Early on, I wasn’t sure how I should characterize the form of communication I was teaching. The word “empathy” didn’t perfectly describe it. At the same time, I didn’t want to use the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) label which is readily applied to relationship-building trainings. EQ is so broad it can describe any teaching designed to improve communication with others—from leadership certificates at Harvard to one-day DEI workshops.
My training is not just about empathy (at least not in the traditional sense); it’s about establishing a sense of understanding about ourselves and then making an intentional effort to understand and connect with others. And yet, after years of research, I still haven’t found a better word to characterize the type of connections I foster.
Empathy itself has a wide range of definitions depending on who you ask. For instance, the 2016 paper “Empathy: A Review of the Concept” defines empathy in 43 different ways. Ask someone on the street, and they might confuse it with sympathy or imagine it as standing around holding hands in a circle.
The traditional definition of empathy is understanding someone else’s thoughts or feelings. Some refer to this as stepping into another person’s shoes or taking their perspective. Already we’re off to a rocky start because we cannot understand someone else’s thoughts or feelings. We cannot step into another person’s shoes or take their perspective.
How can I, a privileged straight white woman, ever feel the life experiences of a black man? A gay Latina? A trans person? Someone living in poverty? The simple answer is, I can’t. Our feelings and experiences are ours and ours alone, created over a lifetime of encounters that have shaped and molded who we are.
Nevertheless, many programs based on EQ or DEI encourage participants to feel or understand what something is like for another person. This is where many communication and awareness trainings come up short. We cannot truly feel or understand what somebody else is feeling. We are not them.
What we can do is make an effort to understand the other person. We can take the time to ask questions with genuine curiosity. We can learn to listen with the intent of understanding, rather than formulating our own response. We can learn to respond rather than react, to better resolve conflict. In this way, we are practicing empathy but not attempting to be inside another person’s head.
The advantage of this approach to empathy is that it is teachable. Anyone who is willing to learn, regardless of their background or level of emotional awareness, can learn to better relate to their colleagues and loved ones.
The secret is that we don’t jump right into understanding others. We work on understanding ourselves first and then take steps in the direction of understanding others. We become aware of the thought patterns that lead us to jump to negative conclusions, analyze our negative thoughts, and then challenge them in order to engage the other person with positivity and equanimity. This process takes effort, and though it’s simple, it’s not easy.
The personal rewards are significant for those willing to put in the work to increase their empathy-related skills: increased happiness and better mental health. And people who are happier and less stressed are more productive, more engaged, and more creative.
I could easily name 43 components of my training system that go beyond the traditional idea of empathy: mindfulness, self-awareness, benefit of the doubt thinking, common humanity outlook, gratitude mindset, etc. At the end of the day, however, it’s about bringing people together and creating spaces where we can be our best selves in relation to ourselves and in relation to others.