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Elliott Masie
Host, Empathy Concert Series
CEO of The MASIE Center and Chair of The Learning COLLABORATIVE emasie@masie.com
The Importance of Empathy!
: What is empathy to you, and why is it important?
: Empathy is one of the most important, powerful, and “stretching” tools that we as learning, performance, and human resource professionals can leverage. Empathy is the outreach, the connection, the acknowledgement, and the honoring of the people that we deal with – meaning our employees, our customers, our neighbors, and our families. Empathy is very specifically important in times of change, in times of stress, in times of distress, and in times of opportunity.
Empathy has been one of my personal missions, and we have asked the Elliott Masie Learning COLLABORATIVE to make it a primary focus in the pandemic.
It is key to me that when we think about empathy, we don’t confuse it with sympathy or counseling, or reaching out to somebody in a therapeutic or coaching role. But empathy is basically permeating the way in which I want to deal with people that I am working with, that I am collaborating with, and that I am living in a neighborhood with. I want to make sure that, particularly in a professional role, I don’t let content and business processes overwhelm the need and the desire to leverage, demonstrate, and extend empathy to my colleagues.
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