Empathy is a powerful tool

Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, often narrates how he almost did not get a job in Microsoft. The manager of the company, Richard Tait, asked him in an interview: “Imagine you see a baby laying on the street, and the baby is crying. What do you do?” Nadella quickly replied: “You call 911.”  As the interviewer walked Nadella out of his office, he put his arm around Nadella and said: “You need some empathy. If a baby is laying on the street crying, you pick up the baby.”  Nadella got the job nonetheless, but since then he understood the importance of empathy in work and in his personal life. 

• Empathy is the ability to share others’ feelings and experiences. It is deeper than sympathy because it is feeling with others, not feeling for others. 
• When someone is miserable deep down, you are happy that it is not you who is suffering. You are in a higher position so you can help the other out, whereas the road to empathy goes through yourself.
• In empathy you participate in others’ being, transmit your energy to others.
• Empathy is an innate trait lying dormant in everyone, but it has to be cultivated. It is not a refresh button you can suddenly turn on when there is a need. The road to empathy goes through yourself. Empathy is one of the most essential skills.
• People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
• Empathy can be developed if you first own your mistakes, if you learn to forgive yourself, if you understand that nobody is perfect. 
• Once you come to that deeper realisation, you don’t judge as quickly, you listen better and you can amplify people’s strengths, not focus on their weaknesses. 
• When someone is receiving your sympathy, you move into a superior position, and he becomes lowly and humble. If you look into your heart, you will find a kind of pleasure in sharing your sorrow for his condition. Sympathy is a false thing; it is a deception. 
• If we understand fully when our sympathy is genuine, we experience unhappiness in another’s unhappiness, and joy in another’s happiness. 
• Empathy is a great leadership tool. Without being empathetic one can't become an effective leader.
• If you can’t measure empathy then it is very difficult to assess how much empathy your company is delivering, and where the greatest empathy deficits lie.
• Empathy is more an indication of management priorities. Empathy pays, and it pays best when it comes from the top.

If there is any one secret of success, 
it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view 
and see things from his angle as well as your own ... Henry Ford