Friday Focus: The Importance of Empathy

This week I was able to attend a business conference. The event hosted different roundtables and group sessions in an effort to give the attendees more perspective, insights and tools to help them exceed within their individual businesses.

One meeting stood out most, the focus of the presentation was on courage, leadership, taking chances and purpose, one thing the speaker put an emphasis on, and it seemed to tie everything together: the importance of empathy.

Empathy as defined is an understanding of someone’s circumstances, or behavior in a caring manner. The origins of the word come from the Greek empatheia which translates to affection. Empathy is a caring quality; it isn’t simply understanding a situation or behavior, it’s approaching it with care and genuine emotion.

Understanding lies within an analytical sphere, binary, explainable, able to be recorded, whereas empathy truly emits from the heart, built on feelings of care and sympathy. Empathy is the ability to truly relate, through genuine attention and care to create solutions that focus on the individual more than an objective.

Empathy is more closely related to love, while love is an emotion and often blinded by such, empathy possesses a remarkable ability to combine the black and white of understanding with the prismatic colors of love.

The way to sense the emotions and circumstances others face lies in our ability to become more sensitive ourselves; to express true empathy one must be in tune with their senses. Empathy is indeed genuine and is only effective as such.

Becoming empathetic starts by lowering our emotional walls, or guard. Mistrust, status, setting and more lead to us tying up our senses, jailing our ability to truly feel; by contrast lowering our armor in times of understanding is what opens the door to truly connect with others. When we do so, we are able to channel our emotions and truly express them, that is where empathy starts.

Empathy begets understanding, and understanding is what builds trust. Trust is an immovable connection, for a leader to be successful in any objective or campaign they need to obtain the trust of his team. Often what is missing in most spaces today, corporate, academic, and familial is this lack of trust, leading to a lack of straightforwardness, poor communication and eventually important bonds being broken.

In the corporate world, this leads to turnover, partnerships ending or customers going elsewhere. The lack of empathy in the workplace is a true epidemic within today’s society and it stems chiefly from leadership.

Searching for the why in an employee relationship is as important as in sales yet overlooked by most in leadership positions. Should a partner or employee underperform at a goal or objective look at it not through the lens of simple understanding, but through the eyes of empathy. Put down the sword, the write up, the PIP and approach a situation in search of the why, as the emotional side of you would approach a loved one or dear family member if they were in a similar situation. As you love and care for your family and friends so too should you care for your employees or business partners. Why should they be treated differently?

This need for empathy is especially important in modern times. So often managers are having huge trouble retaining workers or getting production from the younger generation, particularly Gen Z. A large reason for this is lack of empathy, now more than ever this generation needs it to help and motivate them as they are the most love and empathy deprived generation in modern times. Parents are spending less and less time with children on average and children are spending less and less time interacting with others which is creating a lack of exposing them to the affection and learning experiences so desperately need to develop as a young person especially how to use and deal with their emotions.

When younger people now get to the workplace, they are perceived to lack emotional intelligence or a strong work ethic, which is unfortunately often misperceived by their superiors as disrespect, laziness or rebelliousness. Unfortunately, too often the response or correction to this condition is not carried out with empathy by superiors but with a cold callousness reminiscent of an ancient way of thinking.

The result: a further disconnect workforce, lack of trust and eventually a permanent separation.

We’ve all experienced a time when we needed to be heard, not merely understood, loved and not just being noticed or acknowledged. Now it’s our turn as leaders, managers or owners to make the effort to be the presence, the guiding light so many long for especially today.

It only takes one interaction with someone to change the course of their lives, empathy is the magic tool to make a connection last forever.

To gain personalized guidance for your business on this topic and others contact us.

- Vince Calace

Founder - Venture Business Development