Can You Motivate Them to Change?
Become A Person of Influence
Copyright 2008 by Kevin Hogan
Page 2
What is Empathy?
It's the ability to feel...to understand...to walk a mile in their shoes...Empathy means that you can feel and see life from the perspective of the other person. If and when you can do that...you can be influential. If you can't you will only be able to "close a percentage" or get lucky now and then. You can know all the techniques on the planet, but if you can't feel their pain, you will never truly be a great salesman, a great communicator, a powerful person of influence.
You walk into the hospital, see your loved one with the I V in their arm. You paste a smile on your face, but they know it hurts you as much as it does them.
That's empathy.
Your child is home sick from school. You feel as bad for them as they feel.
You see the result of their bad decisions and the pain of the future they now face. You feel it too.
When I think of empathy, I think of people like former President Clinton. He has far more empathy than most people in the public eye. Politics aside, when you watched Clinton with people, you sensed he could really be in that person's shoes...and he was. That means he has the capacity to identify and feel what others are feeling at this moment. People of great empathy have three common traits.
They have experienced pain first hand.
They have a wide range of experiences with all kinds of other people.
They are validated and feel good based upon the approval of others.
I saw a book on the shelf today at Barnes & Noble. It was called "Disease to Please." I didn't pick it up. Why? The person doesn't get it. (Just like the guy who wrote "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. It's All Small Stuff.") The book might be helpful, but the title spreads a very bad ideavirus.
In a broad sense, the ideal life is about two things. Giving and receiving pleasure. (Pleasure broadly means anything that is good.) Take away one of the two (giving or receiving) from the person, and you have a half of a person...
Take away the giving part, and in the vernacular, you have a jerk....
I'll bet a nickel the author of "Disease to Please" will tell the reader that the reason people are unhappy and unsatisfied is that they are trying to please other people at their own expense. (And that might be a fact.) The possible solution might be proposed to stop trying to please others, and start doing what the reader has never done perhaps...please themselves.
Problem.
As soon as the person stops being helpful, kind, loving, supportive, nurturing to others, they lose the other half of who they were. The half of them that IS powerful and useful.
The real solution, obviously, is to always be supportive, kind and helpful. And then to be supportive, kind and helpful to yourself as well. (It requires no more time or effort. A simple set of choices.) Then instead of becoming a jerk they become a complete person...and...a person capable of powerful influence...which means they are only one step away from success at any level they choose.
The influential person has a strong desire to please... and if they are going to be influential, that extends to the desire to help (for both altruistic and selfish purposes) others be happy, feel better, and be useful as a human. This desire to help, to create value, to love will often be paired with some kind of pain and no one should tell this person to try and squelch the feelings of being rebuffed, rejected or hurt. That IS the healthy and normal response. These are the feelings that generate the empathic response.
When people see these characteristics in you, they judge you as a person who cares, is interested and wants to help others. Kindness. The person of influence is typically a kind person. There are plenty of exceptions in history, but in general if a person is empathic and kind, they have the potential to help others create change.
Why?
Because you won't listen to a jerk. They don't care. All they have is their self-interest and that means you can NOT trust them as they attempt to persuade. It's as simple as that.
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