What is Empathy - EQ 101

It’s a skill and a trait that helps us connect with others, manage teams and keep us alive. You may know the word empathy, but most of us don’t know its meaning.

I’m going to tell you all about Empathy and examples of the different types of empathy in action. But I’m going to explain it through stories of a person who probably couldn’t tell you what it meant, but has it in abundance…my dad.

My dad is someone who worked his way up from a labourer and machine shop assistant, to a consultant manufacturing engineer, to an engineering manager.

He’s not fancy, he’s incredibly humble and he’s unapologetically himself.

But the reason I’m using him as an example here, is that he has the 3 Types of Empathy in abundance.

But before I explain the meaning of the word Empathy, I’m going to tell you what it’s not.

Sympathy: Not the same as Empathy

People often confuse sympathy and empathy. Mostly because they sound very similar, they are mistakenly used interchangeably, but mainly because we aren’t ever taught the difference.

Sympathy can be simplified into a single word and then explained again as a sentence.

“Pity” or “Feeling sorry for someone and their situation”.

If you sympathise with someone, you feel sorry for them. You may appreciate that they are in a difficult place and it could concern you, so you might show this with statements like “I’m sorry to hear that” or “That’s terrible”.

Someone in your team has come up to you and told you that they have had a bereavement in their family.

You might give your sympathies, tell them that they can take the time off and then work out how to reshuffle the workload of the team. This in itself is not empathy.

The word “pity” might also sound disingenuous and maybe even sarcastic. But this is the issue with sympathy as a social tool. It can require little effort and often doesn’t make the person feel heard. It is rare that people genuinely want people to feel sorry for them. Most people want to be acknowledged, understood and helped.

Empathy - What is it?

In short, Empathy can be described as “putting yourself in someone else’s position”.

You may have been in their situation in the past, or you may try and imagine being in that position. But you are meeting them where they are, and seeing it through their lens.

Empathy can be difficult, and one of the reasons may lie in the fact that it is totally not about us. You may use your own experiences and judgment to imagine what it is like in their shoes, but empathy requires you to in part transcend your own experience.

An example I can give here, is me thinking about someone that may have been walking in high heels all day. I have personally never worn high heels, but I’ve heard they can be uncomfortable and unforgiving. I have however worn very hard, unsupportive shoes, and I have also rolled an ankle. So I can imagine that after a full day of wearing footwear in the name of fashion rather than comfort, someone might be dying to get out of them!

In short, you can only sympathise with someone’s bad fortune. But you can empathise with someone’s sadness and someone’s joy.

1. Cognitive Empathy

Cognitive empathy is all about putting yourself in someone's situational shoes, being able to understand the things they might be experiencing physically and cognitively (what they are thinking). If you are an experienced driver, you may be able to feel like you can predict another driver's next move based on their positioning and speed. They might be in the lane next to you and quickly approaching a slower vehicle in front, at which point you could probably estimate that they will want to change lanes.

Cognitive empathy isn't something that we are born with, as it requires context. If a small child is on the phone with a family member and is asked "what are you doing right now", the child may reply with "playing with this…". The family member won’t know what they are talking about, as they can't physically see it. But the child won't understand this yet.

As my dad used to be an engineer, he would have multiple engineering efficiency tools in his arsenal that he would often apply in day-to-day life. One of these was an idea called "Poka Yoke", in which you design a process in such a way that it becomes impossible to get wrong. The cognitive empathy in this comes from the fact that my dad understood that I used to leave the house early in the morning to get to secondary school. As a classic example of a teenager, I would be fumbling to get dressed and out the door in a poorly lit house. My dad was able to understand this dilemma and therefore it would become normal for him to hang my packed lunch on the handle of the front door, making it impossible to leave the house without my lunch. Obviously, as a teenager, I didn’t understand this act of kindness and cognitive empathy and took it for granted, but It'll always be remembered now.??

2. Emotive Empathy

Emotive empathy is putting yourself in the emotional shoes of someone else. If you have ever found yourself watching a film and noticed your eyes starting to leak without your permission, this is your emotive empathy in action.

When constructing an email, your main aim is to communicate an idea and ensure that it is understood; that bit takes cognitive empathy. At this point you might ask yourself "is using technical jargon going to send this message straight over their head?".

