ABSTRACT
Technical skills may be the basis for professional success, but they can only take a career so far. To progress further, technical experts must possess emotional intelligence – and particularly empathy. This chapter reveals how anyone can develop what the author calls ‘empathic influencing’ skills – the most powerful way of succeeding in organisations of all kinds – using the four-step DARE model. 1. Difference: realising that not everyone thinks/feels the same way as you do. 2. Awareness of your own emotions and understanding of how you would feel in a given situation. 3. Reading others with a recognition that another person may not react in this same way as you and really seeing the world through his or her eyes. 4. Effective action: communicating and connecting with other people, armed with a new understanding of where they are coming from.
