The first step on the path to bridging communication gaps is empathy.
Empathy is the story of other people’s minds. By empathising, we learn the cause and effect chains that have created another person’s thoughts and feelings. When we understand their thoughts and feelings, we understand the pleasure they wish to approach, and the pain they wish to avoid.
It’s like a big fan, sitting in the middle of a room, spinning around and blowing at full speed. Around it, all sorts of papers and other light objects are spinning around and around creating a tornado. That tornado is the person’s thoughts and feelings, and that fan sitting in the middle, represents their needs (approach pleasure, avoid pain). There may be so many objects spinning around that we can’t see the fan. But when we start to see that tornado, we can start to guess where the fan is.
When we understand the pleasure they wish to approach and the pain they wish to avoid, we can better predict their behaviour, and better guess what actions we need to take to influence their behaviour.
Dogs are quite easy to empathise with. They want to approach food, and avoid cats! Put some food down in the right location, we can influence which direction the dog runs. Likewise, put a cat in the right location and again, we can influence which direction the dog runs!
I have found over the last decade of training people to increase their empathy, that it is as simple as spending more time imagining being the other person.
Simply sit there, and use the powers of your imagination to visualise what this person is feeling, why they’re feeling that way, what might they be thinking, what caused them to think that way and so on. It really is that simple.
And it can’t really be any other way. We can’t objectively know for sure what’s going on in the other person’s mind. We can only imagine, and guess.
Empathising is easiest when we need it least, and hardest when we need it most.
In the midst of a misunderstanding, argument or disagreement, when emotions are running riot, we don’t really have a lot of motivation to imagine being the other person.
That colleague we dislike said something in a meeting that made us angry. All we can think is “How dare they say that?!”, and “They’re wrong. They’re so wrong! I’ll show them!”. We focus on avoiding the overwhelming pain we are feeling in that moment, and that often results in us making the situation worse.
It’s only when we relax, that our mind can open up and expand enough to start imagining being that other person.
As you are reading this now, you’re probably relaxed enough to start empathising pretty effectively. Think of someone, anyone, that you’ve seen, heard or spoken to recently. It might be the person sitting next to you in the coffee shop, or someone walking by outside, or maybe your spouse.
Now think, what did you notice about their behaviour? What were they doing? What did they say? How did they do or say those things? If they’re doing and saying those things, and in that way, then why might that be?
As I sit here typing this, there is someone sitting next to me eating. They’ve eaten in quite a rush. Earlier on they had a phone call trying to confirm details for an upcoming trip. Then, after eating, they scanned through their phone, whilst shaking their legs quite a lot. And after about 20 minutes of sitting next to me, they were gone.
My best guess it this person felt rushed! It seems pretty obvious as well from all the things I described above. When they took some time to browse through their smartphone, I guessed that they’re probably trying their hardest to get some downtime and satisfy that itch that they hadn’t had time to satisfy so far today. The fact that they left after only 20 minutes, and rushed through their food, all points to being in a rush. Given that they had a phone call about an upcoming trip, and it’s a weekday lunchtime, it also seems pretty obvious that they’ve got some work to do.
Am I right? I don’t know! I would need to check my understanding with them to answer that question. But seeing as I don’t know them, and I don’t really have any reason to empathise with them other than doing so for an example for this book, I didn’t really feel it would be appropriate to check with them!
So empathising is pretty straightforward detective work when we are capable of it. But even when we are physically capable of empathising, there is a good chance we will jump to pretty inaccurate conclusions, because, after all, we are just guessing.
And in reality, empathy is always going to be our best guess. Which is why we should never assume we understand someone’s perspective. We should always check, by asking questions and checking our understanding.
I am surprised by just how often I am wrong about what other people are thinking.
I consider myself quite skilled at reading body language. I have read lots on the subject of body language, and learnt some of the logic of body language. As a trainer, who has spent thousands of hours in a classroom watching people respond to things, I am now finely attuned to subtle changes in body language. I can notice the instant someone’s facial expression changes. A change in body language that is within my field of vision pretty much never goes unnoticed. After a while, this even puts people on a higher level of alert, because they know I am reading them closely.
