“When you increase empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.” ~ Stephen Covey
Increase Empathy Definition: Recognizing and appropriately responding to others’ emotions.
Importance: By actively practicing empathy, people are empowered to deepen their relationships with others. Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they feel. It’s a remarkable ability – and opportunity – to form an emotional connection that fuels insight, trust, and helps us solve problems together.
Example: When someone is acting in a way that makes you angry or uncomfortable, empathy opens you up to the possibility of reconciliation. Instead of making assumptions about why the other person has acted in this way or that way, empathy opens you up to exploring the underlying emotional drivers of that person’s actions. Doing so often results in the formation of an emotional connection with that person, because we realize that they are also dealing with a complex emotional landscape that goes beyond what we see on the surface.
Increasing empathy helps you to deepen your relationships. It’s the link between self and others, how we connect, heal, and relate. As social creatures, humans are quite literally wired to feel empathy, and making the effort to practice empathy more frequently will bear the fruit of having deeper, more meaningful relationships – which in turn leads to a successful life professionally and personally.
The Components of Increase Empathy
Focusing on others is a precursor to empathy. The most basic component of empathy is noticing others.
“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands.” ~ Daniel Goleman
Replacing assumptions with a sense of curiosity opens us up to empathy. As this story illustrates, curiosity opens us up to empathy. At Six Seconds, we like to use the metaphor of the iceberg. The behavior we see from others is only the tip of the iceberg, and the rest of the iceberg represents the emotional drivers behind that behavior. A sense of curiosity opens us up to looking beneath the surface and figuring out the deeper reasons why something has happened.
Videos
Emotional Intelligence Articles about Increase Empathy
Increase Empathy in the Six Seconds Model of EQ (7/26/2023) - What is empathy, and how do we increase it? Articles, videos, quotes and resources to put empathy into action! ...
5 Questions to Develop Your Empathy: Increase Empathy for Success in 2023 (3/1/2023) - Empathy is crucial to developing healthy relationships with yourself and others. These 5 questions can help you take your empathy to the next level. ...
What’s Wrong with Empathy? EQ Coaching for Leadership (10/5/2022) - What does 'strong leadership' mean today? It turns out, (the right kind of) empathy & coaching are at the heart of how leaders ACTUALLY create impact. ...
87 Ways to Be Kind and Loving (6/27/2022) - Sometimes if feels impossible to be kind and loving. When you're struggling to access that loving place inside of you, give these expert tips for how to be kind a try. ...
The Empathy Iceberg: 3 Proven Tips for Managers to Engage People (1/17/2022) - How can managers use emotional intelligence to increase empathy in the workplace? It starts with a willingness to go "beneath the surface." ...
When You Don’t Click with Your Coworker (11/8/2021) - What can you do? Emotional intelligence tips to build bridges and collaborate better even when it's challenging. ...
Free Friendship and Empathy Kit from Red Nose Day & Six Seconds (10/19/2021) - In a time where so many children feel disconnected and alone, it's time to share skills for being and making friends! ...
Active Listening as a Leader: 4 Ways to Use Emotional Intelligence To Listen Well (7/12/2021) - Exceptional leaders have mastered the art of deep, active listening. Here are 4 practical tips to use emotional intelligence to listen well. ...
Empathy vs. Sympathy: What’s the Difference? (1/20/2021) - Learn the key difference of empathy vs. sympathy, including the most common sympathy traps. Plus tips to put empathy into action! ...
Equity, Wellbeing & Emotional Intelligence (#21) (7/28/2020) - What's the connection between wellbeing and racism? Can the skills and practices of emotional intelligence support us to build ourselves, our communities, and our world toward wellbeing for everyone? ...Click here for more Increase Empathy articles on our site
Recommended Tools
- Pursue Noble Goals in the Six Seconds Model of EQ - July 29, 2023
- Increase Empathy in the Six Seconds Model of EQ - July 26, 2023
- Exercise Optimism - July 24, 2023
Very profound
Everything begins with Giving. We give ourselves from the moment we are born, to a life that is unknown. It’s faith and a driving force of trust that moves us forward. Living a conscious life with empathy has changed me deeply. I have become calmer, more peaceful and open to listen to the intelligence of my own heart. I’ve seen how seeing and standing in the “twilight zone” of another, deepens my understanding and experience of them. The value of living with empathy for self and other aligns me more deeply with a noble goal that spirals toward a deeper connection all over.
Understanding the underlying feelings of others is the key to enhance empathy. Whenever you are distrurbed with someone else’s behavior, rather than assuming motives asking a simple question like “Why would someone reasonable act like this? Is there something that I did that caused this reaction”
Also see new book on empathy
4 Essential Keys to Effective Communication by Bento Leal
One of the recurring themes I have found doing my work is the interest out there to teach people altruism, compassion, empathy because it is good being good, etc. Teach it to children. My answer to Stephen Post, MD, Director of the Center for Compassionate Care at Stony Brook University, when he told me that they need to teach medical students to be more empathetic with their patients, was a question – How do you teach someone to be more empathetic who has little or no empathy for themselves? The answer to that is to teach a course using that word, and try to have people reflect on how another might feel. All of it…what I would call from the outside in – which never really works. Learning words and concepts can be done mechanically without having the least positive affect on another human being. Where should we start? By asking someone to rate how compassionate and empathetic they are with themselves. By opening the conversation about self-care and self-love – strangely used all over the spiritual community, but taboo in academia. People can be taught, slowly to become more aware of their behavior vise vie themselves. I believe when people can become truly empathetic and compassionate with themselves, taking care of their physical and emotional needs, will they be able to connect to what is going on inside another. Unconditionally, stefan
Thanks for sharing. Excellent readings and material. They will be of great help.