Empathy - The Secret to Building Relationships

Empathy is a huge topic that I have been wrestling with how to write about for a while now, but I thought a good place to start would be to define two words that are often confused with each other - sympathy and empathy.

Sympathy is showing you understand what the other person is experiencing.

Empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of the other person and (at least practicing) feeling the emotions that they feel.

To help illustrate the difference, let's look at an example response for each in the scenario where a friend loses their job:

• Sympathetic response: 'Oh wow, that sucks. I'm sorry that happened.'
• Empathetic response: 'Oh wow, I'm really sorry to hear that. I know that job was important to you, and you put a lot of effort into it, so it must be really disappointing that it didn't work out. Do you want to meet up for a drink/lunch/coffee to talk about it?"

Both responses acknowledge the unfortunate turn of events, but the empathetic response does a few key additional things:

• Includes words of emotion (in this case, 'disappointing').
• Has an action associated with it (the offer to meet up in person).
• The focus remains on the person and their feelings.

There is a subtlety on that last point that is often overlooked. In our desire to connect with a person going through a hard time, it is common to try and relate by retelling our own potentially similar experience. The thinking is honest and well meaning, but in a conversation that demands empathy, telling your story completely glosses over the other persons feelings. Empathy requires that we stick with the person and how they are feeling.

One potential way to tell whether you are responding with sympathy vs empathy is the medium used. The best scenario is in person, where the full impact of body language can be expressed. The next option down is phone or voice, where you at least still have vocal intonations. By the time you get to email to text, chances are the response is more sympathetic than empathetic. It's not a perfect measure, and your existing rapport with the individual can make a big difference, but at a high level, it works.

So, why do we care about empathy?

In one word: trust. Regardless of whether you are a salesperson or a technician, the best scenario is one where the customer trusts that you have their best interest at heart. This is the core foundation of any relationship - business, or professional. And, who do people turn to when they need help? Those they trust. If you gain someones trust, you gain an ally.

The Biggest Mistake In My Career

We all make mistakes, but when I think back over my career, this one really stood out: For almost 20 years, I virtually ignored networking. It’s only now, midway through my career, that I’m finally learning how important it can be.

I’ve always heard that having a network is beneficial, but I only really considered it in the context of the verb ‘to network’ which, according to my view, was something done by people who are unemployed and looking for a job. I have been very fortunate that I’ve continually had stable jobs where I felt secure in my employment, so I never felt a huge need to go out and ‘network’.

For an introvert like me, making connections and maintaining them takes a lot of effort. I’m not naturally good at the small talk, and I don’t have the natural charisma that some people do. I’m not a compelling story teller, so holding court with an audience can be a challenge. Traditionally, if I’ve made a connection with someone, it has been based on something substantial that we have in common, and that connection has been made with the intent of continued investment.

But what I’ve been realizing lately is that my concept of having a network was almost all wrong: The value of the network is not the endpoints (each individual person) - it’s the web itself. I had been looking at the network from a very ego-centric, hub-and-spoke point of view, when the strongest webs are a mesh.

The purpose of the connection web is to help facilitate additional connections – not only between me and others I’ve interacted with, but also between two or more people that I’ve met, who can benefit mutually from an introduction. If I help someone one on one, that is great – but connecting multiple people is even better. Larger networks mean higher chances that I can facilitate connections between two or more people.

To help push past my narrow view, it helped me to realize that everyone else is in the same boat. Ultimately, we create our networks because it helps us further our careers, or enhance our personal life in some way. We do get benefit from it – so we can’t completely ignore the egotistical side of it. However, so does everyone else – they grow their networks to increase the chances that they get a boost in some way down the line. So if I toss out a connection request, they might as well accept it, because they don’t know how I may be able to assist them in the future, when they might need it.

File this learning under “Salespeople already know this – but other technically-minded people like me may be blissfully ignorant to the value of a well-formed network”.

If you haven’t already – start building your web of connections now. When you need it, you will be glad did.

Capitalizing on Change

 “The only thing that is constant is change” - Heraclitus

That quote, or some variant of it, has been heard by everyone, and has been around for millennia. I’m sure most people think about it the same way I initially did – a bit of reflection upon events in ones’ own life, recognition that changes did happen over time, but feeling that but for a few significant events (marriage, kids, etc) - we were largely powerless over the changes that happened in our lives.

