From the course: Skills to Build Stronger Work Relationships
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What is empathy and why is it difficult?
From the course: Skills to Build Stronger Work Relationships
What is empathy and why is it difficult?
- There is so much talk out there about empathy, but what we really need to remember is that empathy involves an emotional component. If you intellectually understand what someone else is feeling, but you are not feeling it, that's not empathy, that's sympathy. Empathy means actually allowing yourself to feel what someone else is feeling in order to understand them. And this can be tough because we don't always want to feel what someone else is feeling. It's also difficult to empathize with any emotion in someone else that we're not comfortable acknowledging in ourself. For example, I worked with a CEO who pushed away her anger because she was taught that anger is a sign of weakness. So when people on her team felt angry or even just frustrated, it made her uncomfortable and she had trouble empathizing with them. To get more comfortable with your own emotions, practice leaning into your feelings instead of away from…
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