Empathy Walk

Making deeper, meaningful connections with people is increasingly important for all of us. There is an old adage – before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. The point is that doing so will help you better understand their situation, and help you find more constructive means to improve the relationship and what you both get from it.

But why wait for something to go wrong? Walking a mile in their shoes can help you also see new opportunities. So the green track is doing exactly that.

Think around your network and find someone whose situation you do not fully appreciate, and determine to plan 30 minutes just to get to know them better as a person. This exercise is not entirely unlike Walk and Listen, except it is more focused on their work context (and you don’t have to walk).
Here are some questions that may help you to get things underway:

• For you, what are the good bits about where our work overlaps?
• And what are the bits that are not so good for you? And why?
• Can you share with me a bit about what happens at your end? What it would be like for me if we were to end up in each others shoes for a moment?
• If I could do anything different to help you play your part in a better, more enjoyable way, what might that be?
• Are there any questions you have about what goes on at my end?

That is a really good question.

There is a wonderful listening technique within counselling that not only helps you to understand someone’s situation better, it helps them understand their own situation better too.

It works by seeking to create a picture of what is going on in another person’s mind in your own, and to do so solely by asking questions. For the listener, their goal is to only put into their mind what the other person has said, until they reach a point where they can anticipate what the other person would do in a particular situation and why. It is an act of systematic curiosity.

And it has this amazing effect around situations where the other person finds themselves stuck. As you try and construct the ‘stuck’ picture in your own head, in trying to fully understand the ‘stuckness’ you end up unearthing the blind spots and ask questions that the other person not only hadn’t considered, but hadn’t even recognised as a question.

So the blue track is to have this conversation with someone who is stuck. But it is absolutely key that your goal is NOT to help the other person to solve their problem – that will lead to suggestions and assumptions, which derail the technique. Your goal is solely to understand their thinking, and you do this purely with questions.

Sticking to open questions and questions of clarification is fine, but avoid any question that is a veiled attempt to propose a solution.

Trust in the technique – if you are determined to do you part in understanding well, they will eventually find the next steps for themselves – if only to find the answer to your question. For more on this, take a look at the steps to listening part of the Walk and Talk post

Breaking out of the Echo Chamber

The Red Track is basically somewhere where you probably don’t want to go. It is about listening intently and respectfully to views you disagree with at a pretty fundamental level.

We are all becoming more aware of the echo chamber effect, and we can see its impact on groups of people who are developing increasingly radical perspectives. As a result their views appear to become more polarised and reflect less and less that we can engage with.

What we may be less aware of is our own echo chamber. As opposing views become more polarised, we find that it is easier to recognise and exclude them. As a result we too are hearing less and less of what might otherwise maintain balance.

So the red track is a real challenge. It is about deliberately spending time in an echo chamber that is not your own, and trying to see things from that perspective.

To help you, I have included two important resources in the pack section.