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Tarun: Can you give me a concise definition of what you view empathy to be ?
Dr. Lou Agosta: Yes, empathy is a four phase way of being with another person. Empathy is the form of relatedness to another person in which I am open to the other person.
I get who they are as a personality. I need to take a walk in their shoes if I do not get who they are and I give back to the other person what I have gotten, in the form of recognition and acknowledgement of their humanity and of what they are dealing with.
So the four phases of empathy are:
- Receptivity
- Understanding
- Interpretation
- Acknowledgement
Tarun: So in essence, we are looking at empathy as the act of putting oneself in another’s shoes to understand how they see the world, why they respond the way they respond and then out of that understanding, be able to be congenial towards them regardless of whether you agree with their point of view or not; would that be a fair ?
Dr Lou Agosta: I gave you four dimensions and you gave me back the “walk in the other person’s shoes”. When I get stuck as to what is going on with you then I get my cognition working. It’s “top-down” empathy at that point. Empathy essentially, as I understand it and as I get it to work best, is when people come and visit me and they say “Dr Lou, I am suffering or you know “blah blah blah,” it really requires looking at all four dimensions of being open to the other person. So, firstly, be with them, that is the listening part, – empathic listening, understanding
who really this person is. Then the “walk in the shoes” part is often needed to really traverse the differences in the details in my life and in the other person’s life. We are coming from different places. To complete empathy, you really have to give back what you understood about the person, as to who they are, in such a way that you acknowledge them so they say “Yeah Dr Lou, you got what I was dealing with”. The other dimensions are good. They are going in the right direction. There’s an empathic intention, empathic engagement and empathic understanding but it is incomplete until we really say, “I acknowledge you, I give you back something in such a way that you ‘get’ that I ‘get’ you.”
Tarun: Thanks so much for tuning in, I hope you got a ton of value out of that episode. Don’t forget to let us know what you thought in the comments and if you have a topic you’d like us to cover next time we would love to hear from you.
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