When Dr Carol Kinsey Goman, author of the THE NONVERBAL ADVANTAGE-Secret and Science of  Body Language at Work (and various training programs on this topic) hears someone mention “empathy”, she thinks of mirror neurons and body language? And monkeys. A strange combination, so what’s the connection?

Dr Goman writes about a research laboratory in Italy where neuroscientists were studying the brain cells of macaque monkeys. When the monkeys performed a single highly specific hand action, sophisticated monitoring equipment detected that neurons in the motor cortex of the animals’ brains become very active. For example, every time a monkey reached for a peanut, certain brain cells immediately “fired”.

Then one day, by chance, the reseachers discovered something particularly interesting. A monkey connected to the monitoring device happened to see a human grab a peanut. The same neurons fired in the same way! In terms of motor cell activity, the monkey’s brain could not tell the difference between actually doing something and seeing it done by someone else.

In other words, these brain cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others,  which is why the researchers dubbed them “mirror neurons”.

What is fascinating is not only that later experiments confirmed that these same neurons  exist in humans, but in addition to mirroring actions, the human brain cells also reflected sensations and feelings!

In one study , subjects watched a hand move forward to caress  someone else and then saw another hand push it away rudely. The brains of the subjects registered the pain of social rejection as if it were happening to them. Why? Because empathizing with someone, whether in grief or joy, apparently activates the very same circuits in your own brain as your companion who experienced the original emotion! Mirror neurons are well named indeed.

In her training programs on nonverbal literacy,  Goman  describes  “empathy ” as “the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by  simply observing their body language.  The moment you become aware of a strong emotion felt by someone in your immediate environment – whether you can see it on the face or read it in the person’s gestures or bodily posture –   you begin,  however subconsciously, to place yourself in that person’s mental shoes, to get under their skin,  so to speak.

Before you know it, you are experiencing  the identical emotion, feeling your companion’s happiness,  excitement, confusion or  disappointment  as if it were your own.

And that, after all, is what empathy – genuine empathy, in the heart, not on the sleeve – is all about.

Management Communication: Three Basic Rules

Many leaders in the workplace choose to ignore these simple points. Fine. That’s their business and good luck to them. But then why do they seem so surprised when the productivity of their workers takes a nosedive?

How to Tell If Someone is a True Friend

It’s a lament one hears often:

“I’m so frustrated about the friends that I have. I trusted someone who I thought was a good friend of mine and I ended up getting used. I really can’t tell who is really a friend and who is just fake and trying to use me. I used to trust my own judgment, but now…I’m not so sure…”

Here are five simple rules that serve as a litmus test.

Working With Difficult People: Turning Tormentors into Teachers

When a confrontational employee or fellow worker with a chip on the shoulder begins to drive you up the wall, a simple switch in tactics could put a smile back on his face. And yours.

How to Leave Professional Phone Messages

Trying to reach a person who isn’t immediately available can be pretty frustrating at times, but take heart! A well planned message could be a fine opportunity to enhance your reputation and even help build relationships.

Voice to High? How to Safely Lower Your Pitch

Some common speaking problems:

“Even though I’m a mature female and a stockbroker, I am often mistaken for a child when I answer the phone or leave messages. I’m not sure what to do. Is my voice too high? Too hesitant? How can start to sound my age?”

“I am a small man and my voice is higher than I prefer. Are there any ways to lower my voice? I once heard that one movie star used to go into the mountains and scream for hours.”

Read what voice production expert Susan Berkley advises.

What to Do About Office Gossip

How an organization deals with habitual gossipers can be mean the difference between growing and thriving, or disintegrating from within

Please use the Comments area to let me know what you think of these articles, or to suggest topics you’d like to see covered in the future. If you prefer, you can also contact me privately at azriel AT hodu.com.

Or let’s take a setting very far removed from the office: we’ve just arrived at the resort hotel for the vacation we’ve been dreaming of all year. But on the way we were flagged down and ticketed  for exceeding the speed limit. Or, we find that the room we reserved is not ready yet and we’re forced to wait, tired and hungry, in a crowded and drafty reception lounge for an hour and a half.

