Core value · Care family
Empathy
Understanding how others feel
Also covers Sensitivity and Understanding
What does empathy mean as a core value?
Empathy as a core value means making the effort to understand what an experience is really like for someone else, and letting that understanding shape how you respond.
A cheerful email with tension underneath, a teenager whose anger is really embarrassment, a sensible decision that will land badly with the people it affects: empathy is what lets you see these. It’s the ability to stand, for a moment, where someone else is standing. When empathy is a core value, understanding comes before judging. You want to know what an experience is actually like for the other person, and it bothers you when people are treated as if their feelings don’t count.
What does empathy look like in practice?
- You ask how a change will feel for people before deciding how to announce it.
- You read the room and adjust your tone when a meeting turns tense.
- You listen to someone’s side fully before offering your view.
- You can explain the position of someone you disagree with in a way they’d recognise.
- You notice the quiet person who’s still upset after everyone else has moved on.
When is empathy overplayed?
Taken to extremes, empathy can mean feeling everything and deciding nothing. You may be so tuned in to others’ reactions that you soften every message, lose track of your own view, or get swept into moods that aren’t yours. It can also be tiring to be the person who always understands. The grounded version understands deeply without taking the feeling on as your own. A good check is whether you still know what you think once you’ve understood what everyone else feels.
Often confused with
Empathy vs Compassion
Compassion is feeling for suffering and acting to ease it. Empathy is the understanding itself, which you can have without doing anything, and for joy as well as pain.
Empathy vs Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the broader skill of recognising and managing emotions, including your own. Empathy is focused outward, on understanding what others feel.
Empathy vs Kindness
Kindness is about how you treat people. Empathy is about how well you understand them, and the two can come apart.
Questions to sit with
- Whose feelings do you find hardest to understand, and what have you assumed about them?
- When has understanding someone’s feelings kept you from making the call you needed to make?
- After a difficult conversation, how do you tell their emotions apart from yours?
More values in Care
Looking out for others, especially those in need.
About the author
Matt Rutherford is a Career and Leadership Coach. The Values Finder is the same exercise he uses with his coaching clients. He also writes Stuff that MattRs, a weekly newsletter with practical ideas to help you think clearer and work better.
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