By showing empathy, you demonstrate your interest. You show that you care about the person and really mean what you say because it shows in your body language. To verbally demonstrate empathy, you can use the following simple techniques best described by an example.

Consider this sentence:

“Oh, I’ve had it. Clients just don’t know what they want!”

Suppose you want to respond with empathy so you can build a conversation to go deeper into the real cause of the issue. Here are a number of methods you can use:

• The basic mimic technique to say the same sentence in your own way. In this case, you simply establish that you are hearing him.

Example: “You’ve had it. You think clients don’t know what they want.”

• A better answer is to deliver your understanding in your own words.

Example: “You think that clients waste your time.”

• Reflect and Rephrase. This is a powerful empathy method that works both on feelings and emotions. Essentially you rephrase the statement and deliver it with emotional words.

Example: “Your clients make your life difficult.”

As you can see Reflect and Rephrase sounds more effective as you try to show your understanding by saying the same thing in your own words and at the same time add emotional reflection into it.

Empathy is a simple yet powerful technique to use when you find yourself in an awkward situation and is highly recommended due to its ease of use and huge reward.

Exercise:

Imagine you want to build rapport with someone. In order to do so, you can use empathy. Suppose they express themselves by stating the following sentences. Use the three techniques described above, Mimic, Rephrase and Reflect and Rephrase to provide an answer to show that you understand and care about the person’s needs.

Apply all three techniques to the following three cases:

• “I am fed up with these reports. They never finish.”
• “My clients are way too demanding.  No matter what I do for them, they always want more.”
• “My boss doesn’t understand me at all. He doesn’t take my ideas seriously until they are suggested by someone else months later.”