Empathy AND Confidence Essential FOR Success

Personal professionalism is not born into us.  A newborn baby is cute, but no one will describe one as being professional.  We must carefully nurture and develop our personal professionalism.  We must work at improving ourselves in each of its basic elements.  The two internal elements are 1) empathy and 2) confidence.  And the two external elements are 3) organized action and 4) personal style.  I would like to say a few words on the internal elements.  The core element in personal professionalism is empathy. According to the dictionary, empathy is the imaginative projection of one’s own consciousness into another person’s mind.  In career terms, it means projecting your consciousness into the mind of a company and its needs.  It means identifying the “group personality” which is unique in every organization.

As a society, we have just begun to acknowledge the existence of a group (corporate) personality.  Every composite of people, whether a company, a town, a region or a country, has a distinct personality.  For example, we all know small towns a few miles apart.  Of one of them people will say, “They’re a closed group, not very open to newcomers”.  About the other people will say, “Those are very friendly people”.  Sometimes, the differences may not be all that marked.  We must realize, however, that the people in that group feel that they are unique.  If the grouping is large enough, it is a subculture, such as the Northwest. As a composite, we are visibly different from New England.  Both are different from the South, the Southwest, sections of the Midwest.  Together they all make up the most prominent culture in the world: The United States of America. As a culture, we are clearly different from any other country in the world:  The countries of Latin America, Europe, the Mid East, etc.  As a nation, we are slowly becoming more adept at understanding those differences and adjusting to them.

We are not very good at perceiving (and being comfortable with) the differences which exist from company to company.  In fact, the standard job hunt deals with the similarities.  A job candidate is explains, either orally or in writing, all the jobs he or she has held.  This suggests that this company is very similar to all the other companies the candidate has worked with.  This is unfortunate.  The owner (president, department head, branch manager) is certain that his or her company is different from every other company (department branch).  It is in fact, better, because it is mine.  Even if they can’t quite articulate those differences, professionals manage to tune into them and empathize with them.  A professional then adjusts to the differences.  This is all possible because a professional listens.  As I’ve said before, listening is the most valuable skill anyone can learn. Empathy is the deepest form of listening.  If people feel that we’ve listened to them, they’ll give us nearly anything we want.  This includes a position in the company.  If they sense this empathetic relationship, then they will be receptive to developing a truly human and professional relationship.