We can only go so far by ourselves; what we need most to go even further is to collaborate. But this can only be effective when we work with one crucial skill: empathy. How do we improve that at work? In this episode, Sara Murray breaks down eight important tips to help you nurture empathy within your team and fuel your business forward. Sara also digs deep into what empathy is really all about, dispelling myths and misconceptions that often cloud our understanding of it. Through it all, she shows how empathy binds all other skills, both soft and hard, amplifying what we do and the impact that we make.

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The Eight Essential Tips You Need To Improve Empathy At Work

Often, soft skills are considered natural abilities, but I feel strongly we can work on anything, which is why we're covering it on this show. We're tackling the soft skill of empathy. It's one of the most important elements because it weaves into all of the other skillsets. It enhances and amplifies your other skills. Understanding other people's emotions, needs, and pain points is essential to business development. Paying attention, listening, and asking appropriate questions based on what you're hearing is going to fuel your business exchange forward.

In this world, we're individualized. Collaboration is happening in digital and remote environments. With overwhelming workloads and balancing our work with our personal lives, sometimes we can have those blinders on to get our jobs done and focus on the task in front of us, and that human element becomes removed. There are a lot of words that fall into this category, empathetic, understanding, sympathetic, feelings, and being sensitive. Being empathetic is not synonymous with being sensitive.

I want to start there because those words get jumbled together, especially in work settings. In my experience, it seems that a lack of empathy is viewed as a strength. This is where sensitivity and empathy get confused. When we think about successful salespeople and/or valuable and impactful leaders, in order to advance up the ladder, some of those core attributes are in the hard skills category, the ability to have thick skin, communicate directly, have difficult conversations, and make difficult decisions. A lot of these hard skills that we've discussed as the intro to this series, they're not always sharing a lot of personal information, not asking questions, and so on. I'm assuming everyone's imagining someone in their heads as I'm rattling off this list.

All of those assets are great and they're going to be impactful. They're going to be more impactful if empathy is weaved into them. Think about it. Think about the different people that you've worked with over the course of your careers. Think about your favorite boss and your least favorite boss. I'm going to make an educated guess here that your favorite boss could communicate directly and have difficult conversations, but they would understand if you needed to work from home because you had a sick child.

Fill in the blank example here. The point is that empathy establishes the connection required to build trust, which makes communication easier. With trust and communication present, that's always going to result in better business. How can we take an inventory of our empathy as a soft skill, finesse it, and work on it? This goes for people who feel they have strong empathy skills like myself. It's still a skill that requires practice, and sometimes we have to have empathy towards people who are not like us, maybe people who are not as empathetic as us.

Be Curious

We're going to get into examples and we're going to talk about eight tips to be more empathetic at work. The first tip is to be curious. Express genuine interest. I always say that genuine interest is the first step in bridging the gap in relationship building. Empathy is a core element in relationship building. If we can approach all situations with a more open and curious mindset, it's going to give us the foundation to allow empathy to be part of the skills that we're pulling from in a business setting. Always be curious.

Practice Self-Awareness

The second tip is to practice self-awareness. I would recommend you do a little self-assessment now on how you'd rate yourself scale of 1 to 10, specific to your empathy skills when it comes to work. I'll give a formal definition here. Empathy is the ability to sense other people's emotions coupled with the ability to imagine what somebody else may be thinking or feeling. Research suggests that empathetic people tend to be more generous and concerned with others' welfare, and they also tend to have happier relationships and greater personal well-being. Empathy can also improve leadership ability and facilitate effective communication.

Empathy is the ability to sense other people's emotions coupled with the ability to imagine what somebody else may be thinking or feeling.

I took a free test on a website called GreaterGood.Berkeley.edu from Cal Berkeley. If you're interested in taking a test, sometimes people need some metrics behind it. I would encourage you to think about how you sit on that scale when it comes to being empathetic. If you're not as high as you want to be, then this is a great episode to tune in to and start to pay attention to the fact that maybe it requires some work. That is okay. We all need to practice our skillsets.

