Quotes About Empathy

Empathy One is to listen for and be curious about the actual situation or problem that the client is describing. Empathy Two is to listen for and be curious about what is really bothering the speaker as she is explaining the problem or the situation.

What we choose to ask, when we ask, what our underlying attitude is as we ask—all are key to relationship building, to communication, and to task performance.

Humble Inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.

How Does Asking Build Relationships?

Humble Inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in another person.

Doctors engage patients in one-way conversations in which they ask only enough questions to make a diagnosis and sometimes make misdiagnoses because they don't ask enough questions before they begin to tell patients what they should do.

1) Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.

Humble Inquiry is the skill and the art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.

The more we remain curious about the other person in the current context—before letting our own expectations and preconceptions creep in—the better our chances are of staying in the right questioning mode. The more we take a collaborative helping purpose into our conversations, the more likely we are to improve the relationship.

The goal of relationship building should be to reduce each other's blind spots by each revealing more of our concealed selves.

Humble Inquiry works only if the attitude behind it includes the desire to really hear what the other person says, to develop an appropriate level of empathy, and to choose a response that shows interest and curiosity.

The key to Humble Inquiry is to recognize when you need to know why something is happening instead of giving in to a knee-jerk impulse that not only keeps you ignorant but also creates an avoidable disconnect.

Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.

Humble Inquiry is therefore most relevant when you find yourself in a conversation that is initially just transactional but develops into something more personal because one or both of you want it.

Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things.

we must become better at asking and do less telling in a culture that overvalues telling. It

Telling is only an investment if you know for sure that what you are telling is of value to the other person. That is why it is safest to tell only if you have been asked, rather than arrogantly deciding on your own to tell somebody something.

Telling puts the other person down. It implies that the other person does not already know what I am telling and that the other person ought to know it.

Remember that the person requesting your help may feel uncomfortable, so make sure to ask what the client really wants and how you can best help.

Everything You Say or Do Is an Intervention that Determines the Future of the Relationship

Gratuitous telling betrays three kinds of arrogance: (1) that you think you know more than the person you're telling, (2) that your knowledge is the correct knowledge, and (3) that you have the right to structure other people's experience for them.

he couldn't help but laugh. "I was lying there bleeding, I needed 40 stitches, and everyone ran to Edgar. Only one guy came to me. Junior. He leaned over me as I lay on the ground, my eyelid hanging off, and told me, 'Edgar's hurt. You're screwed.

What we share with another ceases to be our own.

The whites that wanted to live like the blacks were as immoral as you could imagine. Ask any black and they will tell you that you haven't lived until you have been a nigger on a Saturday night.