Magic Duo DAY 26 Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

       Q. What do world hunger and bad customer service have in common?

        A. The secret to solving them both is empathy and innovation.

Empathy and innovation seem like an unlikely pairing, but together, they're the secret to solving just about everything. 

Here's why. You have to care about a problem before you're motivated to solve it. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone because his wife was deaf and he wanted to help those who couldn't hear. Empathy for his wife ingnited his innovation.

Empathy is about putting your own persepective on pause so that you can experience how the world looks throgh the eyes of another. With this skill, we then express our values to align with their neeeds, while innovation is a function of new ideas, risk taking and  problem soving to serve that need. 

So how do you kick start the empathy/innovation cycle? Simple: take a walk in another's shoes.

We tend to think of empathy as something that softens us. But that's not true. Empathy empowers us. Because when you see how the world looks to someone else, you don't diminish your own persepective, you expand it.

You can't be innovative if the only perspective you see is your own. Empathy & innovation--the magic duo that can solve anything!!

XOXO

Shelly