As a songwriter, empathy is critical. Being sensitive to my own emotions and to the emotions of others is crucial in turning emotions into chords and lyrics, and without empathy, I would be unable to do this at all. Empathy is also what turned me into a vegetarian when I was fourteen, after I felt simply awful about shooting a deer with my grandfather. Because of empathy, I am more sensitive to the emotional state of others around me (even "others" when they are animals) which helps me in my relationships with other people, and has made me a healthier person with better ch'i because I refuse to eat meat.
How does empathy help you build better software? If you have "emotional intelligence" as Daniel Goleman puts it, then you have a better understanding of what the user might be needing in their user experience with a site or a page. In addition, empathy can help one think about needs of the user that might be simply over-looked by a developer. A great example of this might be accessibility, in that, with the power of empathy, the developer might think about and feel what a blind person's experience with the internet might be like. This makes software better, because with the needs of all felt, the software becomes inclusive and even friendlier!
Empathy is important when working on a team because it allows for much more effective communication. I am reminded of the Point-Of-View gun in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: when zapped with the point of view gun, you immediately understand the point of view of the one who zapped you! The non-sci-fi version of this might be techniques like #Radical Listening and #Self-Awareness which when combined with empathy, allows team-members to give and receive feedback in positive ways, which only makes for a better team.
When working at my previous job at this strange start-up, one of my supervisors would often bark orders at people. One day, he was yelling at me to clean the bathrooms, which wasn't really part of my job description. Because of my rebellious nature, I barked back at him, but could see this was no closer to getting us to a resolution, and left this bad feeling in the air that was almost tangible. But the more I empathized with him, and could see he was under tremendous pressure to have everything in the office looking perfect for the CEO. My empathy for his situation caused me to apologize, which decreased that bad feeling and the pressure in the room vanished.
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 think the reason it can sometimes be difficult in professional settings is because everyone has their own needs that they need to get done for their specific job. This can make it hard because if you need certain things from a coworker in order to do YOUR job, it can be hard to see that from their point of view, they might need certain things in order to do THEIR job. But if we can all put our egos aside for a moment to see that we are all working in a collective for a certain goal, then stopping what you are doing for a moment for someone else to complete their objective is indeed very cyclical. If this empathetic mindset can be adopted by everyone on the team, everyone is helping each other to complete their objectives, and the workplace suddenly becomes a much nicer place to work.