The Intelligence Of Empathy

 3 minute read

The Cambridge Dictionary defines empathy as:

“the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by 

imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s

situation”.                                       

Empathy is about feelings.

Feelings are a vital part of communication in the relationship I have with others and the relationship I have with myself.

When we listen to others, we can look for the content only, or we can look for the content and the feeling that is being communicated. This awareness of the feeling as well as the verbal information in communication is emotionally intelligent.

 Sometimes children are raised to:

“Function well, keep to the structures, deny your feelings about what is happening in life, don’t make things difficult or complex by adding your unnecessary feelings into the mix, just do what is required”!

                    This is teaching them to shut down the heart.

This shut down has devastating results in adulthood as it removes an intelligence that is very much needed to be able to do life well. It is the emotional intelligence that gives us data about ourselves and other people that we are communicating with.

Feelings are designed to tell us about the condition of our heart and listening for the feelings of others will also give information about the heart of another.

The heart of a person is the source of their behaviour.

It is also good to understand that we instinctively live out of what we have been formed in, rather than what we intellectually know.

Often times in shutting out the emotional information that we can gain through empathy toward another person, we will miss the full view of a situation and thereby be thwarting a possible better outcome for all involved. 

This also plays out in the business world.

We cannot afford to dismiss …

    … the intelligence that comes with empathy.