And the moment I sense a change in someone, if I feel its appropriate, I will jump in with my assumption. “It seems you have a question” I’ll say, or “What are you thinking there?”, or “You seem to think differently about that”.
And about 5 times out of 10, people will point out my assumption was wrong! They didn’t have a question, they were just resting their eyes, they just felt a bit tired and so on. 5 times out of 10 I am also right. But I am wrong enough times to know that I can’t read minds.
You don’t have to travel far on the internet to find some body language guru who will tell you exactly what other people are thinking. They’ll tell you exactly what a scratch of the forehead means, or that those shaky legs mean they’re hiding something, or that this person is lying.
I will happily call bullshit on these gurus.
We can’t really know what people are thinking.
Shaky legs could mean so many things. They could mean people are nervous, or excited, or just really want to go to the toilet! That micro expression of anger, could just be a twitch someone can’t control. The fact that someone is leaning away from their partner, could also mean they have a back problem.
Context is everything when it comes to reading people.
If you really want to read people, focus on their responses. What are they responding to? And what was their response?
If they were relaxed and fluid in their movements originally, and then froze the moment someone walked in the door, that is a strong indicator that something has changed in them. It’s a strong indicator that they were responding to that person walking through the door, which suggests that person is of significance to them. Freezing generally means discomfort, which suggests this new person’s presence has caused some tension in them. Are we right? Our conclusions are pretty logical, but logical doesn’t mean correct. So again, we’d have to check.
We can only make our best guess using all the clues we have gathered. And then after that, we need to check.
But before we get to checking, how do we go about making our best guess in the first place?
From Objective to Subjective
Guessing is always going to be subjective. But if we make our best guess based on objective facts, then our guess is going to be as accurate as it can be.
We can follow this process to make our best guess:
- Collect observations
- Identify influencing factors
- Deduce possible thoughts and feelings
- Deduce possible needs
- Check assumptions
1. Collect Observations
And so, the first step is to simply pay more attention.
Consider all the possible things you could notice about a person. Here are some of the things I can think of:
- Body language
- Voice tone, volume and speed
- What they’re wearing
- Physical location (where they’re standing, sitting etc.)
- What they are moving towards and away from
- The things they’ve said or written
- The things they’ve done
- Who they are with
- Things they have with them
- Things they use
And so on.
Body language is an interesting one. In some of my trainings I teach people how to read body language. It doesn’t take long. Sometimes 30 minutes is enough. Afterwards people realise that you don’t need to have a PhD to read body language, all you need to do is just start paying more attention. The moment people realise this, they suddenly start to notice all sorts of things they had never noticed before.
This first step is simply about paying more attention. Look around, collect as much possible evidence as you can.
Sometimes we focus too much on one piece of evidence.
For example, a few months ago, after finishing a series of virtual workshops for a client, my contact sent me a message saying “Hi Jamie, have you sent us a contract for this series of workshops? I can’t find one.”
I panicked! I realised I hadn’t sent a contract, not even a quotation. I’d just agreed on a price with her colleague over the phone several months ago when this contact was on maternity leave.
All sorts of thoughts started racing through my head. Are they not going to pay me for this? I must look really stupid, and unprofessional. What am I going to do?
I blew it completely out of proportion.
After a while, I calmed down and realised that I could just send them an apology email and a contract, which I did. They then responded that they got it and all was fine and they will process the payment accordingly. Fewf!
I had focused too heavily on that one message they sent me. I even ignored the friendly tone of it. I ignored the friendly interactions I’d had with them over the past few months. I ignored the positive cooperation I’d had with them for the past few years. I overlooked a lot of possible evidence that would point to more positive conclusions, and instead got sucked into one message as if it was a blackhole.
In this first step, it’s important to be as broad and objective as possible. There is a lot of evidence out there that can inform our deductions later on in the process. Let’s make sure we collect it and use it.