However, what is JUST as important is your ability to understand what the reader might be FEELING as they read your email. This is vital in any society that requires the cooperation of multiple people (all societies!). Because if you send your message in such a way that the information is clear and undeniable, but it comes across patronising and is likely to hurt the ego of the reader, guess what? They won't be helping you. Or at least not to the degree that you are hoping.

The same applies in your personal life and conflict resolution. You and your partner may have had a bit of a disagreement that has led to you saying something you didn’t mean, and now they are in tears refusing to talk to you. Once you have calmed down yourself, this is the perfect time to employ your emotive empathy and understand how they might be feeling and how to return the situation to something more constructive and compassionate.

When I was a teenager we used to have a group of "hard" teenagers sit on our garden wall, taking part in recreational botanicals. It was out of sight of the main road, the perfect height to sit on and a sort of mid-point of our area. Multiple times, 15-year-old me tried to negotiate with them to stop sitting there as they would throw their litter into our garden and upset my family, but it fell on deaf ears.

This is when my dad put his Emotive Empathy hat on.

He thought to himself, "Why are they so stubborn and how do we get them in the feels?". Well, they had a few things: They wanted to feel dominant and in control, they wanted to show the rest of their group that they could talk up to an adult and they wanted to enjoy their time as a group.

So he took it upon himself to ruin all of this for them immediately by putting on a baseball cap and joining them on the wall. All of a sudden, they can’t talk teenage stuff because there is a 65-sitting-year-old man sat with them, which is properly uncool, they can't tell him to leave, because it's his garden wall and suddenly the emotive appeal of their chosen location is thwarted. Mission successful!

3. Empathic Concern

Empathic concern is all about the impulse to help others. This is that feeling you get when someone needs help and you feel like you have to get involved. It's one of the major factors that persuade people to become carers, nurses, and servicemen and women.

In one extreme you can see it in small acts of kindness, like a cyclist stopping at the side of the road at the site of someone walking a bike and asking if they "…need help?". What is a small impulsive decision driven by a small amount of empathy can prove to be a complete day saver in someone else's view.

On the other extreme, it’s the act of someone running back into the burning building to save someone's dog. It may be instinctual, but deep down that person is very quickly comprehending the impact it might have on the owners of the dog or the house.

On a dark evening a few years ago now, my dad jumped up at the sound of a smashing window coming from next door. The neighbours were out for a few weeks, so this immediately didn’t sound like good news, so my dad driven by empathic concern decided to grab a baseball bat and march next door. This is a 70-year-old man, taking it upon himself to single-handedly protect our neighbour's house from some unknown baddies. Maybe it's stupid and it would have been best left to the police, but we all know that their response times are poor at the best of times. But he felt driven to protect and help.

Luckily they heard him knocking on the door frame with the baseball bat and they all fled without much chance to grab any valuable items. Dad saved the day with a 3-foot-long piece of wood and a heart full of empathic concern.

In Summary

So Empathy is comprised of 3 different types, all of which are about The Other Person. You can understand where the other person is, and how to get to joining them. Sitting with them in the mud and jumping with them in the moments of celebration.

You are understanding what the other person may be experiencing or feeling, using your own experiences and intuition.

If someone tells you that they aren’t able to empathise with someone because they haven't experienced the situation themselves, they don't have to. The act of empathising with someone fosters connection in itself.

Have you ever told someone about an experience you had that was life-changing? And how did they respond?

We default to safe answers like, "Oh, that sucks. I'm sorry to hear that" or "My thoughts are with you". But do you feel like they get you? Perhaps not.

Instead, someone may ask some questions to try to understand how you might be feeling, which is an act of empathising. "Oh no, I can imagine that is really hard, how are you coping?", "Has it made you more nervous in those situations?".

These questions prompt empathetic conversation, which is much harder than accepting someone's situation and moving on. i.e. Sympathy.

Will you have a go at being more empathetic this week? Listen to the responses you get when talking to people.

Thank you for reading until the end, I hope it has come at an important time for you and you maybe learned some things. Applying this understanding to your personal and professional lives will no doubt improve your ability to create strong connections.