"Collaborative Empathy" is an interesting management concept. Group "Brainstorming" was fashionable, yet remarkably fruitless. The process was overloaded with rules, e.g. only one conversation at a time, don't interrupt etc. Likewise, empathy cannot be imposed or workshopped. Some key contributors will either be incapable of it or become less productive. More concerning, Inauthentic empathy will backfire. Perhaps, a piece-wise directed empathy should be part of every team leader's skill-pack, and a way of identifying future leaders. You've expressed it well with "deliberate empathy".
Thanks! I think of deliberate empathy as a habit that anyone should (in theory) be able to cultivate. It's a variant of "assume positive intent" - When a colleague does something that doesn't make sense, assume it's because they have different objectives, priorities and restraints, then try to figure out what those are.
"Collaborative Empathy" is an interesting management concept. Group "Brainstorming" was fashionable, yet remarkably fruitless. The process was overloaded with rules, e.g. only one conversation at a time, don't interrupt etc. Likewise, empathy cannot be imposed or workshopped. Some key contributors will either be incapable of it or become less productive. More concerning, Inauthentic empathy will backfire. Perhaps, a piece-wise directed empathy should be part of every team leader's skill-pack, and a way of identifying future leaders. You've expressed it well with "deliberate empathy".
Thanks! I think of deliberate empathy as a habit that anyone should (in theory) be able to cultivate. It's a variant of "assume positive intent" - When a colleague does something that doesn't make sense, assume it's because they have different objectives, priorities and restraints, then try to figure out what those are.
The same approach is a good model for science. The experiment doesn't err, only the experimenter does.