Improve your communication - the doing collective

What is empathy?

Well, in simple terms it’s the ability to understand how other people feel. A pretty benign sounding skill at first but if you dig a little deeper into empathy and what it can help you achieve, you will see it could be one of the most powerful tools in your business communication tool-kit.

Empathy and business communication.

Empathy had been excluded and widely understood to have no place in business. It was seen part of the ‘soft’ skills group alongside team work and conflict resolution. However, now empathy is recognised as a force behind mastering the hard skills like programming, data analysis and most importantly marketing and communication. You have to be able to understand who you are designing, servicing or talking to and how they feel. If you don’t a service will fall short and a product will not be in demand and people will not develop brand trust.

Up until recently communications were often competitive in their tone, hard and loud. Products and services focused on ‘value’ being financial and ‘better’ being faster or perceived as more complex. Pre 2020 we were all racing through life and work, fuelled with a need to win come what may. That has now all shifted, today’s world is considered, emotive and far more human focused.

Empathy and the new business normal.

2020 has been one hell of a ride, and it’s not over yet. Everyone has been affected, every person on the planet has had to recalibrate and in doing so many people have been taking stock of what is important to them. From the political to the environmental, the communal to the consumed. People are more consider now than ever before and therefore how businesses and brands speak to their employees, partners and customers needs to be equally considered and agile.

Over recent months consumers and clients have developed very keen bullshit filters and communication and marketing experts now have to adapt and come from a place of ‘Better’ being more honest, trustworthy and human and ‘Value’ being not only measured in financial terms but also in terms of ‘impact’ and ‘status’.

Feelings, emotions and connections now are the value people are looking for.

Brands need to become more human and to develop personalities that are honest. This is where empathy and successful communication will be intertwined from now on. The new business normal is empathetic.

5 ways to add more empathy to your communication activity.

Listen.
Key to all empathetic communication is listening. Listen hard to what customers, colleagues and the greater market are saying. Learn from them, by understanding how they feel, their needs, wants and fears. Then, give them what they want not what you are wanting them to have. Communication after all is not passive; it’s active and goes two ways.

Stop being self-aggrandising and start taking stock.
Review your planned communication activity, all your social posts, your press releases, blogs, videos, your internal comms, I mean everything. Is your tone too ‘me, me, me’? Do you believe what you are saying and will consumers? Focus more on using ‘you’ more and ‘us’ and ‘we’ far less. Yes, if you are experts in a field express that, we need facts and knowledge, but remember who should benefit from your expertise. Remember; always tell the truth, exaggeration and enthusiasm have a place in communications, but make sure they are accurate.

Show your humanity.
You can have a personality today. You don’t need to be a product or service making automaton. You can have heart and soul and a sense of humour if it’s appropriate. If you have listened to your market and customers you know what they want from you in terms of personality, and you can allow giving it to them. It will help you form a relationship and most importantly, trust.

Trust your work and trust your customers
Trust is totally key to successful communication, and like communication as a whole, it goes two ways. With empathy you can dive deeper into how people feel about the service or product you are offering them. You can make promises to them that you will keep and they in turn will stand with your brand, your promise and your values, unite in trust.

Be brave
It’s ok to risk things, its ok to not make perfect communication activities all the time. You are human too. But if you don’t try and you stick to what you have always done you will never know if empathy inspired personality, honesty and understanding work for you and your business. Take a rick, be brave.