• What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
Empathy is something that I’ve almost viewed as more of a negative in my own life until reflecting on these articles. Historically, I have been one to feel too strongly what others are feeling and often times put myself out to try to help in any way that could be of benefit. This has led to many people in my life taking advantage of me in different ways – something that has had me doing research on how to be less of an empath, sadly!
There have been some outliers in my life who possess the same level of empathy as I do, and I will say that I am more grateful for those few relationships than any others that I’ve built. Additionally, I’ve been able to use the ability to empathize in my former career field to help great people get jobs who’d have been otherwise looked over by my former office group. I’ve also learned early on to ask “why” as much as humanly possible; this could be a “Chicken/Egg” kind of situation, but I’m more leaning towards the empath in me wanting to know why versus the other way around. That in turn led me to getting my degree in Sociology and falling in love with a field to study for hobby. Empathy has provided me with many great things in life, the more that I think on it.
• How does empathy help you build better software?
I won’t lie – I shed a little tear myself when reading through about Lucy’s experience with the magnifying app. It makes total sense that possessing empathy can lead to one being a better listener. If you’re working with a client on a project, needs are there to be met – it’s kind of the point of work and all! When you have the ability to hear their perspective and understand why they see things a certain way, you have so much more opportunity to help your client in the way they want and need most. Furthermore, when I personally have that foundation down, I feel like I have so much more strength and it pushes me to work harder. Empathy also allows us to expand our thought processes, evaluating preconceived notions more closely, in turn producing more “outside of the box” kind of results. We encounter people from all walks of life in our work and having the ability to understand different perspectives through empathy helps in our work dramatically!
• Why is empathy important for working on a team?
When we work on teams we are surrounded by and interacting with individuals who can fill almost any mold imaginable – some of those characteristics might be new or less favored. We need to have the ability to empathize with humans who might not work in a way that we’re accustomed to seeing. There could very well be a great method to the madness that we think we’re witnessing. Once we let those barriers down and open up to seeing different perspectives, we have so much more opportunity for growth!
• Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
My high capacity to empathize was actually more of a pitfall in my former career field, unfortunately enough. Working in recruitment for two of the largest 3rd party recruiting agencies in the nation was not a fun time for me for that reason, and eventually became led to the demise of my time in that field.
Often times we would get job requisitions on positions that were very speed to market and needed to be filled some time before reaching our desks. If we didn’t hit out goals, we lost our jobs – end of story. We were often pushed to qualify our candidates on things that were not at all morally correct.
My former colleague and current friend, Kareem, had close to 50 job placements to make for super easy hire positions on week. He’d been hitting the phones hard on this particular day and wasn’t having much luck. Towards the end of the day, he’d reached out to a woman who was super excited for the interview offer that he’d extended, and I could tell by his expressions when he was on the phone with her that he felt the same way. Well, Kareem and I were the outliers of the office group there (totally believe it is due to our strong morals) and we’d immediately formed a connection that we didn’t share with others in that space. Due to this, we often helped one another out more discretely so that we could help our community and not just this awful company that we worked for. When Kareem gets off the phone, he pulls me aside to let me know that she was a great fit but that his Account Manager wouldn’t hire her if he presented because she was pregnant. Well, we clearly didn’t let him know (not hiring a woman because she is pregnant is illegal, for starts...) and worked together to interview her the required amount of times to get her into that role. He and I always found workarounds for situations like this many times while with the company.
They often said that integrity was doing the right thing, even when no one was looking. Well, our empath souls kind of flipped that principle around in that situation!
• When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios?
I find it difficult to be empathetic in professional settings when I’m hearing many airs of grief from people that expect an unreasonable output to return ratio. For instance, if I have a colleague who is in a chummy little gig without many stressors and complains about everything from their shoelaces getting wet to their dog looking at them the wrong way, I just start to get burnt out on it. I would say that I fall heavily within the “emotional empathy” category and have always assumed that it was more of a negative for me. After reading through, I’m taking note of how I can utilize that more to my benefit, and to the benefit of those around me.
I’m seeing that this probably comes from the fact that I’ve been pushed ridiculously hard in life from an early age to be successful in life by my definition. Well, for me that’s working hard in whatever field I’m in, not slacking on things and putting in whatever it takes to get a job done correctly. I’ve always been more goal driven – completing a project is more rewarding in itself than going on a trip because I completed it.
Since this has been instilled by my parents and practiced on my own accord for so long, I think it could be difficult for me to look past this sense of entitlement-ty kind of disposition that I take at face value when I meet people who behave as I’ve mentioned. Rather than just seeing someone as what their character displays, it could be super beneficial to dig into the reasons that they could have to behave that way (in my mind; not with the person). Once I have a “why”, I am much more likely to look at those subsurface factors versus what’s presented at face.