Social Awareness
How well can you recognise what other people feel?
Every time I have delivered a seminar on cultural intelligence, I have learned something from the cultures in the audience. One such learning point was on a simple bullet point of ideas that help us navigate new cultures - the bullet point was “Smile, it is a universal expression of friendliness”. When it came to questions and feedback at the end of the session, someone corrected me - in Russia, a smile from a stranger can actually be met with suspicion1. Recognising and understanding another person’s emotions in a multi-cultural environment isn’t as straight forward as we might think. How we interact with others to understand their perspective, their emotions, and why they act the way they do, is a key part of Emotional Intelligence.
I’m currently exploring four elements of Emotional Intelligence (EI for short but also known as EQ) and how we can develop our EI to improve both our wellbeing and our relationships. While there is some research to suggest that there is a percentage of people who may be unable to develop their EI for various reasons, I’ll be aiming this series at the majority of people who have some emotional awareness and an ability to build on that foundation.
EI as defined by Daniel Goleman is said to comprise of Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. Daniel Goleman defines Social Awareness as the ability to gauge your environment and understand the emotions, needs, and perspectives of others. A major aspect of this is Empathy and as I dug into empathy it covered much of the other aspects of social awareness. Being aware of others, their verbal and body language, and being able to recognise and listen to another perspective, are all aspects of empathy. More can be discussed beyond empathy but I’ll limit the scope of this post for the sake of brevity.
What is Empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings and experience.2 Empathy is often broken up into sub categories which are not necessarily interlinked. A person can be strong in one aspect of empathy but weak in another3.
Affective Empathy is the ability to share an emotional experience with someone. It is commonly thought that people with autism struggle with empathy, there are studies to show that they do feel affective empathy but have less cognitive empathy (see footnote 2). There is also a darker side to affective empathy in that too much of it can impact our own mental health4 when we take on the pain and distress of the person we are empathising with.
Cognitive Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s experience. We can recognise what the other person is feeling and relate to it. This often helps us humanise the other and reduces interpersonal aggression. Psychopaths are said to have cognitive empathy but limited affective empathy if any at all, the opposite of people with autism5.
Compassionate Empathy is the ability to act appropriately on the feelings of the other two aspects of empathy to help alleviate suffering6. Just because one feels with or understands the other person’s emotions and perspective, this does not necessitate action.
The Benefits of Empathy
All aspects of empathy help us connect with others as it lowers people’s defences. When empathy is shown, people recognise they are being heard, understood, and are no longer isolated. There are studies that show that empathy in caring roles improves the health of those in care or being treated. Having empathy also lowers burnout in medical professionals7 though this must be balanced with becoming too attached and the negative aspects of affective empathy.
Just as empathy helps the other person, it is also a marker for a healthier sense of self. A lack of empathy or misuse of empathy may lead to relational breakdown but can also be the sign of personality disorders such as psychopathy and narcism.
Healthy Empathy in Coaching
Many of us who go into coaching do so because we are hoping to be able to help and empower other people. While coaching isn’t therapy, there are therapeutic aspects to coaching as one works through life situations that often have significant emotions attached to them. It can be very easy to take on the emotion of the person you are coaching and inadvertently make judgements or affirm limiting emotions which can then hinder the effectiveness of the session. This is where coaching as a non-judgemental and non-directive practice is helpful.
Psychology Today highlight this open, non-judgemental awareness as “non-reactive empathy” making use of a definition by Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley in their book The Emotional Life of Your Brain.
“[non-reactive empathy]… is the capacity to remain receptive to whatever might pass into your thoughts, view, hearing or feeling and to do so in a non-critical way.”8
A coach is not there to fix, or judge, a coachee’s emotions but to point them out and give the coachee the agency to decide how to respond.
I was recently coaching a fellow apprentice and I immediately mirrored their sense of humour and banter, much of which was self-deprecating. While this kind of empathy would have been a great way to start a friendship, in the coaching session it meant that I didn’t appropriately challenge them on how they (and I!) used humour to avoid certain topics and emotions. Fortunately this was an observed session and the feedback helpfully pointed out that my affective empathy was helpful at building trust and rapport but too much of it ended up limiting my ability to coach well in that session.
Developing Empathy
Healthy empathy connects directly to the skills of self awareness and self management. We need to be aware of our judgement, our taking on too much of another’s emotional distress, and take time to reflect on where we might not be as empathetic was we could be. We also need to be aware of things like “countertransference” where past relationships or emotional situations shape how we view the person we are interacting with.
Our empathy also increases or decreases based on how we feel on the day and our health more generally. Basic things like sleep and hunger can significantly impact our ability to empathise with someone else.
Empathy can decrease or increase simply on how familiar or “like us” we find someone. Dehumanising or “othering” will decrease our ability to empathise. Therefore one way to develop empathy is learning to listen to those who are different and looking for ways to better understand their perspective.
Further ways to develop empathy are:
practicing humility
Taking time to understand the emotions of the other person
practicing non-judgement and active listening
avoiding the desire to fix the person or the problem when an issue is being discussed
learning to ask for and receive feedback without being defensive
learning about body language and reading emotions - but be careful to do this with the understanding that this can often be cultural!
learning to listen to people from different backgrounds, beliefs, and viewpoints without “correcting” them but seeking to “put yourself in their shoes”
Take time for reflection
Empathy, like Self Awareness and Self Management, requires time and self reflection. It requires humility to learn from others and get feedback on how they perceive you. You may think you are empathetic, but is that the experience of those around you? How do you know?
It may be that the first step you take to developing empathy (or any of the EI skills) is simply building in a time each week for self-reflection.
Next time you come across an issue that a colleague, friend, or family member is facing, try to avoid jumping in with advice and instead, ask yourself these questions:
“What might this situation feel like from their perspective?”
Encourages perspective-taking (cognitive empathy) rather than judgment.
“What experiences or pressures could be shaping their response right now?”
Shifts focus from behaviour to underlying context and influences (affective empathy).
“What do they need most from me in this moment?”
Moves empathy into practical, supportive action (compassionate empathy).
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Resources
How Empathy Works and How to Improve it by Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast:
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