How do you balance empathy and assertiveness in interpersonal communication?

Balancing empathy and assertiveness in interpersonal communication is essential for effective interactions. Start by actively listening to the other person's perspective, validating their feelings, and showing understanding. Then, assert your own needs or viewpoint clearly and respectfully. It's crucial to maintain a tone of respect and a willingness to find common ground. This balance ensures that you consider the emotions of others while still effectively conveying your own thoughts and needs, fostering healthy and constructive communication.

In my experience, Active listening is an essential skill for effective communication in any field, including the startup world. Here are some tips I've learned for doing active listening well in the startup world: Focus on the speaker: Pay attention to the speaker, maintain eye contact, and avoid multitasking or interrupting while they are speaking. Ask open-ended questions: Ask open-ended questions to encourage the speaker to share more information and clarify their ideas. Empathize and acknowledge emotions: Acknowledge the speaker's emotions and feelings, even if you do not agree with them. By actively listening, you can better understand the needs and concerns of your startup team members, customers, investors, and partners.

As a health care professional, leader and program manager in my experience; its typically important to actively listen, and critically empathize with patients, team members, care takers to achieve organisation goals. Active listening takes more in the health care and leadership aspect, it's in it's own, a therapy. One to be an active listener, should have to ;- 1. Know yourself 2. Know your audience 3. Know your purpose 4. Know your content To listen keenly and actively, one's awareness plays a very big role, it moderates and demonstrates your concern for the audience interests and needs thus minding your verbal and non verbal listening cues, which include concentration, positioning, creating rapport, to mention but a few.

One of the best techniques to improve active listening is reflecting: you listen to what someone has to say, then summarise it back to them. It makes people feel properly heard, and ensures you respond to what they actually meant to say rather than a conclusion you’ve jumped to. We all struggle to articulate what we really mean at times - reflecting helps define the real issue for both of you before you progress the conversation. And in itself, it forces you to listen actively if you know you have to re formulate their words yourself.

Active listening combines understanding and empathy for the speaker with assertiveness when expressing your own thoughts and needs. It involves attentive, non-verbal cues to show empathy and active engagement, while also assertively communicating your perspective, striking a balance for effective interpersonal communication.

I’ve found that feedback from people that I trust, whether positive or negative, carries more weight and led me to action. My recommendation for people giving feedback (usually managers and leaders) is to establish trust first. The means ensuring that you as the feedback giver is not “out to get them” for constructive feedback and your praise is genuine. Spend time to learn more about the person you are working with, share your own challenges, and find common ground on a variety of topics, both professional and non-professional.

Being positively transparent, encouraging and being able to set a plan and allow the other party to voice their opinion will create positive changes. By listening as well as discussing factually about the situation; as a leader instead of using “I feel you should” versus using “ from my experience, this should be done like this, because of this” and giving an A to Z explanation, will allow everyone to walk away in a more positive light

Feedback in interpersonal communication balances empathy and assertiveness by providing constructive input. Empathetic feedback acknowledges the other person's feelings and viewpoint, while assertive feedback conveys your perspective or suggestions. It fosters understanding and collaboration, maintaining a harmonious balance between consideration and expression in the interaction.

Feedback is like that advice you get from a friend about your cooking. It's when someone tells you what's good (like your amazing lasagna) and what needs work (maybe add a pinch more salt). It helps you do better next time, whether it's in the kitchen or at work.

In my experience in talent acquisition and HR, balancing empathy and assertiveness is incredibly important and can be difficult at times. Too much empathy, and you'll get walked all over, too little, and you lose rapport and trust. Both are equally important in the workplace. The balance I've found in TA is by showing empathy with candidates while still being assertive enough to drive the interview forward. One of the most important things to remember for HR and leadership is that empathy does not mean weakness, and being assertive, does not mean being cruel or demanding. Sometimes all it takes is a quick "back to the topic..." or "regarding the idea on XYZ" to maintain assertiveness while still showing empathy and active listening.

You can balance expectations/accountability with empathy by setting the standards and getting commitment and engagement from the start towards keeping them. For example, the expectation is that you arrive at work every day at 0800. Do you have reliable transportation or are there any roadblocks towards you meeting that goal? Small example but documenting that lays the groundwork towards future conversations or performance management actions.

Balancing empathy and assertiveness involves actively listening with empathy, using non-verbal cues to show understanding, and verbally acknowledging the other person's feelings. Simultaneously, express your thoughts and needs assertively but respectfully. It fosters healthy communication by valuing both perspectives, maintaining a harmonious interpersonal dynamic.

One should know when and how to use both traits. Empathy gives room for understanding other’s feelings; this leads to trust in each other and assertiveness makes sure that we receive fair treatment by our peers. If we can balance the two it creates a platform for open, considerate communication that promotes healthy interactions and resolutions.

Different people have different skills. Like any behaviour, interpersonal skills are based on a mix of innate characteristics and learned skills. As a physicist, I have noticed in myself and others, especially high achievers in technical fields, that technical skills are often inversely correlated with social skills. Whether this is due to nature or nurture is a subject of it's own. In any case, it is hard work to compensate, especially later in life. But, with sufficient effort, social skills can be learned. Active listening and feedback skills are just a few examples of "soft" skills that can be added to complement "hard" technical skills.

Utilize active listening by attentively understanding the other person's perspective and showing empathy through non-verbal cues. Provide feedback that acknowledges their feelings and thoughts empathetically. Simultaneously, express your viewpoint assertively and respectfully in the feedback. This approach balances empathy and assertiveness, fostering effective and considerate interpersonal communication.

To enhance active listening and feedback skills, practice focused attention when others speak, refrain from interrupting, and use empathetic body language. Hone your assertiveness by expressing thoughts clearly but respectfully. Seek feedback from others to refine your abilities and develop a harmonious balance between empathy and assertiveness in interpersonal communication.

I think that care to make change is at the core of active listening. Do you care about the setting you are working in? Do you feel invigorated to make a change for the person speaking to you or for yourself? Without this motivation to make change, you will find it hard to remain present. This is something specifically difficult to facilitate through online communication. Cameras off, Mics off. If you are finding active listening a skill difficult to teach your peers or employees, you should consider their wider working context. Micromanaging won’t help. Instead- collect feedback. What would your team enjoy and benefit from? Maybe then they will be interest in making change for you if you are making change for them. It’s reciprocal!!