1. I Don’t Feel Your Pain:
Overcoming Roadblocks to Empathy
By David F. Swink, Chief Creative Officer, Strategic Interactions, Inc.
©Strategic Interactions, Inc. 2017 All Rights Reserved. 1
Empathy is an important predictor of success at both home and
work. Learn how to be better at it.
The Importance of Empathy
Recent research conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital has shown solid
evidence that physician empathy plays an important role in forging strong patient-
physician relationships and boosting patient satisfaction as well as patients
having better treatment adherence and suffering from fewer major medical errors.
Empathy is also important in the workplace. A study conducted by the Center for
Creative Leadership investigated 6,731 leaders from 38 countries. Their results
reveal that empathy is positively related to job performance. The study concluded
that managers who show more empathy toward direct reports are viewed as
better performers in their job by their bosses.
Our Brains on Empathy
Neuroscientists have recently discovered that humans are wired to experience
empathy through multiple systems of mirror neurons in our brains. These mirror
neurons reflect back actions that we observe in others causing us to mimic that
action in our own brains. When we observe someone in pain or when we are
with someone happy, we experience that to a certain extent. These mirror
neurons are the primary physiological basis of empathy. They create a neural Wi-
Fi that connects us to the feelings of people around us.

2. I Don’t Feel Your Pain:
Overcoming Roadblocks to Empathy
By David F. Swink, Chief Creative Officer, Strategic Interactions, Inc.
©Strategic Interactions, Inc. 2017 All Rights Reserved. 2
Many people seem to be naturally empathetic. Others are not. The good news is
that research shows that empathy can be learned. There are however a few
potential roadblocks to empathy that must be overcome.
Overcoming Roadblocks to Empathy
Roadblock 1 - Not Paying Attention
Mirror neurons kick in strongest when we observe a person’s
emotions. We see facial expressions, eye expressions, body position, and
gestures. We may lack motivation to pay attention to a person or we may
be too distracted by our own thoughts or by other things around us while
we are multi-tasking.
The Solution:
Motivate yourself to be more empathetic by knowing how important
empathy is to success at home and work. Put your PDA and computer
away and minimize distractions. Learn about and practice active listening.
Fine tune your nonverbal observation skills. Learn about micro-
expressions (small quick facial expressions) and eye reading. Daniel
Goleman in his book, Social Intelligence, states that “the more sharply
attentive we are, the more keenly we will sense another person’s inner
state.” Watch TV with the volume down and practice your nonverbal
interpretation by reading what each character is feeling and talking about.
This is best done with subtle dramas, not action movies.
Roadblock 2 - Feeling the emotion of the other person but not knowing
how or when to communicate empathetically.
The Solution:
Increase your awareness about your own non-verbal expressions (eyes
and micro-expressions). Notice what you are doing nonverbally when you
are interacting with others. Ask people that you trust, to give you honest
feedback about your non-verbal communication in various situations
especially ones that are more emotional. Notice with whom you have
difficulty being empathetic. Examine why.
Learn more about voice tone. Listen to people who are known as
empathetic leaders, teachers, friends, politicians, or even TV
interviewers. Listen to how they use their voices to express empathy.
Try saying the sentence, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” several different
ways with various voice tones. See if you can tell which sounds most

3. I Don’t Feel Your Pain:
Overcoming Roadblocks to Empathy
By David F. Swink, Chief Creative Officer, Strategic Interactions, Inc.
©Strategic Interactions, Inc. 2017 All Rights Reserved. 3
empathetic or ask someone else to give you feedback. Recognize that
there are some situations where it may be counterproductive to respond
empathetically, such as when a person is sending signals that they don’t
want to interact with you or they don’t want to share with you how they are
feeling.
Roadblock 3 - Not feeling the same emotion of the other person but
knowing intellectually that you need to communicate empathetically. This
is known as cognitive empathy.
The Solution:
Know that you can disagree with someone and still understand what they
may be feeling and why. This is especially important when someone is
having a strong emotion and is asking you to do something that you can’t
do. Sometimes just listening without judgment is enough to convey
cognitive empathy. Communicate to the person in an authentic way that
you understand what they are experiencing.
Can you fake being empathetic?
Sometimes it may be necessary to act empathetically to achieve a desired
outcome even when you feel antagonistic to a person. I have trained hostage
negotiators for many years. Hostage negotiators are trained to act empathetically
toward the hostage taker in order to establish the rapport necessary to influence
him to give up and not hurt anyone. In fact, the negotiator most likely despises a
person that would hold a woman and baby as hostages. What is interesting is
that after a couple of hours many negotiators actually start to feel some empathy
toward the hostage taker as a result of “acting” empathetic. Most of us will never
find ourselves in that position, but you may need to fake empathy to influence
someone to an important end. Hopefully, you won't experience that frequently,
because there is often a price to pay for being consistently inauthentic.
Empathy is one of the building blocks of social intelligence. Stress, self-
absorption, and lack of time can gang up on empathy to kill it. Knowing what your
empathy roadblocks are and exploring ways to overcome them can help you
develop a tool that is vital to your success at home and work.
Do you believe people can increase their ability to be empathetic? Have you
increased your empathy skills or helped others to do it? How? What impact do
you believe empathy plays in the workplace? Do you think some people are too
empathetic? I’d love to hear your comments at
dswink@strategicinteractions.com.

4. I Don’t Feel Your Pain:
Overcoming Roadblocks to Empathy
By David F. Swink, Chief Creative Officer, Strategic Interactions, Inc.
©Strategic Interactions, Inc. 2017 All Rights Reserved. 4
About Strategic Interactions, Inc.
We develop leaders that transform organizations. We demonstrate through live,
interactive behavioral simulations™ how leaders need to be emotionally
intelligent and have effective communication skills to successfully manage
relationships.
Visit our website at http://www.strategicinteractions.com.