MADISON BLASZ
Special to The Leader
Did you know that empathy is an important skill that will serve you well in many areas of your life?
Most people do not know that you can show empathy within your resume and even your workplace.
When you’re empathetic toward those you work with, you may notice a big difference in your interactions and overall job success.
On Wednesday, April 28 the Fredonia Honors Program and Career Development Office sponsored a virtual event, with guest speaker Dr. Irina Filonova.
Helping people from over 40 countries find jobs across the globe, Filonova presented Empathy: The Showpiece of Resumes.
She is a postdoctoral development specialist and career coach at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology who translates the value of empathy across multiple disciplines and cross-cultural communication.
Filonova focuses on how empathy is one of the most sought-out traits when it comes to employers searching for new hires.
Although there are multiple definitions of the word empathy, Filonova said, “It is a social and emotional skill that helps us feel and understand the emotions, circumstances, intentions, thoughts and needs of others so we can offer sensitive perspective and appropriate communication and support.”
We now know that empathy is a skill that we as individuals can develop. It is not only about emotions, but empathy is outward-looking as well because we want to offer something at the end.
Filonova said, “If we’re using empathy skills it has three components. According to researchers the three components are emotional, cognitive and responsiveness.”
When we listen to stories and feel emotions, we are using our empathy skills. Filonova said, “When I told you about stepping into something slimy, you probably felt disgust and this is what we’re talking about emotional empathy.”
The next component, cognitive, is where we can understand that other people are different from us, and we can think through our feelings.
“Cognitive empathy is pretty much perspective talking, and for it to happen, we need to be developed, cognitively and behaviorally. We need to understand something that’s called the theory of mind that other people are different from us, and they have different thoughts, feelings and emotions intentions,” Filonova said.
The last component is responsiveness, which is also called empathetic concern, and it is how quickly and positively we react to something.
Filonova said, “What are you going to do about this, no matter how big or small that action is. When we’re showing empathy, we hope our action would be compassion towards the world and towards ourselves.”
We need to make sure we do not confuse empathy with sympathy. Sometimes we do use them interchangeably, but they’re a little bit different.
“Sympathy is the feeling of pity or sorrow for someone else, but empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another,” Filonova said.
She made it clear that sympathy creates distance between individuals. Empathy, on the other hand, makes people feel closer to one another.
You are probably wondering how does this all relate to the workplace?
Let’s say you wrote your beautiful resume, and it has shiny bullet points with empathy skills in disguise because that’s what employers want.
Now you need to go networking, and go to interviews, and this is where empathy helps you a lot in relationship building.
Filonova said, “In interviews, it’s not about interrogation, it’s about a conversation. Empathy is social glue, people with higher empathy ratings come up as trustworthy, kind, good team players and good leaders because empathy holds us all together.”
So, whether it’s an interview or resume writing, we always want to think about other people and deliver what they want from us very clearly, and that is what empathy is all about.