How do we communicate effectively and break through conflicts with others that have been longstanding? Through open acknowledgement, directness, and honesty. But when honesty that is direct is difficult and borders on the confrontational, how do we communicate with empathy? Empathy in our approach and in our language is the most effective way to forge a connection and bridge the gulf of disconnection.
First, do not try to change the other person or expect something from them, especially if you’re not making a clear, concrete request. Just encourage them to express their truth and their feelings. Try not to meet them with criticism but be in the spirit that you seek to understand them. This usually disarms them from conflictual arguments and opens more possibilities to reconcile and arrive at better solutions, even a win-win solution.
If you are not saying how you feel about a situation, you are rarely accurate about it, ironically enough. When you express your feelings, you are expressing something true on another level, because whatever may or may not have happened, how you feel is the most important.
The key to speaking with empathy is to first learn how to listen. Arguments are disarmed with keen listening, because arguments are precisely fueled when each person argues over the other. In an argument, both parties never feel like they’re getting their point across.
In the face of conflict, when you’ve said everything you can possibly think of to say, you can apply a few of these listening skills.
LISTENING SKILL #1—The Disarming Technique
This is based on the premise that we don’t listen to what the other person says because it upsets us to hear how they feel. We are afraid of being hurt and of experiencing pain.
When you resist the urge to argue or defend yourself and you instead agree with the other person, you will paradoxically end up a winner. They will feel like a winner, too, and likely to be more open to your point of view.
“You’re right to be______. It is understandable what you’re saying. I would like to hear more of what you have to say.”
LISTENING SKILL #2—Thought Empathy and Feeling Empathy
In the spirit of genuine curiosity, your goal is to understand where the other person is coming from and not to argue or state your own point of view.
Mirror what they are saying in a nonjudgmental way so as to grasp the essence of what they are feeling.
Repeat and paraphrase their words to grasp what they are thinking—the thought behind their words.
Acknowledge how they’re probably feeling, given what they are saying to you—the feelings behind the words.
Empathy is in language and the way you listen. Learn not only peaceful words, but how words connect us or destruct us. It is in the language you choose to speak that can transform your life and the life of others because its real message is meant to be sincere. Sincerity is felt not in words of rhetoric but words of truth. Empathy clarifies your most honest choices. Its power is based on the results of the harmonious cooperation between you and the other.
Empathy is Poetry 