The Different Path-Part2

The Different Path-Part2

(https://www.bhconsultancy.net/blog-as-on-30-march-2015.html)
“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart”

It was weekly sales review day for the team. As usual everybody was anxious and doing last minute number crunching for the review hour. Review started with a region which was performing above par for last few quarters. As expected it went smooth. Now it was a turn of a region which had been doing below par in last few quarters and that particular quarter it was nowhere near to even 50% of quarterly sales target. Everybody was expecting a blasting (in review call) of that regional team member. Right so since that particular region pulled down combine number of team and team was collectively looking weak.

To begin with he expressed apology for joining late on review call. To that I asked for reason and he did mention about sudden illness of his child which made him to take child to hospital and he was attending review call from hospital. I didn’t know what trigger my mind but I could feel change in my behavior at that crucial time. Suddenly entire review atmosphere changed. Thunderstorm replaced by quietness and sympathy. That’s what even I thought …sympathy overcame other emotions at that time…but hold on it was not sympathy …..It was beyond that.
After gathering my composure I spoke; “I understand your situation. Being a father of 2 children I had gone through it couple of times. I will help you to overcome this. I will call you offline and discuss on this”. I also requested him to leave review call and attend his child .It mellowed down hyper temperament of review call and rest of session went well with lot of effectiveness. I did call him post review call and discussed matter in detail. However I was trying to find of reason for this change in me.
It was much beyond just feeling sorry and pity for that person. I placed myself in that person place, understood his feelings to a degree. This helped me to connect with him well. Post that incident; so called underperforming regional person started stretching himself to reach at par with other regions. Today the end result sounds very dramatic but it is true. The bond remains so strong that even today he does call me wherever he needs help to overcome hurdle.
What different I did here? I was able to feel his feelings and share his emotion to certain degree. It was feeling for him that someone is there for him to guide. That’s what connected me to him. It was empathy which helped at that time. Thereafter I started using this skill for betterment of day to day life. Most of time we mistaken empathy with sympathy. Sympathy and empathy are separate terms with some very important distinctions. Sympathy and empathy are both acts of feeling, but with sympathy one feel for the person; we are sorry for them or pity them, but we don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling.
Empathy can best be described as feeling with the person. To an extent we are placing ourselves in that person’s place, have a good sense of what they feel, and understand their feelings to a degree. It may be impossible to be fully empathetic because each individual's reactions, thoughts and feelings to tragedy are going to be unique. Yet the idea of empathy implies a much more active process. Instead of feeling sorry for, we are sorry with and have arrayed ourselves in the cloak of someone else’s emotional reactions.
Let me give few examples on how and where empathy helped me to improve.

Making meetings great:-
In today’s world for most of us participate in minimum 1-2 meetings at every day and still keep on doubting the effectiveness of these meetings .During 15 years of my corporate sales job it was very common for me to have minimum 2 sales meeting in a day. Rather it was unwritten mandate to self as well as for team. That made minimum 10 meetings in a week. Even if we assumed every meeting persisted for minimum 30 minutes; I used to spend weekly 5 hours in meetings and probably double of that time in preparing and travelling for same.

The challenge was how to make it more effective and avoid boredom for self and team. Depending on situation either I used to play a role of leader or participant in every meeting. However there were certain common habits which became hurdles for non-effectiveness of these meetings.

1)I used to be judgmental about people who are going to participate in meeting.
2)I used to consider being assertive is the best way to drive my point. That literally used to make me bad listener.
3)Being spontaneous made me habitual of immediately passing judgment on the facts or the meaning of what is being said.

Soon I realized that either meeting are going unidirectional or people used to be mentally switch off during entire session. That is where I started working on effectiveness of meetings. I had few choices such as inviting the right people, create better agendas, and be better prepared. However soon I realized those were baseline solutions. Real hurdles were my 3 bad habits .This is where empathy helped me to overcome these hurdles. For me empathy became a competency that allowed me to read people. During meetings it helped to answer following key question:-

What is the mood of participants? Where is the resistance? What are the reasons for resistance? What are the reasons the next person is not opening up? What will motivate them? Why they are feeling in that way?

This is how I started getting connected to participants and every meeting became more participants friendly. My weekly 5 hours meetings time turned in to most productive time. Very soon I realized that it isn’t as easy as it seems. One has to practice it consciously. Sometimes, the smartest resisters often look like supporters, but they’re not supportive at all. They’re smart, sneaky idea-killers. Carefully reading people help me to understand the major, and often hidden conflicts in the group. These conflicts probably have nothing to do with the topics or decisions being made at the meeting. It is far more likely to be linked to very human dynamics like who is allowed to influence whom. Empathy lets me “see” and manage these power dynamics. Employing empathy help to fathom how people are responding to us. It not only help us in meetings where we are a leader but also where we are just a participant. It helps to face and progress in meeting without any prejudice. It helped me to answer each and every question (irrespective of nature of question) politely by turning that situation into an opportunity to address important point. In a nutshell empathy worked as the best tool for spontaneous speaking which is the most important aspect of successful meeting.

Making Effective Sales call:-
In sales, before my exposure to empathy I spent a lot of time trying to change people’s minds. I used to move people (clients) from taking no action to taking action. I used to try moving them from buying from our competitor to buying from us. But too often I used to rush forward trying to change minds without first understanding and respecting the client’s views and opinions. Empathy allowed me to suspend the mind changing until I built the connection that will allow me to work with their point of view. To develop this skill, I started not only imagining myself as the buyer but asking questions. Would I want someone to try to change my mind without first taking the time to understand what it is that I believe and why I believe?

These are just two examples but empathy is helpful in every aspect of life such as parenting, couple relationship, social relationship, teamwork, review calls, conference calls, studies, teaching and so on!
“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”.