One of the biggest benefits of empathy is how it improves your non-verbal communication skills. This is even more significant if you consider the fact that humans talk more in gestures and expressions than in words. But empathy can sometimes be confusing to practice, so here’s a fool-proof tool that can help you polish your empathy further.
Dr. Helen Reiss et al. wanted to see the impact of empathy on the non-verbal communication between doctors and patients. For the study to be effective, they wanted the steps of empathizing to be as clear as possible, so they used the acronym E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. to train some doctors at the Massachusetts General Hospital. As expected, these doctors showed a significant improvement, becoming both more receptive and expressive, and thus improving the experience of the patients as well.
Today, this method is a part of many global training programs due to its effectiveness. So, why don’t you give it a try to strengthen your empathy muscle? Here we go:
E: Eye contact – maintain eye contact with the other person
M: Muscles of facial expression – be aware of your and other person’s expressions
P: Posture – use open gestures rather than the closed ones
A: Affect – feel how the other person must be feeling in their context
T: Tone of voice – be aware of your and other person’s tone
H: Hearing the whole person – be curious and do not jump to conclusions
Y: Your response – will be automatically in sync with the situation if you are empathetic
Empathy has been a focus of Dr. Helen Reiss’s work and she has a beautiful TEDx talk on each aspect of the acronym E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. Link here: