Role of Empathy
Empathy refers to the ability to create understanding and feelings towards another person, depending on whatever they go through or experienced. Empathy has got three types: cognitive empathy that involves putting yourself into someone else’s shoes so that one understands better what another person experienced or talking about. The other type referred to emotional empathy where one understands someone else feelings and emotions as in the case involving a doctor and the patient; and lastly, compassionate empathy where one understands other persons’ emotions and comes up with ways of helping them. All three types of empathy play crucial roles in society since it is a virtue needed in several career professions, such as nursing, teaching and psychology. Besides, empathy helps develop connections with other people by understanding them and shapes one’s behavior towards other people. For these reasons, everyone should uphold empathy in their lives and recognize their roles for better living.
Firstly, empathy helps develop connections with people found within their environment, which includes at home, at the workplace, and in other places of gathering. The connections are established through having the ability to understand others from different perspectives, for example, their thoughts and feelings towards certain issues. Individuals who lack such virtue have issues with their partners and cannot have time to talk about their differences to empathize with each other’s feelings. However, those with empathy would find it easy to interact with one another and establish solemn connections that benefit them in one way or another since they would have a shoulder to cry on in times of difficulties.
Secondly, one would find it easy to adjust their behavior to accommodate others, especially when they need their help. The reason is that they can know the effects of their behaviors on other people, thus, able to change if they make others feel uncomfortable. They achieve that by expressing empathy. Similarly, they can still read their partners’ emotions to know how best they can help them cope with their situations and transform their lives into a successful relationship.
Thirdly, empathy leads to teamwork within the workplace. Managers, together with employees, should practice empathy that leads to teamwork. For them to work closely together, they all need to understand their partner’s emotions and feelings. Managers should take the lead since when they show empathy to their employees, they would be able to take action towards issues affecting them. On the other hand, employees should show empathy to others’ emotions to get to know how best they would help each other in terms of performing duties. Understanding the background of other colleagues leads to strong relationships that bind them together for effective teamwork. Employees will also share ideas and thoughts empathetically for them to achieve their set organizational goals.
Fourthly, empathy plays a key role in negotiations. For parties to win negotiations or settle for a win-win outcome, they need to exhibit the skill of empathy, which concerns understanding one’s emotions and feelings. By doing so, an individual or party in a negotiation will judge their opponent’s feelings and come up with an effective course of action that would guarantee them a win. Notably, negotiations are meant to solve issues and make things straight for the concerned parties. They will only settle for appropriate decisions if they both feel each other’s point of concern and try to make valid suggestions that would lead to successful negotiations. Without empathy, the parties would not agree and settle for one option. An example includes conflict issues such as division of wealth, which needs high skills of understanding and contextualization of ideas to settle for the best option.
Notably, empathy is included as one of the design thinking approaches, which aims to think critically by making valid observations and studying patterns to come up with functional and emotionally meaningful conclusions. The first approach to design thinking is empathy- a crucial weapon for creating emotional understanding. Individuals cannot make valid conclusions if they cannot put themselves in other peoples’ shoes. Besides, design thinking is meant to solve problems that arise from every corner of the concerned issue. With appropriate use of empathy, problem solvers would be able to understand situations and establish valid solutions for solving them mutually. The idea shows how several cognitive learning fields apply the skill of empathy to reach for effective decisions, and more so, demonstrate how the ideas from concerned groups have been considered.
Additionally, empathy helps in predicting other people’s behavior and their ways of thinking. Firstly, one needs to listen to the other people on how they talk concerning several things affecting them. They often talk about things affecting themselves emotionally, and by so doing, they can gauge their next move. An example includes the case of a person suffering from depression. The affected would constantly talk about the issues affecting themselves and possible actions to take. Therefore, one can predict their behavior and how they can respond to issues. The reason why it’s important to understand the emotions of someone before asking for favors from them since if in negative emotions, they are likely to respond to issues at a bad angle. With the help of empathy, one can predict such signs and go for accommodating options, those that would not cause issues.
Similarly, empathy plays a role in motivating others. Motivation comes along with empathy. One would motivate others when they can emotionally understand the needs of other people. An example includes the case of an organization. Managers would find the best reward for hardworking employees only if they understand the employees’ needs and what they seek to achieve- an action that requires empathy. Failure to do so, there would be constant disagreements even if one side gets favored. The only way is to share and understand each other’s expectations to achieve satisfactorily. Besides, empathy makes one maintain high discipline standards and hard work since they know what is expected from them. The employees would understand what their managers want out of them, thus continually producing quality work and services that impress both the managers and their customers.
In conclusion, empathy plays an essential role in society today, such as developing connections with other people, adjusting behaviors, enhancing teamwork, and negotiations, among other roles, as discussed. Therefore, everyone should appreciate the roles attached to empathy and seek to practice them in every aspect of life since they help avoid many issues. Besides, empathy can solve several issues happening in today’s world, such as violence only if individuals can practice virtue and know the benefits of understanding each other’s feelings and creating a strong relationship with one another.