Empathy: the basis for successful research

As someone interviewing and interacting with so many different people, I find empathy to be the main factor for successful research.

The Dalai Lama said: “Dealing with others is a very complex issue.”

In the book “the Art of Happiness” it is described that even his Holiness does not have the one formula to share that can solve all problems of human interaction. Nevertheless, he describes empathy as the key ingredient of building a relation to others.

By putting yourself into the shoes of others, it makes it easier for you to understand them, despite the fact that you might be completely different.

What is empathy?

The definition on Wikipedia is:

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position.

I believe this definition is exhaustive enough for our purposes and does not need any more adding or polishing. In the end, it is the ability to remove your own experience and judgment and see the world through the eyes of the person in front of you. Even if you have no common experience with the other person or have a very different lifestyle.

Why is it important, especially for researchers but actually for everyone:

Regardless of whether we are a market researcher, user researcher or any other kind of researcher, it is very likely that we are not the target group for the product or brand we are working for. We are not building brands and products for ourselves. This is why we get hired and paid to talk to other people and not just state what we think would be right. This is why personas, customer segmentation or job stories or whatever you are working with exist. They allow us to understand, visualize and communicate tangibly what a person, that is so different from us, needs in a specific situation.

But not only researchers can benefit from empathy. In our everyday life many conflicts can be avoided by putting ourselves into the shoes of the other person and seeing the world through their eyes.

6 practical tips to train your empathy

1. See the other person as a human being: When being in a conversation we often forget that the person on the other side is a human being as well. A human with emotions, needs, beliefs, goals, and past experience. By actively reminding ourselves of that, we take the first step towards empathy. Try to see the other person as a human like you. How would you feel in this situation? What would you do? You should not make this about you but understand that it is about the emotions of the other person.

2. Relate to the emotions of the person: In the end, it is not about understanding the situation the person is in, but rather what emotion the person feels in this particular situation. It is very likely that you will come to the conclusion that you have felt that or a similar emotion as well in the past. While you might react totally differently to circumstances, sharing emotional experiences and relating to them brings you closer together with the person you are talking to. Understand, how it feels, what the person feels.

3. Check your biases: While it is advantageous to relate to the other person, watch out that you do not assume the person is like you. Our brain is used to process only a small percentage of what we hear and fills the blanks with what we believe is true. By removing your personal view you remove the bias of your understanding of what the other person says. You need to make the active choice to only see the other person’s perspective. Check yourself and your biases: Is this really what the person said or is it just what I believe?

4. Forget everything you know, think, or believe for a moment: This is kind of connected to the point mentioned above. Next time you are trying to understand the other side, try to actively forget everything you think you know about the context, the person, or the situation. Be like a 3 year old that sees something for the first time. It sounds simple, but it is really not. We have trained everything we know for so long so this becomes a real challenge. But already by understanding the difference between what you know and see and what the other person knows and sees, you are moving a step closer towards empathy.

5. Practice active listening: This is a way of communication, where you as one conversation partner stay engaged with the other person in a positive way. It is a process where you listen attentively, without thinking about how to reply to that (we tend to do this a lot, pay some attention in the next conversation with your boss or co-worker). The key of this type of conversation is that you withhold any judgement or advice but rather focus on what is actually said. Paraphrase it in order to make sure you really understand. For example you might use sentences like: “It sounds like you are feeling (insert emotion). Is that right?” This way, you are not trying to be heard and need to sell your opinion (we also tend to do that a lot!). Your point of view is meaningless when trying to understand the point of view of the other person.

6. Single-tasking: When doing an interview or having a day-to-day conversation, focus on the conversation at hand. Too often we are distracted, either by external factors such as electronic devices ringing or by internal processes, for example, unfinished to-do lists or our thoughts wandering off. As described above, you are missing vital information that you fill again with your own biased point of view. This is why it is also important to, at best, not take notes and do the interview at the same time but have someone dedicated for each task, or protocol after the interview using the recording. From experience, I can say that the quality of the interview and the insights improve a lot when just focusing on listening.

Closing remarks

In the same way, we need to be empathetic towards others, we need to be empathetic towards ourselves. We are only humans. And while we try our best to understand others, we might not always be successful. Be easy on yourself: you are just learning, like everyone else.