Latest / Northman Coaching / What Empathy Really Means and Why It Matters
Transcript
- Gary: Empathy is often misunderstood. Some people hear the word and think it means being soft or letting people off the hook or carrying someone else's what do you call pain. Others think empathy means approving of behavior that has caused harm. It doesn't. Empathy is not surrendering your judgment. It is not abandoning your boundaries, Empathy is the effort to understand the person in front of you before you decide what the moment calls for. That effort can change a conversation. It can change the way we lead, parent, love, coach, and disagree. It can also reveal something uncomfortable about us. Sometimes the person we are quickest to judge is the person whose pain we are afraid to understand.