Empathy and Compassion

Written by ( Council Members )

Ms. Vidhi Desai, Ms. Stuti Kumar and

Ms. Ananya Sehgal

Empathy and compassion stem from the same desire — to better relate and understand others’ experiences. Both are beneficial to individuals and companies. But there’s a nuanced difference between empathy and compassion in everyday life. There’s also a difference between what it means to be an empathetic person versus a compassionate person.

For leadership, understanding that difference and choosing your approach deliberately is critical. It can determine whether you and loved ones will feel positive emotions. The latest research shows that focusing on compassion and mental health leads to strong, sustainable leadership. It also leads to greater self-awareness.

Empathy is an understanding of our shared humanity. It’s the ability to see yourself in another person’s shoes. Compassion adds another dimension of a desire to help.

As a leader, both empathetic leadership and compassionate leadership are crucial. They have proven effects on employee happiness, retention, and overall well-being. As a leader, you’ll want to use each effectively.

The world is constantly evolving. In the new workplace, people on your teams are facing more ambiguity in day-to-day tasks. They also feel the pressure to keep up with changes in their personal and professional lives.

Having empathy as a starting point sets the tone for the entire team. You should recognize that everyone is human. Accept that all employees and customers have a life outside work. Remember that they have lives full of concerns and stressors that you don't see.

Practice empathy to unlock new insights into how better to serve customers and peers. This doesn’t involve mindfulness meditation or humming weird tones. You just need to make a point of putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.

Practicing compassion is an important element to being an effective servant leader. Understanding what your people need to succeed and having the desire to help them succeed is fundamental to service.

Compassion and self-compassion help leaders create an environment where growth can happen. Research has shown that practicing compassion not only makes the individual happier, it also creates an environment that elevates everyone around them.

Research by Daniel Batson and Nancy Eisenberg in the fields of social and developmental psychology confirmed that people who feel compassion in a given situation help more often than people who suffer from empathic distress.

Researchers around Barbara Fredrickson have shown that several weeks of regular compassion training can have a beneficial impact on self-reported feelings of positive affect, personal resources, and well-being during everyday life. Interestingly, the beneficial effects of compassion training are not limited to the person who is training, but can also benefit others. More recent research in our lab has shown that participants who undergo loving kindness and compassion training increased their helping rates towards strangers in a computer game when compared to an active memory control group.

We see that empathy and compassion co-exist and when practiced daily in life can surely bring in positive changes.