An Exercise in Empathizing
The importance of empathy in business cannot be denied. It will create efficiencies across the board. It provides a construct from which to accelerate the speed of solving business problems. Multi-functional collaborative teams are a given for today’s economy, and leveraging these teams to their full potential requires each individual to think about the other. How do they think? What is their situation? Why? These questions help to create an empathic solution.
This is more than active listening. This is tapping into imagination and fully embracing the challenge through another person’s point of view. Once this is accomplished, solutions can be more quickly implemented with less friction within an organization. This cuts down on rework and shortens timelines by leaping forward from the beginning.
For example, we currently have a global client who is outsourcing much of their tradeshow support to Sandstorm. This organization has been successful by embracing sophisticated processes for developing high-end mathematical software. They have a meticulous process for everything and trusting Sandstorm with this process will be critical to their continued business growth.
Sandstorm is filled with passionate, non-linear thinkers who are always looking for a better way. Sandstorm’s creative process and culture generally produces unorthodox solutions. This is why we are enlisted by our clients to assist them in building their businesses.
Bridging the above mentioned cultures and processes to create something larger and more effective for our client requires active empathy. I challenge our teams to actively empathize with this particular client in order to solve their problems more quickly. This quickly innovates in small and big ways to move their business forward.
Honing your empathy takes practice, particularly if you are driven. Reacting and pushing our agenda and/or ideas forward is the more reflexive mode for most successful business people. It will be scary at first, believe me, I am a control freak; but in the end, better results will abound with a more empathetic worldview.