Adapt To Others

As I've already mentioned, this leads me to my third tip here, the ability to adapt to others. Once you understand where you fall on this empathy scale, one of the most important elements of successful communication and leadership is the ability to flex to other people's communication styles. I'm going to show you how this ties to empathy.

The example I gave earlier in this episode about somebody being direct and to the point, that's great. We work with a lot of those people. As an empathetic way that I could work with someone like that, maybe I recognize they have a heavy workload. They're busy. They're always traveling, so they're responding to emails on their phone. That means that I'm not going to send them an email that's novel with no clear request or action required. I'm not forwarding them a thread. I'm not BCCing them or CCing them on something that they don't have anything to do with.

Sometimes I'll put in the subject line, “No response required, non-urgent.” I'm being empathetic to their style. I'll put things in bullet points. I'll make it to the point. Sometimes I'll even put in bold, “What I need from you,” followed by bullets. I am being empathetic to that person's way of receiving information. On the flip side, if I'm talking to someone more myself who's a little bit chit-chatty, open, or personal in their sharing, I might start my email with, “So-and-so, how's your mom doing?” reference something from the last time you spoke. “How's your kid? I hope you had a great vacation.”

We always need to be flexing to the other person's communication style. I call it being divergent if you're familiar with that young adult fiction series. I'm going to do a future separate episode on this topic with more of a deep dive into how to recognize other people's communication styles and how to adapt to them.

I wanted to talk about it here because I do think that we bucket empathy into a certain type of mushy feeling type of person. That is not what I'm talking about here. If you are one of those mushy-feely people as I am, you need to still be empathetic to people who are different than you. It goes both ways. It's not just people with a lack of empathy, it's the empathetic people having to recognize that not everyone has the same type of style.

Consume Diverse Content

The fourth tip that I want to talk about is something that surprised me in my research when I was researching this episode, but the more I think about it, the more examples I could pull from. The fourth tip is to consume diverse content like reading fiction and nonfiction, watching different TV shows, and putting yourself into situations where if you don't have a specific frame of reference, then how can you get more data points to help pull from to be more empathetic in these situations?

I'm going to share a personal experience. It's heavy, but I finished the show Painkiller on Netflix. It is not a show I would've probably ever clicked on or been interested to watch, but I was on a trip and the group wanted to watch it. Once we started, I got invested in the show. If you're unfamiliar with it, Painkiller is a drama that's based on the opioid crisis in the United States and how Purdue Pharmaceutical in the late ‘90s brought the drug OxyContin to the market, how they built their whole success platform around sales and marketing, and pushing OxyContin to the doctors who would then prescribe it to patients potentially if they needed it or not. It's essentially heroin in pill form to quickly summarize.

That's not scientific there, but it's not the best depiction of the sales profession. Go into the show, knowing that if you watch it. When I watch the show, personally in my life, I've been fortunate enough to not have anyone directly in my life impacted by opioids. It's not a strong reference point in my life. I've never seen it up close and personal. I haven't had that experience, thankfully.

A television show isn't the same thing. However, it did depict different characters. There's a main character in the first episode who breaks his back and he was prescribed OxyContin, and it follows his journey in the show. When you see stories like this, it allows you to have so much more empathy for those families impacted by that type of addiction.

This doesn't always come up in a work environment, but it can and it personally has for me with a colleague. God forbid, if it ever comes up again, I have more context to relate and empathize with that experience because I watch Painkiller. I can understand how that happens a little bit more, even if it's a TV show and even if it's something I don't have a personal reference point in my life.

When we are in a work environment, we're so focused on getting stuff done that we sometimes forget the human element to it. That's why I'm bringing it up here. It's a gentle reminder that everyone is going through stuff in their personal lives and showing up with curiosity and empathy instead of getting through the tasks at hand and what our motivations are. This is going to, in the long run, serve as more impactful relationships that we're building. If you tune in to this show, we all know the value of relationships at work and specifically the importance of it in a sales capacity.

