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Preempt negative thinking
The definition of empathy is really completely understanding where the other side is coming from, especially emotionally, and then being able to feed it back to them in a way that they signal to you that you’ve got it right. Understand and demonstrate that understanding. So once we completely understand where someone is coming from then with tactical empathy we get a much better feel for exactly how they feel about things, how that drives them.
People are so much more driven by avoiding negative things, than avoiding loss, that fear of loss becomes one of the major determinants in decision-making, almost to the point where our fear of loss far exceeds the actual potential losses that people face. So knowing that fear of loss is probably going to drive someone’s decision-making more than anything else, tactically I want to diffuse those fears. I want to get them out of that fear-based thinking and I want to get them really in a more rational, open frame of mind as quickly as I can. Which is why tactically in empathy I want to address their fears first – either the fears that I know that you have.
If I’m getting ready to say something that I know you’re not going to like then I’ll say immediately, “You’re not going to like this.” And there’s a very important distinction between recognizing a negative and denying a negative. I would never say to anybody, “Look, I don’t want you to like this” or “I don’t want you to be upset about this.” I never deny a negative. I’d never say I don’t want you to think I’m a bad guy. Those are all denials. I’ll actually say to somebody ahead of time, “Look this is going to sound really harsh. And there’s a really good chance that when I get done saying what I’m going to say you’re not going to like me at all.“ And then I’ll say what I have to say and they’ll say, “Wow, that wasn’t that bad.” So I know I can take a very preemptive approach to negative thinking because I know what a barrier it is to decision-making in business.
Diminish negative emotions
Labeling is the best way to practice tactical empathy. In its strictest form it’s just saying or writing, “It seems like, it sounds like, it looks like.“ Putting a label on the dynamic, on what’s driving people or what you expect will be driving people based on what you’re getting ready to say. And science is showing us now that if we label a negative it diminishes it.
And in a very unscientific fashion I know that there’s at least twice as much space in a brain devoted to dealing with negative emotions as there are to positive emotions. And that’s why I think negative emotions are at least double the problem as positive emotions. We’ve really found something we call the accusations audit to be an enormously powerful tool. And it has nothing to do with reason – it’s taking stock of all the ridiculous negative unfair things that the other side might even think about you in advance. And how they feel now or how they might feel and then simply, in a very preemptive fashion, labeling them first.
I remember one time I was on the phone with a customer service airline person. And that’s got to be a tough job because those people get yelled at all day long every day. Nobody calls customer service unless they’re unhappy. Clearly she had been yelled at 50 times during the day and she was not interested in staying on the phone with me a moment longer than she had to. And I remember when I was off the phone and she had me on hold I remember saying, “I guarantee you this woman rights now is thinking, she’s saying to her colleagues, ‘This guy is lucky I’m talking to him on the phone at all.’” So I was thinking about the negative of that and then I was thinking about the flip side. Well in her view she thinks I’m lucky to be talking to her on the phone then the flip side of that is she’s actually being generous, in her mind and her world. She came back on the phone and I said to her, “You know what, I really appreciate how generous you’ve been with your time.” And I could tell immediately her frame of mind changed. She put me back on hold for about a minute and a half after that, and when she came back on the phone she had given me a full refund on my ticket.
If I can diminish the negative emotions with just some simple labels then I know I can get that stuff out of the way and that’s why I approach it in that fashion. I know what a difference it makes in decisions. The reasons you won’t make a deal are typically more important than the reasons you will make a deal. So if I can get the reasons you won’t make a deal out of the way you’re probably going to make the deal.