Agile Thinking

Let me jot down my views on being empathetic Vs being analytical.

Empathy is the ability to see the world as another person, to share and understand another person’s feelings, needs, concerns and/or emotional state. Or in simple words what they say as “to be in other persons shoes”

Analytical (or critical thinking as it may be referred to sometimes) means paying attention to detail and involves evaluating, comparing, contrasting, critiquing, judging, explaining why, and examining.

What matters the most? Being empathetic or being analytical. This is an interesting point to ponder on. Here is my view on this.

We are living in a world where we deal more with people who actually “think” for a living (otherwise known as “knowledge workers”). When we deal with people, we are always dealing with emotions. Being analytic is a total contrast to being emotional. Both never go hand in hand. I happened to see this article some time back which gives an insight on why it is so.

So now, the question is, which one should we go with? Agreed, we cannot be both empathetic and analytic at the same time. But, there is always a better way of approaching this.

I suggest going ahead with analytical part first. This helps us to look at various possibilities and various outcomes, which gives a good view on what we need to do. Stop, do not jump into conclusions. We do not have the answers, yet. Next action is to approach this from an emotional point of view and evaluate various possibilities. The surprising fact is that we sometimes realize what we thought was the best solution may now look, not very attractive after attaching a little emotion to it. We may now prefer a different alternative available. This is exactly the biggest advantage of using the two pronged approach.

Taking an example at work, when a colleague indicates something will be done in a particular way, in many cases, my analytical side knows this may not happen. In such situation, I always prefer not to conclude on what my analytical brain tells me. The reason is, I also evaluate the emotional part of it. Sometimes, it is better to make the other person comfortable, for whatever reasons be it. In case, it works out the way the other person mentioned, it is great.

The obvious advantages of two pronged approach are:

• We are aware of various outcomes and can be prepared for any of these outcomes
• We give other persons concerns, a thought (by being empathetic)
• We make the other person feel more comfortable
• When the end result is different from what we aspired for, at least we are fine since we were aware of this one, and not totally surprised

So the net outcome, though may not really be an encouraging one, we were prepared and knew this was on its way, anyhow. This is why, I like to call it as agile thinking :)

Let me know your views...

Disclaimer: Do not use it always as one might get into depression, when later we realize that we are always on the receiving side...