So I talked about the need to be right and expecting empathy back earlier. The 3rd Barrier to Empathy is: 3. Expecting Change Right Away (Or At All) Like I said earlier, the toughest part about trying to become more empathetic (especially when trying to become more empathetic to drive […]
Tag: empathy
Barriers to Empathy, pt. 2
The second barrier to empathy (see the 1st here) is: 2.Expecting Empathy Back If you’re of the mindset that you can use empathy to drive change, you’re already looking at this as a tactic in order to get something you want. Whether it’s enrolling a team in your leadership or […]
Barriers to empathy, pt. 1
If you’re looking to have more empathy, but you’re struggling with it, I believe there are three barriers you need to overcome. Barrier 1: The Need to Be Right You’ve figured out that by having empathy, you can learn what other people’s needs are, and you realize that by understanding […]
Falling Behind, Catching Up
Guh, so I skipped four days of posting. I realize that I have a very distinct choice. One voice in my head is chastising me for messing up. It’s telling me that I need to be a professional. That true writers and thought leaders don’t let things get in the […]
V Day
Happy V Day, everyone. I’m sure we all have the same picture in our head of what a display of love means. It’s probably a big gesture, with large bouquets of roses, fancy dinners, gifts, and then maybe a theater performance to watch after. Valentine’s Day is a social creation […]
Posture
It’s hard to be empathetic with customers who are wrong. They blame you for not sending you information (that you sent), or are acting on assumptions with emails tell them otherwise (that they didn’t fully read). They get angry because a product isn’t working correctly, when the actual issue is […]
Losing all the armor
I’ve been having a lot of conversations about psychological armor – the stuff we hide ourselves behind. Armor could be things like “I work at Company X” when the subtext is that Company X is a huge company that you’ve heard of, and that gives me status. Armor could be […]
Discrimination isn’t always overt
If you haven’t read this tweet chain by Delaney King yet, you really should. Go ahead, I’ll wait. No serious, it’s not like this blog is going to go away or anything. Anyway, while I’m sure the trolls of twitter are crying out random hate speech and outrage over this […]
Fish Climbing Trees, Pt. 2
Money is an easy metric to judge oneself on, because it buys things we need to survive, our society values it, and it’s a zero-sum game – you have X amount of money or you don’t. It’s also an easily-confused metric. We see someone eating at an expensive restaurant and […]
Fish Climbing Trees, Pt. 1
It’s not clear whether or not Einstein actually said anything about judging fish by its ability to climb a tree, but the point is there: Don’t judge anyone’s skills (yourself most of all) based on other people’s metrics. I know someone who recently got laid off from their job as […]