Empathy is fundamental to building trusting and effective relationships. It is the most underused and underdeveloped skill for communicating, building trust, influencing and resolving conflicts. Yet it is very fundamental and very powerful.

If success in life and work is about building effective relationships, then success in relationships is about demonstrating empathy. And in order to achieve empathy, we need to be continually reminded to talk less and listen more. Here’s a very simple exercise that explores empathy and communication.

Instructions

1. Explain that the goal of this activity is to be able to accurately echo what the other person is saying, and that they’ll be doing this in pairs.

2. Instruct participants to choose an initial speaker and an initial listener, explaining that they’ll be given a prompt or question to focus on.

3. Once they’ve decided roles, the initial speaker will respond to the prompt for 30 seconds or so.

4. The listener’s job is to listen and then repeat the speaker’s response back to them, echoing it as accurately as possible.

5. If the initial speaker deems the echo satisfactory, they swap roles and repeat.

6. If the echo missed the mark, the speaker reiterates their original response, and the listener tries to echo again.

7. After they’ve both successfully shared and echoed the other person’s share, they are done.

8. Share their first prompt and then have all participants start with the exercise.

9. If you have an odd number of participants, plan to either stand in, or have one three-person group (and provide them tailored instructions).

10. Note that randomly assigning pairs here is going to be way easier than doing it based on a mindful selection, particularly if you have a large group. If you want to assign pairs intentionally, do so before the meeting.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes – identifying with and understanding the thoughts, feelings and experiences of someone else. Through this exercise, we mimic that ability and understand how it helps achieve empathy.

While it doesn’t mean we completely understand, or that it means we agree, the exercise does bring to mind that with the intent to listen and understand, we have a better appreciation of where a person might be coming from, and thus achieve empathy.