Picture credit - Pickpik
Day 18 - Empathy
27 April 2020
What is Empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
This is a nice quote that explains the difference between Empathy and Sympathy -
“Empathy is walking a mile in somebody else's moccasins. Sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt.” ― Rebecca O'Donnell
My learning for the day
Author - Nikki Gilliland
‘Empathy’ is today’s buzzword in the marketing content. When creating a copy or a video or even an event, marketers walk in their customers’ shoes and connect with their situation.
Here are some example of how companies use ‘empathy’ -
‘Thank you mom’ ad by Procter and Gamble
Most people can relate to motherhood – whether that’s through personal experience or thinking about your own mother.
Procter and Gamble turned this relatability by depicting the struggles that come along with parenthood with an empathetic line - “The hardest job in the world, is the best job in the world.”
Delta’s pizza party for the delayed passengers
With hundreds of Delta flights cancelled and delayed due to extreme weather in Atlanta, thousands of passengers were stranded. This event could have resulted in a tsunami of social media complaints.
Delta turned the situation around by ordering hundreds of pizzas to be handed out on planes and in surrounding airports, just to show ‘we understand your suffering’ and we care.
Awareness by National Autistic Society
National Autistic Society found that 99% of people in the UK have heard of autism, but just 16% understand autism in a meaningful way.
They created this campaign to help people truly understand what it’s like to have autism. Everything around that we see is normal for us but it is a total chaos for an autistic child. This is effectively captured in this video using empathy - seeing the world through the autistic child’s eyes.
“I am not naughty, I am autistic; And I get too much information.”
‘Real beauty’ campaign by Dove
Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ ad was based on insight from customers - just 4% of women consider themselves beautiful.
The video doesn’t promote Dove’s products in any way. Just captures the emotions of women when they realise how beautiful they are in other people’s eyes.
“You are more beautiful than you think.” - these words encourage empowerment and self-belief.
Author - Robin Hills
Empathy is one of the components of emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is combining your thoughts with your feelings to build relationships and make decisions.
The five components of emotional intelligence - Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy and Social skills
Are you ready for the journey of building empathy in you? Happy journey, Turas sona!
How to enhance the Empathy skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Empathy.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Empathy.
- Learn - Assign time to study different frameworks/ models/ techniques about Empathy
- Apply -
- Master a framework/ model that you like
- Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
- Maintain record/ process flow of every important acts of empathy you did
- Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
- Share - Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
- Train - Train others so that they benefits from your efforts
Purpose of this document
I took a 66 day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
I had four objectives -
- to strengthen my mind to face the daily challenges
- to use these skills in my worklife for a better performance,
- tp use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships,
- to open new possibilities to surprise myself
This is my next 66 day challenge (from 10 April 2020) - To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as - psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
- Decision-making
- Problem-solving
- Creative thinking
- Critical thinking
- Communication
- Interpersonal skills
- Self-awareness
- Empathy
- Coping with emotions
- Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand - prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico - prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom - child abuse prevention
- USA - prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia - positive socialization of children.
No comments:
Post a Comment