Empathy means having the ability to sense others’ feelings and how they see things. You take an active interest in their concerns. You pick up cues to what's being felt and thought. With empathy, you sense unspoken emotions. You listen attentively to understand the other person's point of view, the terms in which they think about what's going on.
Empathic leaders get along well with people from very different backgrounds and cultures, and can express their ideas in ways the other person will understand.
Empathy doesn’t mean psyching out the other person so you can manipulate them, but rather knowing how best to collaborate with them.
At a tech company, there was a consulting division that had a brilliant systems analyst. He could solve problems that stumped everyone else. But, as someone there said, “We can never put him in front of clients.” The reason: He never made small talk. He never made human contact or connected with the client. He never even asked them what they thought the problem was. Instead, he'd just launch right into what he saw as a solution—and it turned off the clients.
What that systems analyst lacked was the Empathy Competency.
Read the full article from Daniel Goleman here.
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