Avoid Judgment

There is a little bit of a heavy example here, but I wanted to share that because it was recent. That brings me to tip number five, which is to avoid judgment. If you have the ability to start to be more empathetic in how other people are showing up in their work or their decision-making, if you can start to finesse the skill and work on this skill, it's going to help you refrain from making quick judgments or assumptions about other people. Everyone has their own unique experiences, their own professional background, and their own professional situations that they've had to navigate through. That shapes our actions and our perspectives.

If we can be curious, going back to our first tip, it helps us default to snap judgments to try to understand the motivation behind their action. “I wonder why so-and-so would do it this way. That's not the way I would do it.” That doesn't mean it's the wrong way. Let's try to avoid judgment. It's important to show up in a curiosity space as opposed to a judgmental space.

Share In Other People’s Joy

Number six is an easy one. Share in other people's joy. This is the simplest way to find connection points and show that you're an empathetic person, even if it doesn't come naturally to you. If someone has a big sale, somebody got a promotion, if they got engaged, anything that they're excited about and happy about in their life, be happy for them. Tell them you're happy for them. Try to remember it. If you struggle remembering it, write it out on your phone. Write it out on your CRM. Find ways to share in other people's joy because it's an easy way to exercise that empathy and muscle.

Put Yourself In The Other Person’s Shoes: Learn About Different Cultures

Another piece, number seven, on a similar thread, take time to learn about different cultures. Educate yourself about various cultures, beliefs, and traditions. If you meet someone not necessarily in a work environment and they're open to sharing something about their life, take the opportunity to learn and expand your viewpoint because you're going to build more data points to be more empathetic.

I sat next to an Indian woman on a plane and we were chatting. She told me that she had started multiple businesses. I asked her if she'd be open to talking through a couple of different scenarios of, “I'm in the middle of navigating my business.” She said yes. We talked through it. She gave me some great advice. The conversation turned to dating, astrology, how she and her husband moved to the United States, how they viewed Americans, and her positive experience of immigrating to the United States from India to Chicago. It was such a great conversation. It expanded my viewpoint in different areas of life that I hadn't been exposed to before.

Number eight, this one I don't think is going to surprise anyone. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. View any situation and any conversation from another perspective. Try to imagine how the other person might be feeling in this situation and feeling in their specific situation. What challenges, fears, or joys might they be experiencing? This perspective-taking exercise can help you connect on a deeper level.

One tool that has helped me in controlling my emotions and how I respond to situations is to view them from three different perspectives. The first is my own perspective. That one's coming naturally because I'm the one experiencing it. The second one is to view it from the perspective of the other person. The third viewpoint is to view it from of bird's eye view, someone who has no skin in the game. If a third party was seeing this and has no investment, how would they be interpreting whatever the situation is at hand?

Once you start to do this and make this part of your muscle that you build, you're going to start to see that everyone has their own view of reality. You'll understand the motivation. You'll understand their background because we've talked about this on our other skillsets, but you're going to be able to see that everyone has their own view of reality and that's how they're showing up. It's going to help you understand their motives, take things less personally, and navigate through the conversation with less emotion behind it while still being empathetic.

This takes constant practice. I always practice this. One quick example I can share is a little vulnerable for me to share, but as I mentioned on the show, I used to sell to hotels. I had a hotel that opened to the public and they were still having some issues with their lighting. In this particular situation, the lights in the men's locker room and the women's locker room, separate rooms, were physically wired together. They couldn't turn off the lights in one locker room without impacting the other. They were upset and mad about it. It had nothing to do with me or my product. I didn't do it. My product didn't do it. We couldn't solve it because the lights were wired together.

