I recently read something about Empathy being gone... Well, it may have left the building for a while, but it is one of the most powerful emotions and is one of the most requested training I've been asked to create and/or deliver.
Emotional intelligence also involves the ability to manage the emotions of other people close to you. Many times in life, your family members or close friends may be going through a tough time. In such times, they may require your comforting and emotional support. Emotionally intelligent individuals have the strength to understand and respect other people’s emotions. They are successfully able to comfort and empathize with their loved ones in hard times.
This is why another way to sharpen your emotional intelligence is by putting yourself in someone else’s situation. This ability is often referred to as empathy. Most psychologists break down the concept of empathy into three main parts:
Cognitive empathy: Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand how a person feels. This type of empathy allows people to become better communicators as they are able to perceive a situation from another person’s point of view. By applying cognitive empathy, a person can comprehend another person’s thought process and communicate with them according to their mind frame at a certain time.
Emotional empathy: Emotional empathy is having the ability to relate to another person’s feeling and making them feel understood. Some psychologists have explained emotional empathy as experiencing other people’s feelings or pain in your heart. Having emotional empathy can enable a person to comfort others.
Compassionate empathy: Compassionate empathy is the most effective way to practice empathy as it involves going beyond simply understanding or relating to other people’s feelings. Compassionate empathy urges us to help people in any way we can to make them feel better.
Overall being empathetic adds volumes to your personality and helps you develop your emotional intelligence to higher levels. It not only helps you learn how to communicate effectively by being more considerate of other people’s feelings but it also gives you the ability to use your words to comfort and motivate others. You can generally develop empathy by giving people your full attention and listening to what they have to say with an open mind.
The main goal is to put your own view aside and see things from other people’s perspective so that you can understand what they are feeling. This can change the way you think about another person’s emotional reaction. A reaction that seemed unreasonable or overly dramatic at first may perhaps become justified after you hear the other person out. This is why being empathetic towards others can also help you become better at conflict resolution as it allows you to put aside your personal biases and view a problem from a more neutral view as you keep in mind both sides of the story.
The above is an excerpt from my recent book "Activate Your Emotional Intelligence" available on Amazon.
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