"Poor communication skills can
condemn you to a life of mediocrity and
frustration. Good communication skills
can unlock your dreams of success."
Dr. Robert A. Tracz

Zig Ziglar said, "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

Why can some managers comfort employees in a tense situation, get to the source of the problem and not become emotionally involved? The reason is that they've mastered the skill of empathy.

What is empathy? It's not sympathy. When you're sympathetic you feel the same as your employee and you're emotionally involved and subjective in your evaluation of the situation. When you're empathetic you understand how your employee feels yet you don't feel the same. You're not emotionally involved and you're objective in your evaluation of the situation.

Empathy is difficult because it requires emotional control, understanding and acceptance of how someone else feels and an objective evaluation of the situation.

Managers play a powerful role in creating an empathetic workplace by what they model and by what they expect and accept from their employees.

Here are a few tips for encouraging and empathetic workplace.

• Share your goals, thoughts, feelings and expectations and invite them to share theirs. Listen to what they tell you.
  
• Respect your employee's feelings so they can learn to respect the feelings of others.
  
• Discuss examples of unfair treatment of people with your employees and encourage them to think about how the other person feels.
  
• Explain why you care about certain issues, values and behaviors and ask for their opinions.
  
• Listen to the feelings behind your employee's words.
  
• Name the emotions you or your employees are experiencing and encourage others to name theirs.
  
• Teach emotional literacy so they learn to express not act on their emotions.
  
• Encourage tolerance and understanding of differences.
  
• Acknowledge acts of kindness and thoughtfulness. What is recognized is repeated.
• Celebrate achievements - especially ones your employee considers important. It creates a sense of team spirit and sharing in another's success.

Empathy accepts and validates someone else's feelings while at the same time questions the reasons behind the feelings.