Now, let’s take out our imaginary “emotion meter” and take a reading of our mood or state of mind during the rest of the day at the office, or the first few days of our vacation.

Our boss’s momentary rudeness (or at least we perceived it as such) is in the past. He may even have apologized, or we may have realized that it was really our fault.  Or the minor discomfort we had to endure on the first day of our vacation didn’t last much longer than sixty minutes.  Great! So why are we making so many mistakes on the job, and why was our lazy day on the sun-drenched beach…well, yes, a lot of fun,  but…not quite as much fun as it was last year?

To be sure, our emotional state at any particular moment affects  our actions, present and immediate future, in so many different ways, and I mentioned some of them in my recent post on defining emotional intelligence. Yet unfortunately, that’s often not the end of the story.

It’s bad enough when some external stimulus, whatever it is, make us feel angry, or disappointed, or irritable, or extremely frustrated, and  so gives rise to a mood or state of mind that can last for several hours, days, or even weeks.

What’s worse is that our emotional state often doesn’t just remain at its initial level. It may escalate in intensity, without warning,  so quickly  that the person feels he is losing control (or sometimes he may not even feel it!). I have seen this referred to  very descriptively as “the spiral effect.” Perhaps an even more appropriate term would be the “one-thing-leads-to-another syndrome.”

Jack and Jill’s little tiff: how they erred

Let’s use our now famous (!!) imaginary couple, Jack and Jill,  to cite a simple and familiar example from everyday life.

After a business meeting had finished sooner than anticipated, Jack calls Jill mid afternoon to tell her that he will be arriving home earlier than usual. Of course, Jill is pleased, and asks him if she could save her a trip by stopping off at the neighborhood supermarket on the way to pick up a few things.  She rattles off the items she wants, and assures Jack that though she might not be at home when he comes,  she’ll be back soon.

Jack arrives home with the goods.  Jill isn’t back yet. He was pleased to help  because he figures Jill must be exhausted  after an especially busy day. Then he has a brainwave: why not help even more by cooking some supper?  So he takes some noodles and eggs and a few other small items from the bag he’s just brought and begins to cook up a dish he knows Jill is fond of.

The pot on the stove is almost ready when Jill walks in.  She ambles over to the stove, opens the pot nervously, and lets out a scream.  A real scream.

“Hey, Jack, have you gone out of your mind?  Are those the noodles you bought? I especially needed them for the meal I promised to take to my sick friend tomorrow. I wanted to use the leftovers from Sunday lunch for supper tonight…now I’ll just have to throw them out. And by the way, you bonehead, you now I always buy brown eggs, not white ones. Can’t you think for once in your life?”

Jack, who just two minutes ago was expecting to be showered with praise for his thoughtfulness,  is overtaken at first with with a numb feeling.   A rather bland, seemingly harmless, sensation.  But the numbness quickly turns to bewilderment, which in turn converts into anger.

And unfortunately, anger breeds more anger. Jack storms out of the kitchen, leaving a badly burned culinary creation to go up in smoke.  And a lovely young couple hardly speaking to each other for several days.

What should Jack have done – while his emotions were still reasonably under control?  First and foremost,  he should have kept reminding himself of his   original intention, what he had set out to achieve in the first place.  If making things easier for his wife was his first priority,  then by definition, that took precedence over a wounded pride or temporary feeling of disquiet!

He might have said: “Look Jill, I’m sorry, but let’s see what we can do; losing our cool won’t get us anywhere.  I’ll pop back to the store to get some more noodles, or maybe I can borrow from our neighbor. Perhaps we could…”

For Jill’s  part, some quick thinking  before Jack’s stormy exit would surely have helped.  “Jack,” she might have said,  “I know you only wanted to help me.  I’m sorry I lost my flap…I must be overtired, I guess. You know what – let’s put your concoction in the freezer…it  will actually be a big help not having to worry about tomorrow’s supper!  And you know, there are some dishes that taste better with white eggs, not brown…”

The problem is as we said: a strong negative emotion will most likely generate a still stronger negative emotion. If it happens to you, will you be able to take one step back and direct your rational side to take charge, before hell breaks lose and everything spirals out of control?

