Empathy and how you can improve it.

As a manager or supervisor of a team, you must have heard the word empathy countless times. If you are new to the ideology of empathy, empathy refers to understanding the emotions of others and feeling the emotions as the individual themselves.

For example, you have questioned a low performing employee or subordinate and he/she tried to relate to you their marital issues at home and that it is affecting their daily work performance. By empathizing with the employee/subordinate will mean that you try to understand his/her emotions and rationalize why is it affecting their work performance.

More often than not, most bosses claimed that they empathize with you but they are not empathetic as they seemed. They might 'pretend' to be listening to you but end of the day they just want to achieve their end goals without due consideration of how to help the said employee or subordinate.

However, not all bosses chose not to be empathetic. Most of them thought that they were empathetic simply just by listening to the issues the employee or subordinate has and hope that the problem he or she faces miraculously disappear. A truly empathetic boss or supervisor will put themselves in the shoes of his employee or subordinate and help to provide solution or advice so that this aid can in turn bring the employee back to track for better work performance.

Most supervisors and bosses are not empathize with others because they simply cannot relate how the other parties feel. Not everyone had suffered the loss of a loved one, not everyone had issues with their wives and not everyone would have experienced the same predicament as every other people.

I personally felt that the best ways to improve the level of empathy of a person is through the following methodologies.

1) Learn about other's stories.

The most basic ways of understanding how others feel is simply to connect with others by knowing their stories. I have spoken to thousands of people in my professional and academic life and everyone has a different story to tell. However, you have to be authentic and genuinely want to connect with them to learn more about their stories and this will truly polish your level of empathy.

2) Listen more talk less

You know whats a NATO? No action talk only. Don't be that person. You can level up your empathy only through active listening. By forming images in your brain of what the person is telling you will allow you to depict how the person is feeling. More often than not, people with low empathy tends to disrupt others to shove their ideas across. This is a barbaric way of getting your point across and it is definitely a no no if you want to improve on your empathy.

3) Read a fiction novel or play a role-playing video game (RPG)

I had been an avid gamer since my younger days and games and novels were one of the ways I try to escape from reality as I bring myself into the character in the games or books. These allow you to experience life out of normal life and simply learn more stories out there.

Do you any other ways to improve empathy? I will definitely love to hear from you.

Check me out on linked at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chengyu-leo-liao-008854136

and I will love to connect with you.

The best had yet to come!

Leo