Empathy is generally described as the capacity of participating in or understanding the feelings or ideas of another person. One ingenious approach to relating with people and solving your own hurts and feelings is to turn your attention to someone else and seek to enter his world, without necessarily leaving yours, of course! He who wears the shoe, we often say, knows where it pinches. So, if you want to get along with a person who is proving difficult, step into his shoes and see if you can feel what he feels and perhaps you will understand what he knows.
Businessmen and marketers of goods and services thrive on empathy as a tool to understand prospective clients’ needs in a competitive environment. It’s an analytical process of determining what the client wants and how best you can give it to him. You are like an excavator, unearthing your customers deepest and most primal desires. Subri Suby in his international bestseller marketing book: “Sell Like Crazy… How to get as many clients customers and sales as you can possibly handle” writes: you must delve into their fears, hopes, wishes and dreams”. Sometimes you find that the client is not really sure of what he wants and what he needs. So, your job is to probe beyond the surface, which is normally a superficial façade and seek to establish a link to those emotions that are normally lurking somewhere close. If you understand that all needs and wants are linked to a feeling that is emotional, then you are half way there. Robert Collier puts it differently: “Enter the conversations already taking place in the customers mind.”
Businessmen and marketers of goods and services thrive on empathy as a tool to understand prospective clients’ needs in a competitive environment.
Those people who value designer wear, like Armani, for instance base their choice of clothing on a feeling it gives them. It possibly makes them feel important, neat and recognizable. Those emotions are what the seller of the product needs to target so as to hook the buyer to the product and make his sale. The same goes for services.
Empathy is a great tool for the psychologist, whether you practice pychoanalysis as a discipline or you simply use it occasionally in your line of work. Having a person or group of people in mind and taking the pain to understand their desires, tastes, preferences and moods goes a long way in helping us to know the person sometimes almost intimately. Often, empathy will take the broader concept of profiling which reveals deeper nuances of a person’s possible behaviour even in relation to goods and services. So, if you are in any line of work, its error to think that everyone around you must see the world through your own kaleidoscope. There are multiple perspectives. Your job may often involve understanding these perspectives, even though you might not necessarily agree with them. Psychoanalysts sometimes have challenges with their nature of empathetic work. If and when an analyst identifies with and understands a person, he can get dragged so deeply into that person’s void that it could constitute a danger to him.
Creflo Dollar, an American Pentecostal Pastor and Psychoanalyst once described how after counseling victims of sexual abuse of a long period of time, he found himself in a deep depression that made him have suicidal thoughts. He had empathy for them that was so deep that he begun to have an emotional response to their predicaments. There is a dangerous dark side to empathy familiarising ourselves with the desires and behavioural traits of people who are ethically challenged could have a bad influence over us. The flip side of the analysis is for us to be able to profile ourselves appropriately. Can we turn the search light on ourselves when and where necessary and take the blame when we realise that we are responsible for things going wrong? Empathy should help us reveal hidden truths about ourselves as well as others. Often, leaders find themselves in positions where their followers are sycophants who cannot tell them the truth. Different people might find themselves in positions of leadership or influence. Robert Greene in his most recent book: “The Laws of Human Nature,” says “there are fools and saints and sociopaths and ego maniacs and noble worriors, sensitive and insensitive people all around us”. Such people often find themselves in positions of power or influence and the outcomes might be fatal or beneficial depending on the nature of the individual. Sometimes the individual can portray a need for power and control and have a deep seated poor self image which would cause him to do so much damage to people and institutions he is involved in that his very presence in that environment would lead to depravation and deprivation. History gives various examples of such individuals. Adolf Hitler, the counselor of Germany, whose warped vision plunged the world into a war and led to the extermination of several million Jews in concentration camps is a critical example.
In an attempt to understand a person’s disposition towards politics, religion, fun, ethics and individual choices, we have to be unbiased and patient if we wish to empathise. It calls for dispassionate observation and we have to make an effort to ensure that our personal biases do not hinder a forthright analysis. Empathy does not mean we should turn a blind eye to nefarious or deviant behaviour, it rather seeks to understand why people engage in such behaviour and in extreme cases, what can be done to ameliorate it. This voyage of fact finding is not limited to us understanding the subject under study. It also enables us to make vital decisions concerning our relationships and our personal disposition.
The secret of empathy can be summarised in one of the popular laws of highly effective people by Stephen Covey: Seek first to understand and then be understood.
The motive of the person or people whom we empathise with is also a major consideration. Control is always issue. We should understand that society places limits on what we can control as individuals. Even powerful people have their limitations and must have a following of some kind before they can fulfill their desires. But if their motive is not all together altruistic, then danger looms. All actions and decision taken are weighed by the question: Why? Every motive can be explained and analyzed. But whether it can be justifiable and acceptable is another story entirely. Real motives take time before they are revealed. Often we have to probe beyond the surface and settle on a pedestal that prevents us from being swayed by deceit and duplicity.
A soft voice and a mellow tone used in subtle inquiry can often probe beyond the surface and get to the heart of a hidden matter. It can take time and intense study to unravel. As human beings we like to put up false flags and present our very best self and if we find a person who is willing to swallow the front we have put up, we might continue our quest to win him over till he is right by our side – swallowing our every word and taking it as the gospel truth. Orators have been able to deceive mass audiences using the same technique. But empathy should refuse to be swayed this way. It should seek views and show sympathy for the individual where necessary so as to gain the confidence of the subject. But the person making the observation or inquiry should have his own rational point of view which should be tempered with truth and reason. If we have opposing views they should only be expressed after we have a full understanding of the issues at hand and they ought to be expressed subtly where there are expectations of rejection or sometimes strongly where there is an urgent need for correction.
The secret of empathy can be summarised in one of the popular laws of highly effective people by Stephen Covey: Seek first to understand and then be understood. This takes us right to an ideal way of communicating which is a great need for proper empathy. In advanced negotiation with terrorists and hostage situations, these skills are used extensively and the results are often positive. This is why empathy is important.
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
