Business communication skills have been taught for centuries yet empathy skills, especially the ones developed by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg must be the most powerful. Why use empathy communication skills in your conversations with customers, management and employees? What other skill do you know that builds trust in seconds, really helps you understand deeply what the other person is really needing. Additionally if there were any past problems the skills can be used for expressing any regret and help to heal the past problems.

Why Use Empathy Skills in Business?

So real empathy skills are powerful. I have seen people say they use empathy and it is ineffective. Ineffective because they have left out parts of the method. I have discussed already in past articles the use of intention and focusing. Also the use of self empathy to ready your day of experiences that may be ahead. I will describe empathy as we offer it to another, verbal empathy.

2 Steps for building Trust and Communication.

There are really 2 steps to this process. One is identifying emotions of the other person and then the values or needs. Obviously identifying the needs is most important. There is a list of needs or values in the website listed below. The more irate the other person may be the faster I want to guess what they are needing. I can do this silently or verbally. All I might say is"So you value ________"? Notice that this is a question. So if a person is upset, I jump to identifying the need and say or think in my mind, " So you value being heard" heard is the value not being met.

Guessing Incorrectly is OK

I can guess incorrectly yet this is fine. It shows at least we are trying to understand the Otherer person. Remember our intention is important which is to want to understand the other person. They might say No, t is not understanding and state a different need. Don't let your ego get in the way here, but stay focused on this person. They are telling you what is important to them. This is building the connection and trust.

Who Uses Empathy?

Empathy is a funny word, maybe you see it as fluffy and not to be used in business, yet it is very highly as in Steven Covey's book of Highly Effective people and several books concerning Emotional Intelligence. Want easier sales and more trust from your customers, try using empathy in your business communication skills.