In an upcoming post,  we’ll discuss this kind of situation further.  We’ll analyze the sad case of a hitherto happy and close family that was nearly ripped apart by anger,  see  how the situation could easily have been prevented  and what can still be done to repair the damaged relationships.

Passive Aggressive Behavior and Workplace Anger

Passive aggressive behavior is one of the most common ways anger is displayed in the workplace. Because people fear retaliation for speaking up, or even fear for their jobs, anger goes deep and oozes out in unhealthy ways

Seven Ways to Stop Interrupting

It happens all day, every day. We see it on television interviews. We hear it on the radio. We experience it at home and at work. One person talking over the other person. Not letting people finish what they were saying. In short, interrupting!

Interrupting can cause a whole stream of problems and challenges. It reduces our effectiveness as a listener, negatively impacts relationships, shuts down communication, reduces our ability to learn and much more.

Icebreakers: The Niftiest Training Tool

If you’re looking for a training tool that will deliver the most benefits for the least effort… a tool that can be used in any number of training situations… and change the mood of a group in a second… all while delivering heaps of learning… then I think I can claim to have found it…
…Icebreakers!

Stand Your Ground With Manipulators!

Nobody likes being manipulated. And despite what manipulators may believe, the act of manipulation always has a diminishing outcome.

How to Deal With Conflict Avoiders

Some people with whom you relate have tremendous difficulty acknowledging and talking about negative feelings.

Because they want to keep the peace at any cost, they pretend everything is fine. They don’t want to rock the boat. As a result, underlying resentments can grow and eventually destroy working relationships as well as personal relationships.

High Time to Change Childish Conversation

Many adults use childish conversation styles some or all of the time. What are the most common types of childish speech, and what makes people talk that way?

Please use the Comments area to let me know what you think of these articles, or to suggest topics you’d like to see covered in the future. If you prefer, you can also contact me privately at azriel AT hodu.com.

Or maybe she wants to know whether she thinks she got a good deal on some new electronic appliance. And you just happened to pass by a store yesterday where the same item was advertised for 15% cheaper. In both cases – the garment and the gadget – you know there’s no way now she can return the item for refund for exchange.

So now…what do you say to your friend?  The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or in this case, will you be prepared to bend the “truth” (not my deliberate use of quotation marks) a little so that your friend can feel good?

Let’s now turn to the world of business. Let’s say a department store somewhere puts out a big sign that reads: “Buy now! Sale ends tomorrow.”

Brad Shorr of Word Sell, Inc takes a close look at this statement  on his blog.  The “latest buzzword in corporate communication,” he writes, is transparency. Fine, but what exactly is meant by the term? If by “transparent” we mean “clear”, then “By now! Sale ends tomorrow” is a transparent statement.  It is clear and unambiguous – and yes, it may even be true!

But what would you say if what the store really means is: “Buy now! We’re deep in debt and plan to file for bankruptcy before the end of the month”? Schorr points out that most people would no longer agree that the original statement is “transparent”, because in the minds of most, the real meaning of “transparency” is sincerity.

Now we have a different ball game, because sincerity doesn’t admit degrees. Lying to the market is insincere. But telling partial truths is also insincere! Schorr quotes the philosopher Thomas Merton, from his book “No Man is an Island”:

“In the end the problem of sincerity is a problem of love. A sincere man is not so much one who sees the truth and manifests it as he sees it, but one who loves the truth with pure love. But thruth is more than an abstraction. It lives and is embodied in men and things that are real. And the secret of sincerity is, therefore, not to be sought in a philosophical ove for abstract truth, but in a love fore real people and real things…”

Heady words. But here we have the key to everything that is good, or that can be good, in human relationships.

More in upcoming posts.