Sometimes, reminders of what’s really important in life present themselves when we’re not expecting them. Whatever the trigger, when our normal patterns of hamster-like busyness are interrupted, we become (even if for only a short while) a bit more present; more focused on observing instead of doing. And when we’re more present, we are more likely to see age-old truths that have defined the human experience since our earliest days.

According to a fascinating post about Narrative Empathy on the Psychology Today blog, "empathy" is a relatively new term to modern western cultures. Empathy in the workplace has been historically looked down as too much of an ultra soft skill. But in the last twenty or so years with the rise of emotional intelligence, empathy has been slowly making its way into the workplace. And that’s a good thing. When people can empathize with someone else in the workplace by emotionally putting themselves in others place in order to understand their perspective, it leads to higher levels of respect. The following are a series of articles posted over the past several years from the Respectful Workplace blog that discuss some of the ways that empathy can be incorporated into the workplace and beyond in order to create a more engaged and respectful culture.

I am in the middle of a fairly sizable harassment training project for a client. Lucky for me, the client’s new HR manager comes to all my sessions and chimes in. The employees often have to deal with, shall we say, a rather challenging customer base. And this HR manager has made it her job to really [...]