Empathic Sympathy 2

Let me start from where we left off last week.

In communicating, in reaching out to other people or better still, in the quest of other people (your friends, business associates, children, husband, wife, brother, sister, neighbor, etc) to be reached out to by you, would you rather sympathize or empathize?

Permit me to share with you some lessons I’ve learnt from reading Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and John Maxwell’s Everyone Communicate, Few Connect to help you move to the next level in your relationships across board.

First of all, it is pertinent that we understand a principle that will help us connect and reach people with results that will further enhance our bond:

Seek first to understand

Then be understood

What this means is that we have to make serious effort (that is what it takes- effort) to see the world from other people’s perspective. We must not cajole (from a selfish point), force (because we are more powerful) or intimidate others to come to agreement with us. Lasting relationships are not built that way. Unfortunately this principle has been flouted by so many of us, especially those of us who should know and the result has been broken relationships, separations in mind and proximity all of which can be avoided by simply seeking first to understand before being understood.

Once you come to understand that communication is not all about you but also that other person and that s/he is the starting point, success is guaranteed.

In John Maxwell’s Everyone Communicate, Few Connect, communicating to connect is in:

1.    Words

2.     Tone of voice

3.    Body language

The reason many of us record minimal success in our relationships is that somehow we have limited communication to just words, what about tone of voice, does it tell you anything? What about body language, what do you understand from it?

An empathic communicator is the one who hears beyond words, he is spoken to with the body language and can connect with the tone of voice.

What does it take to be an empathic communicator? I’ll explain this in the next issue. In the meantime don’t forget that if we have been seeing the world with our perfect eyeglasses, the next person might find it useless trying to see with those same glasses. That the glasses fit you perfectly does not mean it will fit me.

Seek first to understand, then be understood.

Be inspired!

Remain motivated!

Further reading

1.    John Maxwell

Everyone Communicate, Few Connect

2.    Stephen Covey

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Photo Credit:

www.gettyimages.com

EMPATHIC SYMPATHY 1

With the death of the former president of Ghana, John Mills on July 24^th and the subsequent outpouring of emotion all across the country, I decided to find out more about the difference(s) between these two words that I had hitherto found confusing and in some cases interchangeably used- Sympathy & Empathy- and find out which of these was being expressed by most of the people.

Here’s what I found out:

When we say we are expressing sympathy towards another, it is a feeling of sorrow for the person’s pain. It doesn’t go beyond ‘sorry’ here and there and that ends it. In fact, the whole world can express sympathy towards whomever they choose to from wherever without ever having a physical presence (they did so when John Mills died) showing that sympathizers are not necessarily close (they might be in physical proximity but far in mind and heart connection).

Sympathetic people might communicate but they don’t connect. They exhibit superficial attention.

On the other hand, empathy reaches beyond the surface. It is the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings and emotions. The process of identification is intellectual while feeling indicate emotion hence, empathy deals with not just a show of feelings but a deep understanding of the person emotionally and intellectually.

In some cases though, the most we can show or express towards someone else’s suffering is sympathy.

But in communication, in reaching out to other people or better still in the quest of other people to be reached out to by you, which of these will be more appropriate, how and why?

Let’s continue this discussion next week…

Be inspired!

Remain motivated!

Photo Credit:

www.gettyimages.com