Patnaik is CEO and founder of Jump Associates, a growth strategy firm. He also is the author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, which analyzes the use of empathy in business growth.
He said humans have three parts in their brains. The reptilian section is the part that developed first; it holds instinct and autonomic bodily functions.
Mammals have another section of the brain:
The limbic section gives emotions and empathy. It’s the limbic section that lets your dog know you’re upset when you return home from a bad day at work, Patnaik said.
The balance of both empathy and ego drive is vital for a good sales person. Just having either soft or hard selling skills won’t sustain him for long.
There are age-old concepts called Empathy and Ego drive. And, it says that as a good sales person you need both. A sales person, who lacks either empathy or ego drive, can never sell. Do you agree?
Empathy is the ability to feel for the customer, understand his needs, recommend a solution and think from his point of view. But, if you’re selling to, let us say, a company, how can you feel for a company? How can you think from a point of view of the company? Well, when you’re selling to a company you’re also selling to a person inside that company. So, you should empathize with that person. Ask yourself: “What is she thinking about? What will make her look good? What is her comfort level? Does she want more time?” So, thinking from the point of view of the customer is called empathy. And this is very important.
When is empathy a good thing, and when is it a bad thing?
Psychologist Mark Davis has suggested that there are 3 important types of empathy. The first is a purely "cognitive" form of empathy that he terms "Perspective-Taking." This is being able to see things from another's point of view. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes. It is important to better understand where someone is coming from, but it's not what we typically think of as empathy.
A second type of empathy, and one that is represented (literally) by Clinton's comment, Davis terms "Personal Distress." Personal distress is literally feeling another's emotions. When you are watching a scary movie, and you start to empathize with the hero and feel afraid, that is personal distress in action.
You are actually feeling the other's emotion through a process called "emotional contagion."
Disarming tense situations in business Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter analyzes three steps leaders use to disarm tense situation...
Empathy Kanter says the first step of disarming a tense situation is to empathize. “This step is a cliché because it’s true, and it works.
A client calls their Realtor and is angry that they haven’t heard any news in three days and their listing has been on the market for three months. The Realtor has the choice of over-explaining immediately, or being defensive (the most common response) and blaming the market, but there is nothing empathetic about a defensive speech.
Do leaders need empathy? I think so. This summer, I’ve been reading a book by Dev Patniak (with Peter Mortensen) entitled, “Wired to Care”.
It’s about using widespread empathy to create competitive advantage. If you have empathy for your customers, you create better products and provide better service.
But what about leaders? Does empathy make for better leaders? Some of the research on emotional intelligence suggests that empathy is an important factor in leadership, but the jury is still out.
I've been designing computer interfaces for almost 15 years, and I've had the great fortune to work with some great designers and some well-meaning, but terrible ones.
The difference, I've come to understand, isn't technical skill or training - it's empathy.
The two keys to great design. 1. Know your user. 2. Know what they're trying to do.
You may have the best solution for a major problem, you may have done all the groundwork to establishing your social entrepreneurial project but unless you are able to harness the public compassion for the cause you will find it very hard to implement change.
Your success rests in part on tapping into the public capacity for compassion and strategically contributing to that capacity.
As Social Entrepreneurs we need to think about the social environment in which our social entrepreneurship takes place.
Last week I had the distinct pleasure of co-hosting the weekly tweetchat with Lolly Daskal. The subject of my chat was “The Role of Empathy in Leadership” and I have to say I was gratified by both the level of participation and depth of contributions/insights which arose during the discussion.
Although I’ve written previously about the importance of empathy in leadership, I want to use last week’s talk as an opportunity to delve into this issue more, sharing some of the points I provided during the talk, as well as some of the insights proffered by the various participants
. Here are the ten questions I asked participants as we discussed the role empathy plays in leadership.
He explains how empathy is key to effective collaboration in a rapidly changing world, and the art of listening... At the core of the process of collaboration is empathy and I want Bill to tell me more about it...
These are very complicated skills. This is a world where you need a higher form of empathy, where you observe yourself, watch other people around you, and then you find yourself understanding and interacting with various combinations of people. So this goes to say that the system around you is changing. You need to contribute to the system and avoid doing damage. So, you require a very sophisticated set of skills.”..
From the idea of empathy, we now move to a conversation on the art of listening.
