Unit 7: Communication Skills

Communicating with Empathy

WHAT IS EMPATHY?

Empathy is the ability to understand other people (and, by extension, their communication) from their own perspectives. We all “personalize” messages; we all shape and interpret those messages based upon our past experiences. The key to effective communication is to try to transcend the barriers occasioned by our own personalizing.

If we are the listeners in the communication cycle, we must attempt to understand the message from the sender’s perspective. What is motivating the sender to communicate as he or she is doing? What are the feelings underlying the message? What is he or she really trying to say?

If we are the senders in the process, we must first be aware of the ways in which our own words are personalized by past experience and, second, we must be sensitive to the ways in which we can shape messages to accommodate the personalized needs and expectations of the receivers. We must ask ourselves, “How can I shape my message so that the listener will hear what I really mean?”

In empathic communication, we get “inside other people’s heads” and use their frames of reference to discover what their expressed views mean and to shape our own views so they will be heard. As Mark Twain once said, “Don’t judge another man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” Empathic communications are the opposite of critical or judgmental messages.

We can’t fake empathic communication. It requires that we really want to understand another person, despite our fears of being criticized or changed.

Here are some ways in which you can communicate feelings of empathy to others:

• Be sensitive to divergent viewpoints. Do not filter out feelings that are inconsistent with your own.

• Treat each person as an individual.

• Suspend judgments until you hear all the facts. Listen for the total meaning, including feelings as well as information.

• Seek clarification of unclear ideas.

• Acknowledge distractions (i.e., the telephone ringing, your preoccupation with another matter).

• Observe nonverbal signals.