Noticing how people feel - empathy

• Noticing how people feel is a central element of emotional intelligence.
• Empathy is not the same as sympathy - feeling sorry for people.
• Empathy means understanding and respecting how people feel.
• It means adjusting how you behave to take account of feelings.
• But first you need to learn to notice feelings.
• Standard advice is to put yourself in their shoes.
• But this won't help if you wouldn't feel as they do at such times.
• Another approach is to brainstorm with your team a list of situations where negative feelings are stimulated and what arouses them.
• Then list alternate actions that would not bring on negative feelings.
• You can then practice the more sensitive approaches.
• You might never excel in detecting how people feel.
• But you could improve your ability to avoid upsetting people.
• Enlist the help of a colleague who is keenly aware of how people are feeling.
• Ask this person after meetings what feelings were aroused that you might have overlooked.

Other steps to try

• Regularly ask others how things you have done make them feel.
• Then try a different approach - get regular feedback.
• Ask more questions generally, doing less telling.
• Drawing solutions out of others gives you less room to say the wrong thing.
• See listening for related themes.
• Say more positive things - state what went well before turning to what hasn't. Don't place blame, ask for solutions.