Our previous blogs on Emotional Intelligence (EI) discussed being more self-aware and better regulating your emotions in difficult circumstances. The next element in EI shifts the focus from yourself to others.
Being “empathetic” means you fully tune in to another person’s reality – their perception, feelings, and thoughts. To do that well, you need to fully set aside your own thoughts and feelings. Empathetic listening is not listening to figure out how you’ll respond, but listening to figure out exactly what the other person is thinking and feeling. It means understanding the Golden Rule 2.0® – treating people the way they want to be treated. A key resource for this is our T.E.A.M. Communication Styles® which can help you better understand yourself and others.
In a conflict situation it means listening behind the emotional outburst or attack. Listening instead for what the other person is really seeking to accomplish. Not the surface statements about what they want to see happen, but the underlying interests about why they want that to happen. It means not criticizing or analyzing what the other person is saying, but instead trying to “walk in their shoes” and see the situation from their perspective.
And… empathetic listening is “active” listening – you need to summarize what the other person is saying and let them know you fully heard them (paraphrasing). In a conflict situation you should always paraphrase tentatively – it’s easy to misunderstand the person so you may not have gotten it right… or they may be so upset, they didn’t really mean what they said. By being tentative, you give them more room to clarify what they really meant.
All this circles back to the first two elements – self-awareness and self-regulation. If you are not aware of your thoughts and emotions, you can easily get hijacked by them or they can lead you to misinterpret the other person. Once aware, you then have to manage them so they don’t get in the way of you being able to listen empathetically.
The last part of Emotional Intelligence is “social skills” – how you put your empathy into action. We’ll address that in our next issue.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts or questions on this. Feel free to comment below or email me.