Concept
Empathy as a skill
Empathy, in Goleman's account, is a skill rather than a trait: the deliberate reading of another person's state from face, tone and posture before deciding how to respond, which improves with practice.
The same machinery the amygdala uses to scan faces for threat can be turned, on purpose, to the question of what someone else is feeling, and Goleman's claim is that this can be trained like any perception. Its value is information. A manager who reads that the late report came from someone frightened, or a parent who reads exhaustion under a teenager's sharp word, responds to what is actually there rather than to the surface. Kahneman's research on fast judgement applies with full force, because the fast read of another person is confident and often wrong, so the read is a hypothesis to be checked, 'you seem frustrated, is that right?', rather than a fact to act on. Combined with regulation, holding one's own reaction for a breath, it is what makes difficult rooms work, and Chris Voss's tactical empathy applies the same skill at a negotiating table.
A real-life example
A site manager in Adana notices that a usually talkative welder has gone quiet and is missing measurements. Instead of a warning he says, 'You seem far away today, is something wrong?' The welder's father is in hospital. The manager moves him to a two-person job for the week, and the errors stop.
How to use it
- 1Before responding in a heated exchange, read the other person's state from face, tone and posture.
- 2Check the read out loud: 'you seem frustrated, is that right?'
- 3Aim the response at what you found, not at what you assumed in the first second.