This training activity focuses on empathy – the ability to see the world from the other’s point of view.
The basic premise is that if we can understand others by sharing some of their emotional responses, we are more likely to be able to work with them in collaborative ways. Listening with empathy and communicating empathy, are the two key skills that will be explored in this training activity. Without empathy, people may use their Emotional Intelligence in manipulative and self-interested ways.
The ability to read non-verbal indicators, to disclose strategically, and to probe into the other’s personal life, can be used in a malevolent way, to ‘weaken the opponent’ and to gain power. It is important that this training activity is seen as a counter to that possibility.
As such, it is essential in any programme that develops Emotional Intelligence.
There’s been a lot of talk about the merits and drawbacks of empathy lately. But does empathy make sense in any job? A little workplace empathy can go a long way, experts agree.
It's not ‘all touch-feely’
“Empathy has gotten a bad rap in the last 25 years in business,” says Dev Patnaik, author of “Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy.”
The best organizations and the ones that survive economic tsunamis, he says, are those with empathetic cultures and managers who are able to step outside themselves and walk in someone else’s shoes.
It takes a great deal of skill and knowledge to be able to motivate, evaluate, and manage a team...
Empathy. Great managers use empathy to foresee problems that their employees might encounter. It allows you to put yourself in the shoes of your staff and your patients. This ability helps you make informed, thoughtful decisions and it also keeps your team feeling needed, wanted, and appreciated.
It's one of the most critical regions of the brain for business thinking. ...
What is the role of emotions in effective business leadership?
In business you’re dealing with more than just logical, linear consequences; you’re dealing with people. And people are as driven by emotions as they are by their thoughts.
For example, a lot of people are talking these days about the importance of empathy in the work environment. Neuroscience has now shown us that there are two types of empathy: cognitive empathy and emotional empathy.
The latter is when you are in a conversation and you make a gesture to show that you relate to what the other person is saying — say, an “ah.” Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, is about demonstrating that you understand another person’s point of view.
Using this form of empathy, you might start a sentence with, “So from your perspective…
What is empathy? What does it make possible? How can we cultivate it? What makes it matter to the work of social entrpreneurs?
On Saturday morning, Bill Drayton, Ashoka's founder, opened the day in conversation with Gregory Dees and Susan Davis. He emphasized his view that empathy is a critical skill that must be developed if we want a better world. I agree in many respects.
And, happily, empathy was big aspect of what I aimed to focus on in my workshop later that afternoon. I figured I was in the right territory.
We must ensure the customer service rep FEELS what it is like to be the customer. Empathy is the number one feeling behind an effective customer experience. If the customer service rep feels, displays and communicates empathy, then the customer instantly feels like their needs are being met.
We first learned about empathy from Aristotle. He called it pathos, and reasoned that if the audience at first didn’t like you, then they weren’t going to listen to you, let alone do what you want.
Do you know how others really feel? Do you care? Some people do. Some people don’t. But if your job or business deals with people, you need to be in tune with your people
Knowing how people feel, what they need and what delights them is the key to being relevant as a manager, a mother, a brand or an advertiser.
So if you are making decisions using only your opinions, have no insight from real world people, or are basing decisions solely on metrics or analytics, you are not being empathetic.
If you ever want to understand your boss, corner him (or her) at the next office party and see if he’ll play a little game.
In an intriguing set of experiments a few years ago, a group of American social scientists led by Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management used the E test and some other techniques to investigate the connection between power and empathy.
They found that while most people seem naturally inclined to take the other’s perspective, providing people a dose of power correlated with their being less likely to draw the E in the perspective-taking way. In other words, a surplus of power seemed to be connected, and perhaps even led, to a deficit of empathy.
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Kellogg School of Management used the E test and some other techniques to investigate the connection between power and empathy.
A presentation on how as leaders we are predisposed to certain possibilities because of our physical mood. Empathy is also looked at from an embodied perspective.
Companies can create an oxytocin-led positive feedback loop, bettering employees and business while making customers happier—or they can lead their business into a downward spiral...
Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in some else's position and to intuit what that person is feeling. It is the ability to stand in others' shoes, to see with their eyes, and to feel with their hearts.
An interview with Daniel Goleman, Psychologist. See how you can use emotional and social intelligence to improve your own and your organization's performance.
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