I have a friend who's writing a book, and I'm not going to say who the friend is, or what the book is about. But the title of the book just sits with me. And she and I were up one night, having a late Zoom meeting. And I said, you know what would be a great title for your book? Everybody's going through something, dot, dot, dot, including me. See, when we recognize empathy, it's not sympathy, saying, Oh, I'm sorry that, you know, I'm really sorry that occurred. And then we bring it back to us. It's about acknowledging what other people are going through. It's understanding what they're going through. And when we do that, we have greater context. And when we do that, we understand people's emotional makeup when we ask people, so what is this causing in your real life? You know, what challenges is this causing you? How are you feeling? What can I do to assist you? The questions as we get into that section will serve you extremely well.