2. Identify Influencing Factors
In the first step, we are relying on 100% objective evidence. Things we know to be true.
In this second step, we are combining 100% objective evidence, with possibilities that we may not be able to prove.
This is where we consider context.
As we looked at earlier in the book, context in a story is the cause and effect chains that lead to someone forming a goal. It’s exactly the same when it comes to empathising. We want to understand what may have caused a change in the person.
Consider all of the possible factors that could influence a person. Here are some of the things I can think of:
- Other people
- Things other people did
- Things other people said
- Things they saw and heard
- Relationships
- Peer pressure
- Social obligations
- Work and life stressors
- Work and life goals
- Life experiences
- Beliefs and values
- Culture
And so on.
As you can see from just my list above, there are a hell of a lot of factors that can influence someone!
Recently, I worked with one client here in China who had a challenge communicating with their headquarters in the US.
Due to the pandemic, and given the nature of this client’s industry, the US headquarters decided to implement extremely strict policies to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 throughout their offices around the world. These policies included wearing a face mask in the office at all times, working from home every 2 weeks, different business units staying physically separated from each other and so on. They were extremely strict policies.
In most regions, this was quite reasonable. But at this time, in China, this was an overreaction. China had mostly recovered from the effects of the pandemic, and was pretty much back to normal. The city of Hangzhou, where my client was based, had not experienced any cases of Covid-19 for months by that point.
Furthermore, in Hangzhou, most companies had eased their preventative measures months ago. Shopping malls and many other public places had too. Life was very much back to normal.
So for these employees in Hangzhou, they found it both strange, and unfair, that the only time they had to follow these strict policies was when they went to work. They looked at their friends in other companies who didn’t have to wear face masks at all times at work, and felt jealous.
They tried several times to convince their leaders in the US to ease these restrictions at the Hangzhou office, but were unsuccessful.
So when I sat down with them to explore this issue, it was quite clear to me that empathy was the problem. They explained to me how they had tried to convince their leaders, which involved basically telling them they felt it was unfair and an overreaction and that people felt uncomfortable wearing face masks all day. I could see why the leaders in the US had not been convinced.
I encouraged them to consider what factors had influenced the US leaders perspective. We discussed this a bit and identified several.
One of the main factors was very little positive media coverage of China. Whilst life in China was very much back to normal, this was not being reported much at all by the Western media. News stories about China tended to focus more on the political tensions being felt between various countries. Occasionally there were isolated outbreaks in certain cities in China, and when this happened this was blown out of proportion by the media. So the media was probably having a huge influence on their perspective.
Another factor was the situation in the US. For these leaders, on the ground in the US, they were probably experiencing a far more severe version of this pandemic than most people in China had. For most people in China, there was a lockdown of several months, and then a gradual and smooth recovery until things returned to normal. But in many other countries, the US included, there were multiple lockdowns, incredibly high infection rates and devastatingly high death tolls. So whilst people in China could see no reason for these strict policies, their leaders in the US could probably see reasons everywhere they looked.
One final factor was something that had been missing for the US leaders perspective. They had no idea what life was like in Hangzhou. They weren’t on the ground in Hangzhou. They weren’t walking into shopping malls, seeing hundreds of people walking around without the need for face masks. They didn’t have friends working at these other companies that were far more relaxed. They literally could not see how out of touch their policies were with the reality on the ground in Hangzhou.
As we discussed these factors, a very obvious solution presented itself. They needed to show the leaders the reality of life in Hangzhou. They could show photos of people walking around in the shopping malls. They could show policies other companies have in place. They could show the infection rates for Hangzhou and the rest of China. They could show the challenges these policies had unnecessarily created, and the impact this was having on their business.
At the time of writing this, they have done just that. They have started to show their leaders in the US what life on the ground in China is like. Certain policies are being relaxed, wearing face masks in the office is no longer something being strictly enforced. And other policies are being discussed. Whilst the outcome is still not what they would like, it is definitely progress, and there is definitely buy-in from the US side.
