How to Build Empathy? Listen.
Earlier this week, I was at an undisclosed hospital in an undisclosed location in the outpatient surgery ward. Outpatient surgery facilities are tight quarters in which you’re stacked up like sardines— you can hear everything that’s going on around you. Patient confidentiality? Ha! When you’re in outpatient surgery, you have to check any sense of modesty or privacy at the door!
Anyway, there was a gentleman across the hall who was in really tough shape. Anxious, uncomfortable, and obviously in pain. For purposes of this Muse, we’ll call him ‘Jim.’ As he was being checked in for whatever he was there for, nurses and staff flitted in and out of his pre-op bay. He had concerns about his procedure that he tried to bring up on numerous occasions, but no one was listening. His nurses and assistants needed to check boxes and keep things moving. After all, time is money in outpatient surgery.
As the morning progressed, I could sense that Jim was becoming frustrated and agitated with what he likely interpreted as a lack of care or concern for what, to him, was a big deal. After a long delay, his anesthesiologist entered his pre-op bay—we’ll call him ‘Bob.’ Fed up with the lack of empathy others were showing him, Jim let loose with a tirade of all the things that were concerning him.
Bob patiently listened and then began asking a series of probing questions to get to the root cause of Jim’s concerns. Each time Jim answered, Bob listened intently. He did not dismiss Jim in the way others on the floor had done earlier in the morning. After this brief, but meaningful interaction, Jim had calmed down considerably—Jim had been ‘heard.’
I was impressed with Bob’s level demeanor and willingness to make the time to hear his patient’s concerns. He was articulate and caring in his responses. He was likely just as harried as everyone else on the floor, but he purposefully made the time. Bob’s actions that morning gave Jim comfort and diffused further escalation in Jim’s pre-op bay.
I get asked fairly frequently about the importance of building the skills of empathy and compassion in a business and/or institutional setting. A natural follow-on question is: how does one go about improving this skill?
Whether we’re talking about at work or in your personal life, the strategy is the same. The first step is to listen.
Far too often, when confronted with a challenge, we talk. We talk to deflect. We talk because we don’t know what else to do. We talk to release nervous energy. To make matters worse, when we start talking, we usually start relaying a story of a similar challenge that’s happened to us. The individual who’s going through the challenge doesn’t want to hear about our suffering or similar situation, they want to be heard.
So the message this Saturday morning is this. If you want to build empathy, practice listening. It is only through listening—which includes hearing, seeing, reading, and putting it all together through critical thinking—that we gain understanding. If someone needs us and we’re doing all the talking, we’re likely hurting and not helping.
How do you practice listening? My recommendation is to connect with your own inner self through quiet contemplation and meditation. Listening to the self is the first step toward being able to truly listen to others.
Oh, way to go, Bob. Fantastic work!
