“Simply put, leaders need get outside of their own heads – to place less emphasis, not more, on their own past challenges… When we’re trying to encourage someone to be more empathetic, we often say something like, ‘walk a mile in his shoes.’ As it turns out, that may be exactly the wrong thing to say to people who have worn those shoes themselves.”
~ Rachel Ruttan, Mary-Hunter McDonnell & Loran Nordgen: ‘It’s Harder to Empathise with People If You’ve Been in Their Shoes’ [hat tip Jim Rose].
Monday 31 July 2017
Bonus Quote of the Day: On empathy
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2 comments:
That rings true. There's a tendency to assume that if you've overcome a certain challenge, then others should be able to as well. Similarly if an idea or conclusion is clear to you,there's a tendency to assume it should be equally clear to others. Perspective requires you to remind yourself that (a) people differ in their relative strengths and weaknesses and (b) what may be easy or obvious to you now, wasn't once so easy or obvious when you were younger. Time lessens the memory of how difficult or painful something once was - which is of particular significance to parents.
Thank you for this post.This is very interesting information for me.
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