Empathy Is a Verification Skill
Explain why perspective-getting is more reliable than assuming you can take another person's perspective accurately.
Empathy becomes useful when it can be corrected. The risk of imagined accuracy Perspective-taking can make you feel closer to another person, but closeness is not the same as accuracy. In a workplace decision, a confident wrong read can send effort in the wrong direction. The disciplined move is perspective-getting: ask the person what they are seeing, weighing, fearing, or protecting. The map-before-ask move Use an empathy map to separate evidence from hypothesis. Put direct quotes and visible behaviors in one zone. Put inferred thoughts and feelings in a clearly marked hypothesis zone. Then ask one question that lets the…
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