If you’ve been scrolling through the comments sections of this series on high-impact workplace skills, you’ll notice that one topic has come up several times, and that’s compassion. The ability to empathize—to truly hear, understand, and feel for other people—is a key interpersonal skill that unlocks deeper abilities and fosters effectiveness in working with others.
Think about it this way:
- You can use analytical thinking to find solutions to problems, but you can’t convince your stakeholders to act on your recommendations if you don’t consider their needs.
- You can motivate yourself to prioritize your professional development, but to set a career progression strategy, you need to understand the results your boss values.
- You can show leadership by assigning tasks to your team, but if you want to inspire everyone’s best work, you need to recognize the conditions your team needs to perform at their best.
Well, even though empathy and active listening sitting at number 8 on the list of the best skills of 2023, these skills can find a way to improve them.
How to show empathy
Empathy is a step deeper than sympathy. When you express sympathy, you might acknowledge how the person is feeling and know how you would feel if you were in a similar situation. When you express empathy, you can imagine how it feels to be that person in that situation.
When you empathize, you understand the set of circumstances that surround another person and affect how they feel. Sympathy is noticing an intern struggling to complete a project; empathy is the recognition that the intern is struggling to adapt to his first work environment and that this adjustment period makes it difficult for him to cope with tasks.
Active listening and empathy have a symbiotic relationship. Active listening is the practice of listening, interpreting and thinking when communicating with someone else.
To illustrate the relationship between these two skills, let’s go back to your intern:
During the introductory interview, the intern told you that this was their first work experience, and through their body language and the questions they asked, you got on their nerves about finding the right contacts for the various teams they would be working with and etiquette for reaching out.
This previous conversation informed your empathetic response when you noticed that they had missed a deadline—the very thing they were worried might happen. Now you go back to the intern and think, “How do you feel about your project? Can I help you find the appropriate points of contact?”
Now, your intern feels that you have heard them and understood their block, and provided a way forward (that’s leadership). Empathy and active listening not only help you feel connected to others, but can help your peers feel connected to you in return.
Practicing empathy and active listening
You probably already have empathy and active listening skills—you may notice them most when interacting with loved ones—but these skills can be difficult to use in different settings or situations. To really master these skills, practice is required.
Here are some starting points:
Finally, to conclude this series on high-performance skills in the workplace, we’ll offer one more recommendation: IBM’s specializations in people and soft skills for professional and personal success. Over the course of six courses, you’ll explore how to develop and implement what IBM calls “success skills”—all of which will look familiar after these last five editions.
This concludes another series of Career Chat. Thank you for showing up and sharing with us. We’re back next week with another special edition. I’ll see you then!