The ability to empathize is admirable. It requires listening, understanding, and suspending judgment. Empathy helps us understand another's feelings and motivations. In this document, Chris Burand points out that having empathy does not mean that we must support or agree with another's feelings and motivations.

A key characteristic of a good salesperson is having empathy with others, particularly customers and potential customers. According to the Random House Dictionary, empathy means, “vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another person.” This is accomplished by listening carefully, asking questions, and suspending your own judgments to understand another's situation, motivations, and feelings from their point of view. Empathy helps build strong bonds because it helps the other person feel that they are understood. They believe that you're on their team, a belief that builds a strong foundation for future sales.

However, empathy is often confused with other, less productive responses, such as sympathy. Remember, empathy means a clear understanding and effective communication of that understanding. It is not agreement or approval. Neither is it acting in a sympathetic manner or feeling the same way that the other person does. The difference is important because as business owners, partners, and managers, we must often make hard decisions based on our own motivations, feelings, and goals, which sometimes conflict with those of someone else. Although sympathy and/or complacency often interfere with making such hard decisions, empathy does not hinder taking action. Here are some examples:

• An employee has stolen from your agency. You empathize with the employee, you understand their situation, and you might even believe that they're really a nice person. Nonetheless, you can't overlook the problem: The employee has stolen and corrective action should be taken.
• A long-time partner has a poor personal life that is seeping into and slowly destroying the business. Listening and empathizing with their unfortunate situation might help them feel better, but their story never changes and ignoring the negative impact on the business only perpetuates the problem. Being able to empathize is admirable, but it shouldn't stop the other partners from facing the problem and taking action to protect the business.
• A partner has reached a level of comfort and refuses to invest in the agency or adjust with the times, even when there's no other practical choice. This is an easy situation with which to empathize because we will all reach this point to some extent or another. The hard truth is that this person has most likely outlived their usefulness, at least in their current role. The partner can be proactive and choose another role, or the market will impose other consequences, probably less desirable, on them and the agency.
• One partner in an agency has reached their comfort level and refuses to change. The other partner(s) have so much sympathy (as well as empathy) that they won't force the complacent partner out. They won't make the hard decision. When the complacent partner finally leaves, the agency is worn out and everyone's enthusiasm is gone. If I were to draw a cartoon, it would show a person either scared of change, or perhaps just complacent, blocking the door to success. As a partner, the choice is yours about whether you want to keep allowing your partner to block your door to success or whether you will push them out of the way.

Empathetic people must be cautious about becoming victims of predatory associates. People who need constant reassurance, don't want to take responsibility for their actions, and attempt to avoid change often seek out empathetic people as allies. These people are really predators, who hope that once the empathetic person understands their position, they will show sympathy and support and allow them to avoid responsibility and change.

Once an empathetic person fully understands another's position, it's often easier to cut them some slack and let them continue their destructive behavior. So begins the cycle of the empathetic person becoming prey to the hungry predator. The most intriguing aspect of this cycle is outsiders often view the predator as the weaker party in this struggle, even though they rarely are. What's more, neither party is aware of the predator/prey relationship in which they're a part. Their respective roles come naturally to them. To break the cycle, the empathetic person must remember that empathy does not require sympathy or support. An empathetic person need not become a victim of the predator. They can, and should, take action when needed to protect themselves and/or their agency.

The ability to empathize is admirable. It requires listening, understanding, and suspending judgment. Empathy helps us understand another's feelings and motivations. But it does not mean that we must support or agree with those feelings and motivations. Having feelings and goals that conflict with those of another places us in a difficult situation and must inevitably make hard choices. Empathy will bring us to a point of understanding the other person, but the choice remains ours about whether or not we wish to honor and take action on our own feelings, motivations, and goals.