Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position.

The above definition from Wikipedia is normally talked about among friends, trying to understand each other from different views and backgrounds. How often is it a topic of project management and project teams?

Although there are a number of articles on how a project manager can use more empathy with managing projects, there are few posts about what team members can do to foster empathy during projects.

Today, I will introduce ideas about teams using empathy on their projects.

Why Is Empathy important for Projects?

As human we start to develop empathy at the age of five as we acquire the ability to simulate or to imagine the experiences of others. (Gopnik, A. (1999). Theory of mind.)

But, somehow we stop using that incredible capability as we get older, get busy with work, and get on with our personal objectives and achievements. We focus more on selfies and how many clicks we get, and we think less on what it might be like to be in the other person’s shoes when we send out that quick response.

Businesses are full of silos. Even within the project team as team members are under pressure to perform and therefore end up focusing only on their own checklists.

We all lose site of what the other team members are tasked to do, their challenges, their ideas, or their joys of small successes.

Collaboration is always talked about, but most of the time it’s about keeping someone up to date, sending out quick messages and getting fast replies. Collaboration is information made transparent and it’s good. It has helped increase project timelines and quality results.

However, you cannot have great collaboration without empathy.

What if empathy was fostered? What if we bump up the notch of collaboration with empathy?

Here are a couple scenarios where empathy brings value:

• Empathizing with others helps you regulate your own emotions. For example, you might get upset at another person because they are not responding to your emails. Being upset at others hampers productivity. What if you learn to calm down as you think about what it’s like being that other person who is under pressure and can forget to open their inbox like we all do sometimes?

• Empathy can help you understand someone’s pain and may reveal new solutions. Let’s say a colleague is struggling with a project issue and it’s affecting the project progress. You might think it’s not on your plate, so no need to go there. What if you spend a few minutes listening to that person explain their challenge even if it’s not something you can solve? You listen intently trying to understand how this person is feeling and suddenly you recall that same feeling when you were up against a wall. You can now at least feel what they are feeling. With this new outlook, maybe a piece of the solution puzzle forms between you and this other person.

There are many other benefits of empathy.

Building a culture that includes empathy takes time, but it can be powerful since it can turns collaboration into something much more amazing than just information sharing.

There are many ways to go about it, but I thought to share some game-like exercises you might try with your team members.

1) In Other’s Shoe Game

Preparation: People would need to agree to do this to avoid embarrassments. Prep the team in advance of the meeting on how this will work to give them a chance to opt out in the first try. As they see others giving it a go, they may be more prepared to participate next time. For this game to work, all of the assigned tasks should be in a project tool that can easily display team member’s work, such as Pie’s On My Team’s Plate view.

The Game: In a meeting instead of each team member reporting their work from their task list, have a member pick another team member to do a review of what’s on their own plate. For example, John will select Karen to review John’s own task list.

Purpose: This builds an awareness of what others are doing instead of just focusing on your own work. Understanding lays the foundation as they get started with empathy.

2) Recalling Other’s Details Game

Preparation: At the start of the meeting, let the team know to pay close attention to the updates from the others during the status updates and to be prepared to recall some details of what others have reported.

The Game: Start with asking each member to give their update of what they are working on and their status, challenges, etc. After this is done, ask individuals to volunteer to re-iterate some small detail of what what another member reviewed, such as a specific task accomplishment or challenge.

Purpose: This quick game helps to build the power of “listening”. A study presented that empathic processes and empathic relationships rely at their core on a most intent listening to the other.

3) Proactive Help Game

Preparation: No preparation needed with this game exercise, but as teams experience this game, they may be more inclined to be proactively prepared.

The Game: Have team members share any experience they have had with others since the last meeting where an other person reached out to them and provided assistance. Have them specify if they requested the help or the help came on its own. Either way is fine.

Purpose: Empathy is organic and at times people offer assistance to another who is struggling even if that other person didn’t ask for help. This could be from an unconscious ability to feel what the other person is feeling or knowing you were in their shoes once and using that internal spark to offer help. This game will bring this organic spark more out into the open, and may help individuals to consciously look out for those who may be struggling.

4) Shared Goal Mind-Reading Game

Preparation: As the manager, try to find out form the project sponsor and/or business sponsor of the project why this project is so important and what is its true purpose from their perspective. Before you meet with the sponsor, try the game yourself. Write down your gut feelings and then go interview the sponsor for their true feelings about what the project’s success is about. As for the team members, no preparation is needed. Just spring this on them.

The Game: Have members describe in their own words what they think the shared goal and objectives are of the project and its proposed result as they would imagine in the mind of the project sponsor.

The Purpose: The exercise helps each individual try to get into the shoes of management to better understand why they are doing the work they are doing. This may be an eye opener for some. If you did the prep, share the sponsor’s perspective you received from the sponsor after the team shares their idea of what the sponsor thinks. If you didn’t do the prep, then go to the sponsor after the meeting and ask them and then bring that back to the team to compare notes. This could be fun!

In summary, project team member empathy can reveal things that have been blocking our ability to humanize projects. Good luck with the games!

Please comment below or email me if you try any of these games. I would love to hear about your experiences.