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Empathy in
Profession, Practice,
and Lifelong Learning
Missy Parks
Elixir Business Adoption Lead: HomeServices of America, Inc.
Empathy is in the professional DNA of learning practitioners. Extending that ability to see, listen, and understand can also help us engage more meaningfully with others and ourselves.
A Profession and Practice
Learning professionals design and deliver effective, enjoyable training because they care and attend to others’ perspectives. The simplest way to practice empathy, in or out of a class, is always with respectful kindness, giving others the benefit of the doubt. For those who appreciate frameworks, The Business Model book’s Empathy Map presents a formal, person-centric structure. Contemplating what someone thinks, feels, hears, says, does, sees, fears, and measures as success helps open the door to different perspectives. We love those movies and parables about schoolteachers who literally change lives by supporting their students’ distinct needs. We each have stories about times we pivoted in our work to make a difference (e.g., a colleague builds applications to teach fast-food operators with voice-activated tablets, so they don’t have to wash their hands and interrupt their work). I recall “under-30 me” teaching 40+ year-olds who struggled with their computer display settings and painfully small on-screen labels. While I literally didn’t see the problem, my empathy for the stress those learners felt triggered a response, and honoring their needs meant adding a lesson about adjusting display defaults. I’m grateful for the lessons and courses that got me to that point, and the many that have helped me this year.
Learning
Despite all the demands on our schedules, now is the time to learn new skills and revisit “old” ones, like communication skills. Working from home and sharing our personal lives broadly during these challenging times require tools and skills for connecting authentically and unapologetically. LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, Harvard Manage Mentor, Udemy, YouTube, and others host outstanding communications (and other) course content. Forbes, Wired, Fast Company, and other e-zines push continuous helpful news, notes, and how-to’s. And we need to practice empathy for ourselves, surfacing our own needs for support. For that, Brené Brown’s, Angela Duckworth’s, and other podcasts are terrific! Taking Zoom-hosted personal development and exercise courses, as well as attending group gatherings and concerts, inspires and fuels me in ways that TV binging and fiction don’t.
Doing More
The calling to make a difference, help others grow, accommodate unanticipated needs, find answers, and learn while doing are all skills typically found among those in the learning field. There is also a shared outlook that empathy is a choice about how to interact with other people, embodied by this truism: “Everyone has something to teach; everyone has something to learn.” This is a critically important perspective for our times, to extend beyond our work and into our lives. It will help us embrace plurality and find common ground with our colleagues, friends, family, and local and global communities. We’ve learned so much in this past year, and we’ll survive and thrive with empathy and action.
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