Let's kind of jump into the theme overture
as talking about Empathy. And Empathy is one of those themes that I think is
is related to emotions and feelings. And obviously we talk about talent is
about a
natural pattern of how people think, act and feel.
Feelings are part of what talent is and this particular theme
I think really begins with the emotional
attention to the emotional state of others. It's people who have
an awareness or sensitivity to that. I think it also can be for people
not just the ability to be in tune with how others are feeling but maybe their
own feelings and to some degree
have an ability to kind of express that emotion.
So it's both the emotions of others and the emotion
of the individual themselves. This particular domain or
this particular theme falls into the Relationship
domain and obviously when people have a good sense of how other people feel
it gives them an opportunity to - psychologists call it
"Prosocial Behavior."
Behavior, social behavior that can kind of build relationships and so
obviously
emotional understanding and emotional intelligence can certainly
contribute to better relationships, so I certainly understand why it's there.
Some nouns that we use, we usually try to come up with some nouns and some
adjectives that kinda go along with this theme; so some nouns are
obviously sensor, expresser,
intuiter, absorber, listener,
resonator and then even feeler.
Adjectives: listening,
emotional, expressive, sensitive,
aware, caring, intuitive,
helpful, instinctive, are kind of words.
When you think about the balcony and the basement, I think this is a theme
where there is some
bias
about this theme. And Danny and I are going to talk
about this. I think sometimes the
basement
of Empathy is that it is soft
some people might even say weak.
In terms of the balcony of this theme though it's really about
a theme that I think brings, creates trust, can bring feeling
knows just what to say or do, it really is
about the ability to kind of customize your emotional approach to a person.
In terms of themes that are kind of similar and different from this
Danny has a one of the other themes that he has in his top five is
Individualization and I think Individualization
and Empathy have a lot in common. They really are
aware of, sensitive to things that are inside of people.
And Individualization is really, "I know who you are;
I know what makes you tick in terms of the kind of person you are,"
whereas Empathy is more, "I know how you feel."
And so I think having both of those really
enables a person to have a real insight into
people. Because people have
personality and people have emotions and so
I think that could be the value of that. Sometimes it's good to have some
themes that could help to
harden, if we think of
Empathy as a softer theme, there might be some themes that could harden this theme,
toughen it up if it had to. For example
a theme like Command or Activator, if you add that
Empathy it might sound like this: sometimes you will need to act even
though it's going to create
hard, bad feelings for someone. So
that could be a theme that could add value it may be
you're a rare person that has both Command and Empathy,
but maybe you could partner with someone with those themes that could
could push you to act even though there's some emotional risk involved.
Analytical is another theme that I think is probably
different from Empathy. Many times when
Empathy is high, Analytical can often be lower, and so
how that would work is: when emotions are running high
the objective perspective might provide a more rational
view of reality. So kind of blending the emotional with a logical with
Empathy and Analytical.
There are also some themes that I think can kind of intensify and really
add value to
Empathy and those might be things like Positivity.
When you are aware of how someone is feeling this theme can actually help
people feel better.
Sometimes I kind of use the metaphor of Empathy is like a
thermometer.
It's able to take the emotional
temperature of a person. You can pretty quickly ascertain
are they are they mad? are they sad? or they glad?
That's kind of simplifying quite a bit. So that's a thermometer.
Positivity is a bit more like a thermostat.
It has this ability to kind of turn up. And obviously
Command might be another theme that could really
influence emotion and even Harmony is another theme that's more
thermostatic in nature truly trying to
manage the emotional temperature in a room.
So those themes could kind of play together in that way.
There's kind of some interesting statistics around
Empathy. Empathy, 18 percent of our database has
Empathy in their Top Five and in the scheme of our whole database that's really
kind of seventh most frequent. Now if you break that down
male and female, and this is something we will talk about a little bit later as
well.
Women, for women Empathy is number five
on their, on the female Top Five Empathy is
is fifth most likely. In men
it's twenty. So this is one area where there seems to be some gender
differences. This is not exclusive. Obviously there are
women who don't have Empathy in their
Top Five and there are men
who do have Empathy in their Top Five, but it seems to be
an area where there are some differences.
The theme that's most likely paired with Empathy is Developer,
which really makes some sense to me. I think
Empathy and Developer kind of have a common
interest in others, how others are feeling and helping others grow and
I have a feeling they kind of the nurturing and
investing part really kind of work together.
The theme that is least likely paired with Empathy is
theme is Significance and so that
that makes some sense as well.
I found some quotes and I found it kinda
interesting when I was looking for
quotes, many of the quotes about Empathy came from people
involved in the arts, acting,
music and there some that are really quite, quite interesting.
I'll just read this first one here. This first one isn't a
an actor or musician, but this is Stephen Covey says this,
"When you show deep empathy toward others
their defensive energy goes down and positive energy
replaces it. That's when you get, you can get more creative in solving problems."
So there is something about Empathy that kind of lowers the
defensiveness of people.
Here's another one, Susan Sarandon who is an actress,
this is what she said, "I think I'm an [actress]
because I have very strong imagination
and empathy. I never studied [acting],
but those two qualities are exactly the qualities
that make for an activist." And it's interesting that many times,
we all know actors and actresses who become kind of activists
for causes, and it could be that maybe the source of that
activism is
the passion and emotional empathy that they feel for a person or for a
cause or for a group of people
And here's one more, "Empathy is the starting point for a community and
taking action.
it is the emphasis, it is the impetus
for creating change." And I like these and I think I'm gonna bring in Danny now.
I like these because
I think sometimes people perceive Empathy as kind of just a
state of feeling. It's an emotional state.
And from what some of these people here they're really talking about
this being kind of the impetus for action.