Welcome back, everybody, to Thoughts That Fit
With You by Neogentrics, Food for Thought. As
promised, we're going to cover understanding
other people today. Since the last topic we covered
was empathy, we're going to go ahead and continue
on with the same general area, but we're going
to cover how to understand other people as well,
okay? If you asked a group of people to define
empathy, you would almost certainly find that
the one of the first things that anyone suggests
was an ability to understand other people's feelings.
And like I mentioned before, Daniel Goleman,
the author of Emotional Intelligence, listed
the understanding of others as the first element
of empathy. He also suggested, however, that
understanding others is more than just sensing
other people's feelings and emotions. It also
means taking a general interest in them and their
concerns. So, the skill you need for this, understanding
others, we're going to go ahead and cover that
today. People who are good at understanding others.
They can pick up emotional cues, often from body
language, tone of voice, and other nonverbal
elements of communication. For more about this,
I will cover nonverbal communication and body
language in another video, in another podcast,
as well as active listening, clarifying, and
being able to reflect, okay? which is another
ability that people who are able to understand
others is able to do. They're able to listen
well to what people are saying, actively checking
their understandings, okay? You may find it helpful
to listen to the other podcasts as they come
out in accordance, okay? When people talk, listen
completely. Most people never really listen.
Most people don't listen with the intent to understand
when they listen with the intent to reply. This
is covered in my very, very many people. Okay?
Showing sensitivity towards others and understanding
their perspectives. Okay? They're careful not
to give offense by saying or doing the wrong
thing and are aware that not everyone has the
same point of view at all. Okay? Be polite, tactful,
tact and diplomacy, intercultural awareness.
These areas may also help you develop this area
of your skill set, okay? And if you're struggling
with bouncing between truth, honesty, and politeness,
please feel free to go back and listen to the
podcasts I've done on these before, okay? Last
but not least for this specific area, Help other
people appropriately based on their understanding
of their needs and emotions. Okay? We'll take
a short break here. And we'll continue on with
the insights from understanding others. Okay?
Okay, and we're back. We're going to go ahead
and cover insights from understanding others.
Developing empathy, and particularly the skill
of understanding others, is not just important
to your interpersonal relationships. It can also
help have a much wider impact. For example, in
the U .S., doctors who listen carefully to their
patients are much less likely to be sued. In
one study, Primary care doctors, the equivalent
of a general practitioner in the UK, for those
who don't know what that is, who had never been
sued were found to be much better communicators
than their peers. Empathy as economic sense.
Let's use Huggies pull -ups for this example.
They were developed as a direct result of empathy
in action. Those without children. These are
pull -up nappies or diapers for toddlers and
immediately step between nappies and grown -up
underwear. Kimberly Clark, the makers of Huggies,
sent observers to watch parents and toddlers
using nappies. This gave the company real insight
into the way that families were operating and
what products they needed. The company realized
that it would be helpful to have something in
between nappies and pants, a stepping stone,
if you will, that would allow children to start
getting themselves dressed, and then thus Huggy's
pull -ups were born. The importance of sincerity
is, in its own right, one of the most important
things in understanding others. It's possible
to pretend that you understand people's feelings,
and more particularly, their concerns. Sales
staff often try to do this to try to establish
rapport with customers. However, as humans, we
are programmed to detect and dislike insincerity.
So, your pretense, it is fair to say, will be
detected by those around, probably through subtle
hints in your body language, or perhaps in the
response to an unexpected question. The other
person may not even be aware of detecting it,
but will feel uncomfortable with the conversation
that you have or tried to strike up, for that
matter, or with or what you say, and find that
they do not really trust you. In other words,
this is false empathy, and it will be counterproductive.
Trying to manipulate emotions can backfire on
the perpetrator, and may well not be worthwhile.
So those who are generally empathetic will get
a very different response. Keep this in mind.
Okay? All right. Let's go ahead and cover empathy
avoidance and empathy overload. I know I mentioned
it before, but we're going to cover this in a
little more detail here. There are two aspects
of understanding others and being interested
in their concerns that as a part of empathy are
worth exploring a little further. The first is
empathy avoidance. It's a deliberate lack of
empathy, which might be called emotional tone
deafness. I'm pretty sure you've heard this term
once before. Total empathy avoidance is unlikely
to be healthy for your long -term relationships.
But being able to shut down some of your empathetic
responses may be helpful under certain circumstances.
So here are a couple examples. I gave you three.
Home, work, and health care. Let's talk about
each one of these individually for a second.
At home, children need to receive certain vaccinations
in their first few months of life. They have
several vaccinations several times, two or three
at a time. Having a needle stuck into your leg
hurts, and babies scream when it happens. Parents,
however, need to clamp down on their immediate
response and recognize the long -term benefits
of vaccinations and avoid serious diseases, rather
than focus on the long -term distress of the
child. Right? Let's move on to work. At work,
managers responsible for making redundancies
need to be able to make good decisions. They
are unlikely to be able to do so if they are
struggling with their own emotional response
to the stress of the people around them. While
it is important that they remain aware of the
feelings of those involved, they have to also
be able to balance that with the use of reason
and logic and not become overwhelmed. In healthcare,
a surgeon performing emergency surgery on someone
who has a serious injury in a road tragic accident,
or traffic accident, or any kind of accident
for that matter, needs to be able to use all
of their skills to try to repair the damage,
or amputate if necessary to save the patient's
life. They can't spend time considering how this
might make the patient feel, for one, if they're
unconscious, in which case you can't really tell.
However, after the operation is over and the
person is awake, they need to explain their actions
and help the patient to start to come to terms
with what has happened to them. They need to
remain aware of the patient as a person with
feelings and concerns and respond appropriately,
but not become overwhelmed by it. Empathy overload
sometimes happens when people are exposed to
difficult and distressing information. In such
situations, people can find themselves unable
to deal with their own emotional response to
the situation. This can happen, for example,
if you find that a friend is seriously ill. You
want to help and support them, but you are too
upset to do so. It is also a problem that can
arise for people working in professional professions
like medicine, nursing, and social work. The
way to manage possible empathy overload is to
work on your self -regulation and particularly
your self -control. With improvement, self -regulation
you will be able to manage your own emotions
and respond appropriately to those of others.
Don't worry, I will cover what self -regulation
is in response to this. But if you're wondering
about self -control, please see a previous podcast
that I've done on the topic of self -control
so you'll be able to understand this a little
bit further. Next, we'll cover, in a short bit,
understanding others is not soft. Welcome back.
Understanding others is not soft, okay? We often
talk about soft skills, and there is no question
that empathy and understanding others are important
soft skills. There is, however, absolutely nothing
soft in the sense of easy about understanding
others concerning feelings. Neither is it soft
in the sense of being tough. There is a such
thing as being soft and tough simultaneously.
The best managers are empathetic, but not soft
on their team. Understanding others does not
mean that you have to agree with their feelings
or point of view. Rather, it means that you recognize
their point of view and accept that it is different
from yours. You may still have to do difficult
things that others do not agree with, And they
understand that. Okay? So with that, we're going
to go ahead and bring this topic to a close.
And next time, we'll be covering emotions and
emotional intelligence. Okay? As well as What
was it I mentioned before? I did believe it was
not self -control, but self -regulation. Okay?
As always, thank you for tuning in to my podcast.
I hope you have a great rest of your day. As
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We have a new episode coming through. Enjoy the
rest of your day. Neogentrics out.