Empathy has been highlighted as an essential Emotional intelligence skill. While we may know what empathy is but what comes in our way of practising empathy? I think two things can be a barrier to practising empathy.
1. Losing awareness about our own impulse to interject, respond quickly, and our internal chatter about what fits in our world than what the other person is saying.
2. Lack of attentional stability where we can't offer complete attention and presence in the conversation. With our minds wandering we may miss very important verbal and non-verbal cues in the conversation.
I again see the role of mindfulness here. Mindfulness builds attentional stability and higher self-awareness. With a greater capacity for attentional stability, we can bring this to our conversations where we offer our best to the other person, listen not just to the content but also try and understand their perspective. Mindfulness training is also about being non-reactive to every single thing that arises in the mind and developing the ability to let go. This again comes in handy to not hold on to our impulses and opinions, take a pause and let the other person fully express themselves. Many times when we just do this the other person feels heard and inclusive.
Many organisations these days are talking about customer obsession and what they are saying is, to be obsessed with customer delight we need to listen more to what our customers want. while we may coin many different terms, we still feel the need to go back to the basics, do them well and repeat.
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