However, I think there are deeper meanings, and multiple levels of truth, in sayings that have stood the test of time.

In this case, the first level of truth is initial reflection. It’s easy to look at the past and see how the saying has applied to events that already happened - the tapestry of history is already known, and we are familiar with looking at the past to gain insight.

The second level of truth is recognizing that the saying will continue to be true in the future. It sounds obvious, but it is more difficult to embrace, because it means admitting things you enjoy in your life right now will change – your relationships, your career, your health, etc. The changes are not necessarily bad, but things like relationship dynamics and career paths do change over time.

The third level of truth is recognition of change as it is happening. In my opinion, this is where the saying really starts to show its value, because change is opportunity in disguise, and if change happens frequently, that means there is always a new opportunity. We can then use these opportunities to improve our situation or set us up for future success - we just have to tune our eyes to see the opportunity.

For example, maybe there has been some management change at your workplace. This sort of thing is often viewed with trepidation because it can threaten the status quo and existing level of comfort. However, this change may result in new professional growth opportunities – barriers that existed in the old regime may not be present in the new, because policies and procedures may be altered.

Or perhaps something has happened in your life that has changed your comfortable and familiar schedule. This change may result in a new consistent block of time that is conducive to pursuing something you have been thinking about for a while, such as working out more regularly, reading more, or even preparing your own home cooked meals more often.

How many times have you examined some factor of your life - how you ended up at your current job, how you met your spouse, or how your deepest friendships developed - followed the chain of events that ultimately led to that outcome, and been amazed that something so insignificant at one point in time resulted in something so significant now?

That was when something happened in your life when you weren't paying attention. Now, imagine how things could look 20 years from now if you brought a level of intention and vision to events happening in your life right now.

Life presents us with a lot of changes on a regular basis that at first seem insignificant. Yet, we can use them to continually practice sharpening our vision, which provides even more opportunities we can capitalize on. Over time, this cycle acts like compound interest – small changes now pay big dividends later.

Don't be afraid of change. Embrace it.

The Challenge of Working From Home That No One Seems to Mention

Having a quiet workplace where you can concentrate is great, and the internet is flooded with articles offering advice on how to do that. That’s the easy part.

I find the hard part about working from home is the other side - how to ramp-down the work brain, and flip into our family brain once we take the five steps that has become our commute. It’s only been recently that I discovered how much of a challenge this is, even though I’ve been working primarily from home for four years now.

When I am in work-brain mode, I have a tendency to be ‘Go! Go! Go!’, and I’ve learned (the hard way) that this attitude is not conducive to interacting with family. When my brain is still in a super-productive mindset, and I’m thrust back into a normal home environment, I come across as short tempered, irritated, and annoyed. As you could guess, this can be a source of friction.

A few weeks ago, I started reflecting on what was going on. At the time, I couldn’t even articulate the problem in the way I did above – I just knew there was something going on between work and home that wasn’t quite right. I eventually came to realize that I was holding onto work-related anxiety – specifically around situations where I either didn’t feel productive that day, or didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped.

That was a major breakthrough for me, which led me to come up with the following process for dis-engaging from work prior to walking out of the office:

• Start winding down work related tasks 30 minutes prior to leaving the office. I had gotten into a habit of trying to remain as productive as possible up until the final minute, but oftentimes I still didn’t finish the task I was working on, and it made things a mess to pick up the next day. By starting to wind down early, that easily led to the next item…
• Note down what tasks to start on first thing the next day. This accomplishes two things – it allows for some closure for the day if I didn’t finish a task, and it gives me an easy spot to start from the next morning to spool up productivity.
• Don’t beat myself up for not getting to everything. The reality is that tasks I am involved in at the midpoint of my career are significantly more complex than they were at the start of my career. There are going to be days where it doesn’t seem like the productivity needle has moved much, but these larger tasks require a lot more groundwork than early-career tasks.

These are little things, but I find they make a big difference in offloading the mental burden and making the transition from work-brain to family/home brain.