I was getting frustrated because I was getting blamed for it. I was getting yelled at for it. I was expected to fix it. I was the only person around still to help. I was trying to help, but I was getting frustrated. That was a difficult situation to navigate. I was venting to one of my colleagues about it, and he said to me, “Think about it. They spent millions of dollars and years opening this hotel and something isn't working. They're just upset.” That was a helpful, humbling moment for me. It's still not my fault, but it shifted the way I showed up to offer solutions to help them solve it.

Another tool that has helped me practice empathy when I'm in a type of disagreement, attention, or difficult situation is to find reasons to be grateful for that person or the situation. Some ways you can frame gratitude here is, “What lessons can I learn from this experience?” I personally grew from this conflict. Next time I have this situation, I'll know how to handle it. This helped me make a decision to move forward because I got clarity from this situation. I have a stronger relationship with the client because I solved their problem and so on. It's hard when tensions are high. It's hard when egos are impacted. Feathers are ruffled. Practicing gratitude has always served me, and it helps me reframe it from an empathetic mindset. I encourage you to try it.

Improve Empathy: Find reasons to be grateful for that person or the situation.

Practice Active Listening

The last tip here, tip number eight, our final tip is to practice active listening. When we're interacting with others, focus on truly listening to what they're saying without interrupting them, without formulating responses in your mind, without thinking of your agenda, what you want to say next, and what you need to get out of this interaction. Pay attention not only to the words but also their tone, their body language, and the emotions you're seeing. This is going to show the other person that you value their thoughts and feelings.

If you're actively listening, you can ask ideally open-ended questions. This is going to help navigate and put the puzzle pieces that we've been building through tips 1 through 7 that we've already discussed. Active listening is what ties it all up with a bow. Active listening is another critical soft skill, and it's an area that takes practice. It's an area that not everyone does well, but if you can work on it and master it, you are going to differentiate yourself in your communication style and how you build those relationships. We're going to dive deeper into active listening in the next episode, but it's a big part of the overall skill of empathy.

That wraps up our eight tips. I'm going to give a quick recap here. 1) Be curious. We're always expressing genuine interest and understanding, being curious about their motivation. 2) Practice self-awareness. Work on this skill if it's an area that you feel you may be weak in. 3) Adapt to other people's styles. We're going to do a deeper dive into this topic in a future episode. 4) Consume diverse content. Open yourself up to other things. That's going to give you more data points if you don't have your own personal experience to pull from.

5) Avoid judgment. 6) Share in other people's joy, the easiest way to have empathy connection points. 7) Put yourself in the other person's shoes. We are viewing things from their perspective too. Everyone has their own view of reality. If we can see it from their point of view, it's going to change how we take it personally. It's going to change how we show up in our emotions. It's going to change how we navigate the conversation. It's a huge piece to practice. 8) Work on your active listening skills. It's a huge part of expressing empathy. It shows that you're not there just for you and your own benefit, but that you're here for a mutually beneficial relationship.

Everyone has their own view of reality, and if we can see it from their point of view, it's going to change how we take it personally.

We will discuss active listening in more detail in the next episode. To wrap this up, I want to remind us that building empathy is an ongoing process. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes a genuine desire to connect with others on a deeper level. By consistently practicing these strategies, you can become more attuned to the emotions and needs of those around you. Ultimately, strengthening your ability to empathize and layering this soft skill into every other skillset, including the hard skills required to be impactful and successful in your work.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this episode. Empathy is such a crucial skill, and it's going to be woven into some of our hard skills. That's why we started with empathy first. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. I'd appreciate it if you would subscribe to the show. Rate it. Leave a review. Thank you so much to those who have already done so. I appreciate you showing up in this episode. In the next episode, we're going to talk about active listening. It's going to be a good one. I appreciate you. It's going to be a good one. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Important Links

GreaterGood.Berkeley.edu
Free Test – Empathy Quiz

Episode 37: The Eight Essential Tips You Need To Improve Empathy At Work