- What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
- Throughout my life, I've gone through a lot of things and it's safe to say that everyone has gone through the struggles that life gives. There were points in my life where I only thought about myself and thought that theres no way anyone is going through the same struggles that I am. Selfishly I closed myself off from a lot of people that way but soon after realized that everyone has their problems which I have no clue about just as no one knew what I was going through. Soon, I analyzed more why certain behaviors of people would occur, such as someone being grumpy in the morning and just empathizing and knowing that I'm not too much of a morning person myself. Or someone being extra anxious over something miniscule and thinking... They probably have a lot on their plate right now because I've been there. It's important to be empathetic, it allows you to create better relationships with people and helps you understand behaviors.
- How does empathy help you build better software?
- I believe empathy helps you work better in an endless amount of ways. Software consists of working with other people whether its your team or your boss, it is your job to work with them. This may consist of a couple things such as being self-aware, learning how to give and recieve feed back, and being an active listener. Especially being open to listening to other people's approach could help you immensly on your own work.
- Why is empathy important for working on a team?
- Sort of the same response as above but working on a team requires input and output, and I mean that verbally. We need to be able to comunicate. Most people don't want to talk to someone who is impatient or is always condescending to everyone because there is a lack of empthy from that person. Some people have different working habits and someone who carries empathy understands that and helps create a healthy environment for the team. Not a hostile one. Being able to give feedback while understanding the position the person recieveing is in is important because you don't want to create a relationship where now one of your teammates won't come to you for help because you're harsh and don't put yourselves in their shoes.
- Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
- In the past 2 years, I had been a mobile phlebotomist and well that requires me to drive around to nursing homes to take blood from geriatric patients. This job has taught me a lot about empathy due to the conditions most of my patients are in. I encountered a situation once where I was supposed to draw blood from and older gentleman who was probably in his late 80's, proceeding as normal, this gentleman was expressing rude remarks about the phlebotomist always coming in and taking his blood and never seeing any results. Taking in this information, I know that the reason for this is because nurses of the facility recieve results, I evaluated what the man said and empathized understanding that he is in a position where he feels helpless and doesn't feel independent anymore, I apologized to the man about his previous expirience and asked him if it would help if I left directions for the nurse to print out his results for his personal files. He agreed that he would feel better about that and expressed gratitude.
- 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 most difficult when I am recieving feedback on a topic which I have more knowledge on and am being questioned on my approach. This is difficult for me because I feel confident on certain topics but I do also understand that having the empathic part of me come out most at times like those because I would rather create a work environment with less tension. I find it easier to put myself in their shoes and try to explain my behavior in a way that they would understand while at the same time understanding their point of view.