Empathy plays a huge role in my life and I feel is a central part of who I am and how I act. Every time I interact with a person, I try to read their emotional state and get a feel of what kind of mood they are in. I try to always give off a pleasant tone and positive demeanor, knowing that giving off that welcoming vibe is essential setting the other person at ease. I smile a lot, ask questions, and try to listen to answers and follow up with questions. I've come to learn over the years that we all just want to feel we can open up, be ourselves, and feel comfortable in our own shoes. This has helped me tremendously over the years as it's really changed who I am. I feel like I am generally always calm and positive. I am more grateful for the people and blessings I have in my life. It's also really helped with being less intimidated by future bosses or people in power. I try to view them the same way: As people who want to feel valued and listened to. It's helped me get over a lot of nerves of public speaking. We all just want to feel valued, and we all should be.
Empathy helps build better software because it helps the developers understand potential end user behaviors and needs. If developers are able to listen to and see things from the perspective of their users, they can build better products for them. Products need to be meaningful and emotional for users, otherwise they are likely to abandon them or worse, not even try to use them in the first place. Also, society has shifted to where consumers are giving a lot more feedback and want their opinions to be reflected in the products they choose to use. Otherwise, consumers are more willing to try different products. If a user/consumer senses that a software developer truly listens and makes great efforts to understand them and their lives, they are going appreciate that and try the product. For the developer, if they practice empathy, they are going to be way more in tune with user needs while developing the product. Empathy is a win/win.
Empathy is vital to working together as a team because when teammates practice empathy, everyone on the team feels valued and safe to share ideas and participate. Together, teams accomplish way more than any individual can, yet teams can also struggle if a lack of empathy exists. An essential component of teamwork is having each member be motivated to accomplish their part and have their ideas heard and/or implemented. When people feel safe in a team, their specific skills get an opportunity to come out and shine, which leads to everyone on the team working with their strengths and creating a better overall product. People that have empathy generally are able to park their ego and be open to other ideas. They are also ok with their ideas not being implemented if they feel heard. Plus, when everyone feels comfortable and valued on a team, they work for each other and that's when great things happen. It all starts with empathy.
When I was a teacher, we were constantly inundated with new curriculum/processes to teach, or new standards to teach to, or new paperwork we were required to complete for students. It was easy to feel completely overwhelmed and feel little value as our voices in decisions weren't often listened to. One teacher I worked with, Terri, would completely stress out in staff and professional development meetings because of the mountain of work being shoved down her throat. She reacted how many teachers do: She nodded yes in the meetings, then went back to her classroom and taught the same curriculum as she always did. When being observed, she would go to great lengths to put on a show that she was implementing new processes, but the entire act stressed her out and her cognitive resources were geared toward putting a mask on. The root casue of all of her actions were that she liked the way she taught, she had developed some good processes on her own, and she didn't feel listened to in meetings and didn't see the need to implement new processes just because someone told her to. Terri's attitude was actually pretty common in teaching. I had a lot of the same feelings she did.
I would listen to Terri, let her talk about her curriculum and why she felt it was just fine. She would eventually confide in me that she was just tired of implementing new processes because it took so much work and time, time she didn't have. She also had the experience of working hard to implement new curriculum, only to have the district strip it away and again require something new. The process was discouraging. I shared with her that I felt the same way. So we worked at things together, trying each week to implement a little of what we had to. Terri also had a great fear of technology, so I stayed after school with her for many days working on little steps to get her comfortable. We worked hard just to get her comfortable playing a scholastic news video on her smartboard! But that's where her level of comfort was and as soon as she felt secure opening up, we got to work on the basics. I met her where she was, and because of that, she was able to grow, small step by small step.
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 to be empathetic in professional settings when I am working with pushy, loud, and egotistical colleagues, clients, or bosses. This is definitely something that is hard for me and I also wrote about this on my professional development assignment. I call it the downside of empathy: Ironically, it can be hard for me to work with people that display little empathy! This is something I have worked really hard on and like the article "The Surprising (Nontechnical) Skill You Need to Succeed in Tech" suggests, those are times where I need to really practice being more empathetic myself. I need to be self aware, make sure I am not giving off a bad vibe. I need to listen with attention, honor opinions, ask questions. I need to give feedback to those people instead of simply agreeing with them just to end the conversation. I also need to make sure my ideas are heard and voice them in a respectful manner. Improving on these skills involves simply being brave enough to practice them. Those people aren't bad people at all, they are simply people who have probably had great success or feel they want to be heard as well. It's important to keep that perspective and I feel I am getting better at it. It's a work in progress for sure!