[difficult people] - 3. Empathy at Work: Understanding and Collaboration
Dealing with Difficult People
Empathy and Understanding
One way to improve your working relationship with everyone, whether difficult or not - is to increase your empathy and understanding of others.
Keep in mind that for some relationships this empathy and understanding will never be reciprocated, but there are still benefits to understanding what motivates the other people you are working with, asap least to the extent they might make that known.
What are some of the key ways you can be empathetic, and be seen to be empathetic? In this setting, both are important.
Active Listening: giving your full attention to the other person, work on your eye contact and non-verbal cues (eg nodding). Don’t interrupt, don’t plan your response while you’re listening. This will demonstrate you value the perspective of the other person, and show them you are working to understand their situation.
Acknowledge their Feelings: Use verbal cues - “it sounds like you’re feeling frustrated”, “I can see why that would be upsetting” - this could validate their emotions and show you’re trying to understand their experience.
Ask Open-Ended Questions: Avoid the yes/no questions and commit to memory some other questions - “Can you tell me more about what happened?” - with a goal of showing genuine insight and building greater insight into their perspective.
Reflect back what you hear: Summarise what you’ve said to ensure you have understood correctly. You might just want to say “So, what I’m hearing is…”, or you could read a whole book on the subject like the new “Supercommunicators“ by Charles Duhigg to improve your skills in this area.
Offer support: Ask how you can help or what they need. Perhaps they just want to be heard, but perhaps they would like some greater assistance, and it’s important to clarify.
Be Genuine: This relates to your words, tone, and body language - depending on your background, you might not have a lot of experience thinking about how to have these align, but if you’re looking to build both trust and rapport, alignment between words, tone and body language is key.
Share your own experiences where appropriate: if you’re able to introduce a relatable story from your own experience without taking the focus away from the person you’re talking to, then that can help prevent the person from feeling alone.
Follow up: Don’t forget to check in with the person again after your first conversation - this is part of building the relationship and showing a commitment to supporting them.
Respect privacy and boundaries: In your conversation with them, be aware to what extent the person is prepared to share, and respect the level of detail they’re prepared to disclose: pushing too hard can undermine the attempt at empathy that you’re trying to make.
Cultivate a culture of empathy: the more you practice empathy, the more it will be seen by the people around you, and so become a part of the workplace culture that more and more people value.
To develop your skills in empathy and understanding will require focus, practice, and a desire to connect with other people. Keep practicing these approaches in the interactions you have each day, and you can make your work environment more kind, supportive, and even cohesive.
Have I missed anything in describing how to display empathy and understanding could help with empathy at work?