Empathy is described as the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, striving to understand their feelings and perspectives, and using that insight to guide your actions. This distinguishes empathy from kindness or pity. The goal of communicating with empathy is to encourage the other person to share more openly by fostering a strong connection.

By demonstrating empathy in communication, you show an understanding—at least on a broad level—of the other person’s experience. This helps build trust and respect in the relationship. Below are some skills to support relationship development 

Careful listening is central to successful communication, and it encourages the other person to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas. This assists to build rapport and trust within the relationship. 

Also, efficient listening enables us to build on ideas, ask effective questions and demonstrate their desire to engage with the person more. 

A large proportion of our communication is non-verbal, and is important in any interaction. Research has found that facial expressions help to convey empathy and being aware of our facial expressions, our gaze and our gestures is important to convey that we are truly engaged with the conversation.

• Passive Listening: This is where the listener is not paying attention because their concentration is elsewhere like looking at their phone, thinking of what needs to be done that evening, etc. 

• Active/Reflective Listening: This is where the listener provides verbal and non-verbal feedback in the way of questioning, gestures and paraphrasing. The listener also uses their whole body (eyes, facing forward, etc.) to listen to the speaker. 

• Empathic Listening: This is where the listener tries to understand the world from the speaker’s perspective in as much as that is possible. 

‘We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.’ 

Epictetus, Greek Sage and Stoic, 55 AD 

This is when we use a set of skills to hear and understand what the person is communicating. 

• Interpretation and evaluation:  In order to react appropriately to a person, there needs to be a good understanding of the speaker’s message. Therefore, it is ok to ask a person to clarify a point to ensure the interpretation is correct.  

• Attending/Non-Verbal Behaviours:  There should use culturally appropriate eye contact, body language and tone of voice that demonstrate person has our full attention.   

• Reflective Listening: This is a way of showing how we are focused on the other person. It also shows we understand what the other person is communicating and conveying this by reflecting it back to the person.    

• Rephrasing or paraphrasing:  This is repeating, in the person’s own words, what the person has said, using introductory phrases such as "So you are saying that...”. This allows the person to either confirm or dis-confirm the understanding of the message.   

There are a wide range of different lead-ins for paraphrasing.  Some common examples are listed below:  

• What I hear you saying is… 

• In other words… 

• So basically, how you felt was… 

• What happened was… 

• Sounds like you’re feeling… 

• To put it in a different way, you seem to be saying… 

• As I understand it… 

• It seems like… 

• So, from where you sit…  

These are the various things that happen, such as noises from both outside and inside the room, that act as barriers to listening. Before starting to actively listen to someone, we should attempt to eliminate and/or minimise as many of these external barriers as much as possible so they can focus fully on the person.

There are barriers to active listening that come from within the listener such thinking about pending matters back at the office, not feeling well, being hungry, etc. All of these can impact how well people hear what is being spoken about.  Here are some examples:

• Automatic Talking: This is where the listener responds to the first recognised word the speaker says but not to the overall meaning of what the speaker is talking about. 

• Mind-Reading/Fortune-Telling: This is where the person is thinking in advance. This can lead to mentally “tuning out” before the speaker is finished talking, leading to misunderstanding, frustration, and possibly even anger for all parties involved. 

• Rehearsing: This is where you, rather than actively listening, are trying to figure out what they are going to say to the person. 

• Fixing/Advising: This is the tendency to only listen initially to the person and then begin to search for a ‘fix’ or advice to offer them. 

• Making Assumptions and Judging: Assumptions and unconscious and conscious bias about people and situations happen.  Therefore, it is important to be mindful of when this occurs otherwise it can limit your ability to listen and communicate effectively.  Also, there is a possibility if a person feels not understood or judged then this can negatively impact the relationship. Finally, this situation can happen when there is incomplete information or even half heard information.   

These skills are used whenever we are uncertain or unsure about what the other person is saying.  In this situation paraphrasing should not be used since there is not an adequate understanding about what is being communicated.  Instead, by using the skills of clarification we convey we are trying to understand the person.  Below are examples of ways to do this and it is important for the person to take responsibility for the lack of clarity:

• I am not sure I follow you. 

• That’s not clear to me. 

• Run that by me again. 

• I am not certain what you mean. 

• I am having difficulty understanding that. 

• I am a bit confused about... 

Here are some examples of what not to do because if this technique is not done well, it has potential to make a person feel defensive or uncomfortable.  These next examples of what not to do place the ‘blame’ for the confusion on the other person even if it is not their mistake: 

• You’re not expressing yourself clearly. 

• That’s not clear. 

It’s important to remember the purpose of seeking clarification is to ensure both parties are on the same page. This can also be done by asking questions.  Please remember it is important to have a clear purpose when asking a question since it will promote reflection and better answers from the responder.   

Finally, the skill of summarising what has been discussed can be utilised.  Like other skills already mentioned, a summary allows you to check their understanding by verbalising it.  This also allows the person to either confirm or deny the summary. 

This technique can used to bring closure to the interaction and to check final comprehension.  Here are some examples of how this skill may look in a conversation and remember the focus is on the main points/themes presented: 

• So, to sum it up.... 

• We have discussed so much, let me see if I can pull it together.... 

• Overall, I get the picture that.... 

The practice of curiosity encourages us to ask more questions in conversations rather than making statements designed to influence others. By setting aside judgement and ego, we can discover what truly matters to the other person, enriching our relationships and gaining fresh perspectives on situations. Through open-ended questions, we connect with others and learn their stories. Curiosity fosters learning and growth while strengthening relationships and mutual understanding. One way to enhance self-awareness is by asking more questions and actively listening. This can be achieved by evaluating your ask-to-tell ratio (e.g., do you ask more questions to explore someone’s viewpoint than you give advice or instructions?) 

Questions are an important of any discussion because better questions lead to better answers, information and comprehension.  Effective questions can help to make ideas viable and they can assist to create a deeper dialogue between people.  Helpful questions not only serve to help gain clarification, but they assist in prompting discovery and insight.  Finally, by asking useful questions it shows how we have not only heard what has been said but how we are curious and would like to learn more from the person.  This is an important aspect to building the relationship as well as trust. 

Before deciding on what type of question to ask, we need to consider who the audience is and what type of information they are looking for.  This will assist in deciding about the appropriateness of the question. Also, we need to consider if the potential question is relevant for the situation and for the intended audience.  By making these considerations it will help to build trust and further development the relationship. 

Broadly, there are two types of questions that can be utilised: open-ended questions and closed questions.  Open-ended questions are those which allow the person to give detailed responses rather than a simple "yes/no" or one-word answers (those are known as closed questions). These questions can be used to help draw people out and often start with the words "Who," "What," "When," "Where," and "How."  These questions are useful for clarifying the persons’ statements and getting the mentee to express their thoughts more fully. 

Here is an example of an open-ended question "What would you like to focus our discussion on? whereas close-ended question would be "Would you like a cup of coffee?”.  Asking open ended questions gives us an opportunity to really learn from the person, facilitating a meaningful conversation.  

 *Information for this section provided by Leslie Shoemaker, Lecturer, TU Dublin 

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Leslie Shoemaker, Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering  

and Coordinator of ESTeEM, Chartered Counselling Psychologist, C.Couns,Psychol.,Ps.S.I  

Grangegorman, TU Dublin 

​01-220 5977