Identifying influencing factors is a crucial step in empathising. These factors help us understand what might have shaped someone else’s perspective. And when it comes to bridging communication gaps, like my Hangzhou client had to do with their leaders in the US, these influencing factors reveal the nature of the communication gap. When we understand the nature of the gap, we can start to think of solutions.
But before we do think of solutions, it’s still best to go through the next two steps.
3. Deduce Possible Thoughts and Feelings
The objective proof we’ve collected, and the possible influencing factors we’ve considered, start to paint a clear picture of what’s going on in their minds.
A quick tip here is to consider what the other person would be saying to themselves in their mind.
Thoughts typically work as a self dialogue. We talk to ourselves all the time! There are voices running through our head narrating the events of our daily lives and what they mean to us.
In the example I just mentioned, we can quite easily start painting a picture of what the US leaders are probably thinking and saying to themselves.
They were probably thinking:
- “We can’t risk any possible negative impact on our business”
- “It’s vital to our clients that we show them we have got this situation under control and we are doing everything we can to prevent disruption to the services we provide them”
- “Our clients are trusting us to continue serving them during these difficult times, and any disruption to our business will reduce their trust in us”
- “We have no choice but to implement these strict policies”
Based on those, I can deduce that they were probably feeling very worried and concerned. They probably felt a lot of pressure to act as risk averse as possible. I’m pretty sure they weren’t feeling relaxed about the situation!
This now conveniently leads us on to the next stage.
4. Deduce Possible Needs
Remember, the force that drives every living being on the planet, is the need to approach pleasure and avoid pain.
Now that we can understand what these leaders are probably thinking and feeling, we can start to understand what their needs might be.
Going back to the example of those leaders in the US, I imagine they needed the following:
- To satisfy their customer’s expectations
- To avoid, at all costs, any preventable negative impact on their business
- To ease any pressure they were feeling to keep business running smoothly
Probably a few other things as well. But my best guess is the above needs were the most pressing for them.
So now we’ve deduced what their possible needs are, we need to remember that we may very well be wrong! So rather than assume we’re right, we need to move on to the next step.
5. Check Assumptions
Check with them. This is also pretty straightforward.
Focus firstly on what you have observed. The things you know 100% are true. Then take those to the person and ask them why?
Why did you do that? Why did you say that? Why do you need that?
And so on. Of course, we need to be extremely careful how we phrase these checks, our tone of voice, the way we ask and so on. We will look at that in the section on Opening Their Minds.
In the example of the Hangzhou office trying to convince the US leaders, they could start by asking them why it’s so important they implement exactly the same policy across all regions. This may reveal some very useful information about the factors that led to these decisions.
It’s even better if we can check the moment we observe things. That saves us a lot of time deducing possible conclusions that we can’t guarantee are 100% accurate. But of course, that’s not always practical, so sometimes we must go through the rest of the process before we check.
Another way of checking is to make suggestions.
We’ve deduced what their possible needs are. So, if that’s their possible need, then how could we possibly appeal to that need?
Going back to that example, we’ve deduced that the US leaders possible needs are to satisfy their customers, avoid any negative impact on the business and keep things running smoothly. How could we appeal to that?
Perhaps we could start a Post-Pandemic Hygiene movement. We could disinfect desks several times a day, take temperature checks and even start up a fitness and nutrition group. These would be reasonable measures that most staff would probably welcome, that would also show customers they are doing everything to keep the company healthy even after the pandemic is over.
Perhaps they could even show a backup plan, and run emergency drills every so often to show that they have a plan of action in place should the pandemic start to impact them again.
And so on.
Then after checking with them, see what their response is. Do their answers match your thinking? Do their answers reveal new insights? Do they accept your proposal? Do they offer an alternative suggestion?
Empathy is not a one way thing. It’s two way.
Summary
Empathy is the story of other people’s minds. We are never going to understand exactly what’s happening in other people’s minds, all we can do is make our best guess. And to make our best guess, we should follow the process below:
- Collect observations
- Identify influencing factors
- Deduce possible thoughts and feelings
- Deduce possible needs
- Check assumptions
