Can empathy be taught? The ability to empathise is an essential life skill from childhood to adult life and through to the workplace. Being able to see the other person's point of view and feel their emotions is necessary in coaching, customer service, counselling and negotiation. It can be particularly important when giving bad news such as redundancy notice.
An HR Manager once described a situation to me where her company had made a corporate decision to close part of a country operation. Through the use of rehearsal, scripting and practice, she coached managers on giving the bad news. At first, many waffled and dragged out their explanation keeping the 'employee,' (the role playing HR Manager) in painful suspense. When prompted to be more concise, they switched to the other extreme of being too short and direct. Well, maybe it takes a little practice to find the right tone and range but my initial thought was that this was not so much a skills issue as one relating to empathy. The Managers were focussing on sending a message without thinking about the receiver.
Scripting provides useful prompts and process skills but to deliver a message empathetically, people need to develop sensing and feeling skills also. Possibly, a role play where the Manager receives the bad news first would have been helpful - although it's easy for me to be wise after the event.
I believe empathy can be taught by focussing firstly on understanding and then on practising. That requires patience, consideration and the imagination to think how would I feel in this situation?
I hope you understand how I feel about it! The next post will include some suggestions for empathy coaching.Here's a short video involving some empathy training - let me know what you think. Thanks for reading. If you enjoy the blog, pass it on.
