How To Be Empathetic At Work?

Empathetic: Empathy is the ability to perceive, share and understand what another can feel, worrying about other people’s experiences. It is also described as a feeling of affective involvement when you are aware that others may see and think differently.

empathy at work

The emotional factor of workers is increasingly important for companies, since it has been shown that it plays a determining role in the way each person works and therefore affects the company in its eagerness to achieve challenges and objectives.

One of the key points for good management of emotions at the workplace is empathy . The rhythm of life that we lead, the volume of work, the conciliation with personal life and other matters can lead us to a stressful situation in which it is often difficult for us to realize the problems that other people suffer and to look only for ourselves.

Daniel Goleman , American psychologist, journalist and writer, known worldwide for his book Emotional intelligence, was the one who popularized the term “emotional intelligence” which he defines as “a synonym for character, personality or soft skills that, together with resilience , has its translation into manifested behaviors, both at the level of thoughts, physiological reactions and observable behaviors, learned and with the possibility of being learned, which facilitate the management of human relationships”.

Today some people think that being empathetic means forgetting oneself and looking more for others. However, the practice has many benefits and can help us clarify fears, anger or doubts. Some companies no longer only measure an employee’s worth by his IQ and his ability to work, but have begun to take emotional intelligence into account.

Outstanding workers are those who have developed  emotional intelligence

A study by Robert Kelley and Janet Caplan, published by  the Harvard Business Review , found that workers who excel are often the ones who perform best on the emotional side of intelligence. That is to say: those who have a greater facility to solve problems and know how to deal with the rest of the employees.

4 Tips to be an empathic person

To become an empathic person, it is advisable to follow some of the following recommendations:

• Reading opens the mind . Raymond Mar , PhD in Psychology from the University of York believes that “reading is a great way to expand our horizon of experiences”. The ability to know what others think, put yourself in the shoes of others, know how to treat each individual is a virtue that can be learned by reading.
• Prejudice doesn’t help. It is the biggest barrier that exists, sometimes we prejudge others without knowing anything about them, based solely on their appearance or their way of being. We have to learn to forget about the prejudices of that and try that the first experiences are not what stay in our memory and open ourselves to knowing people better. Try to talk to a stranger at least once a week.
• Volunteering facilitates empathy , which helps increase life satisfaction. This is because we leave our social circle and generate new social links.
• Let’s speak. You need to be an active listener in order to be empathetic. In fact, it is the most efficient technique. This means that you must be totally focused on what the other person is saying. And also if you manage to focus not only on what she says but also on non-verbal communication, you will be able to get to know that person much better.

In short, the benefits of practicing empathy are many. Among others, this quality allows us to better detect emotions and feelings and improves our communication, since by observing we get to know people better and learn to communicate better.

Self-esteem tends to rise when relationships and communication are more satisfying. Empathy is not only an altruistic act that benefits a person, but also helps us to be happier and feel more complete.

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