Have you ever said something thoughtless to someone and thought it was perfectly harmless only to find out later you hurt them?  This summer my boyfriend, his daughters, and I went hiking at Turkey Run State Park.  I often encourage them to go outside and enjoy nature.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and the park was busy with people tubing on the river and hiking the trails.  There are often jokes among the four of us about me liking nature and how I promote its benefits to them.  At one point, I flippantly said something like, “Well, this gets Angelina off the couch and exercising.”  Writing that down now makes me cringe, but at the time, I didn’t think anything of it.

As the hike progressed, I began to notice Angelina and Michael were hanging back and Michael was hiking with his arm around Angelina.  They were not joining the conversation with Lexi and me much throughout the hike.  At one point, we stopped to rest on a rock cliff overlooking a stream.  Angelina seemed sullen.  It was a beautiful view from the cliff looking down on a stream through leaf-patterned light.  I was becoming annoyed with what I saw as coddling behavior from Michael.  I was not feeling empathetic, so you can imagine how the conversation went when I finally got a moment alone with Michael and asked what was going on.  He was kind of pissed at me for hurting his daughter’s feelings and I was annoyed.  Neither of us approached the conversation with an empathetic viewpoint and it did not go well.  I now do not have fond memories of that day and it certainly didn’t help build our relationships.

A Self-Survey

I recently completed a 360 Reach survey.  It is a free service helping you understand what other’s think about you.  You can do a self-survey and then survey those in your life who can speak to your strengths and weaknesses.  Here is why self-awareness is important.

Do you Know your Strengths and Weaknesses?

In the self-survey, I noted my strength as driven and my weakness as emotional reactivity.  The survey results did tell me I am self-aware.  Empathy is something I’ve worked to improve.  I need to learn to understand the feelings of others better.  When you read your weakness reflected back by others it is even more motivating to want to improve it.

Seven Tips: Action Items that can help Improve Empathy:****

1. Someone suggested in my survey to investigate Adaptive Inquiry.

2. Practice shifting attention outside myself.  Ask myself questions:

3. What does this person think?

4. What does this person feel?

5. How are they holding their body?

6. Slow down and ask clarifying questions.  Ask about their feelings.

7. Identify some feelings the other person may be having.

8. Be curious about the other person.

9. Improve listening.

10. Refine observational skills, attend to body language and facial expressions.

11. Take this test to see if you can read people’s emotions.  I got a 26.  Not great but not bad.

Does Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) Lack Empathy?

I can be hard on myself when I don’t perform as well as I think I should have.  I’ve worked on giving myself a break.  Today, I did that by sharing an article about things Jeff Bezo‘s said to his staff which were less than empathetic and I said, “At least, I don’t say things like that.” 🙂 How Jeff Bezo responds to stupidity.