One of my friends’ lost a parent a long time ago. He was miserable for months, understandably so.
I was quite young and honestly was at a loss of how to communicate or help with grief. I thought my role as a friend was to cheer him up and kept offering ideas that could help him.
Until he turned around and said, ‘Can you stop offering solutions to fix me. Sometimes, I just want to be heard’.
For some reason, that incident has defined empathy. It is an under utilised super power.
We tend to have this huge action bias. We tend to form responses in our heads even as the other person is speaking. We like solving for problems, offering ideas and ways in which the other person can do better.
But sometimes, people just want to be heard. They want to talk it out. Without being trivialised.
A friend does this brilliantly. His most favourite question is ‘Tell me more about it’
Leadership is about empathy. At home and at work.
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
— Ernest Hemingway
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#reviewswithranjani #empathy