PPI #68: How to Develop Empathy

As a leader in business or at home, one of the most powerful skills that you can develop is empathy, empathetic communication, empathetic understanding, empathetic leadership. And unless you develop that empathy, you'll never lead properly, either in your home or at work. And so today, I want to talk to you about a couple of techniques that you can use to grow your empathy muscle.

Several months ago, I was having a conversation with the CEO, coaching him on his leadership ability both at work and at home. And one of the things that we did was ask him to go and solicit feedback from his spouse and his kids and from his colleagues at work. And the feedback was super consistent. Everyone said that often he had the right answers and he knew what to do, and he was great at providing advice and. But that the edges were a little bit too sharp. He needed to soften those edges. And what we zeroed in on was that he needed to show more empathy. And there's two simple things that you can do to immediately engage and practice more empathetic communication, both at home and at work. And the first thing that you can do is when anyone ever asks you for advice or is struggling with, first seek to acknowledge before you advise or before you begin to coach them. And we acknowledge by simply replaying what it is that they said to us. We acknowledge by making sure that we go to the same place that they are. So if they're feeling a little bit down and depressed about something, we, we want to create that empathetic link by saying, yeah, I can see why, you know, you're feeling down or depressed about this. Yeah, I can understand why this, this is a bit of a challenging or, you know, a tough time for you. We need to make that acknowledgement, that empathetic link to them. So first, seek to acknowledge. And the second thing that you can do is just pause. So after you've acknowledged, after you've created that empathetic link, that empathetic connection, acknowledging where they are, perhaps replaying what they said, then just seek to pause before you respond and ask yourself, how would the most empathetic version of you reply? Because there will be a response that you could associate with the most empathetic version of you and all the other potential responses. And if you just pause and allow that wisdom to come in, you'll develop that empathy muscle. And if you think about developing empathy in this way, every single day presents a whole bunch of opportunities to you. It's sort of like somebody's handing you a dumbbell, a weight. You know, it says empathy on the barbell. And every conversation that you have is a chance for you to both acknowledge what the person is saying and then to complete the repetition by pausing before you respond, asking yourself, what is the most empathetic way I could reply to this? And then completing the rep to develop your empathetic muscle. To develop your empathy muscle. And the more you do this, the stronger you get at it, the more empathetic your communication will become and the more you will successfully lead, both at home and at work. So I hope you've enjoyed that. And if you head over to my website at ericpartaker. Com, you can also subscribe to my weekly Peak Performance Insights newsletter.