Open Mind for a Different t View
Recently somebody said to me, in a grateful, good humoured way, “I wouldn’t want your job, you seem like an empathic chap”. Unusually for me, I took that as a compliment, but there are some echoes of other conversations in this which make it slightly disappointing if anything. We need more human understanding in our world, not less. As long as we see this as something other, we’re missing an opportunity to learn and push on as a species. As Feynman said “Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.” Communication skills speak to all of these elements. Like many skills which get labelled as “soft skills”, there is a hard edge, practical utility and commercial benefit to be gained from investing the time in the development of empathy. Empathy is the skill of understanding, putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes to view the world from their perspective. Where sympathy is a feeling of concern and wanting to see improvement (wh