Sympathy, Empathy And Compassion = Which one is important for Workplace?

In my former days, when I was entering the industry, I was advised by professionals to have sympathetic attitude.

Having sympathy with your employees as a Human Resources professional was the "in" thing.  Every body expected to you answer that one word in order to ensure that you get the job.


Few years into my professional career, I was again advised by my seniors to become empathetic towards employees.

Although, the words are very closely related to one another, quite a number times, I have observed they are the mostly abused words, especially in the corporate world.

I have always found both words - sympathy and empathy to have no use or place in the cut-throat corporate environment.

Here are the reasons why:

• While Sympathy means you can understand and relate with how a person is feeling, Empathy means that you can feel what the other person is feeling.  None of this results in anyone taking any particular action towards getting the feelings sorted or the problem to mitigate.
• While using the word Sympathy may not get you around much, Empathy can attract people with more grief to you like a magnet.  Even if you develop empathy, it does not mean that you would be able to sort other people's problems as effectively.
• While Sympathy can get you to open up about management issues, Empathy will restrict you to function effectively and efficiently.  Something that a Human Resources professional cannot afford.  
• Both Sympathy and Empathy are very strong feelings and tend to generate equally strong emotions.  When these emotions accumulate, they generally tend to release few explosions.

So how can we, as professionals be more effective as human beings?  

How can we add more value to the work place and build a more human friendly culture?  

I have been seeking these answers for quite some time.  And I have come to a conclusion, that instead of have Sympathy and Empathy, we can instead be more Compassionate towards our fellow citizens.

Now let's begin by understanding compassion a little bit.  

Compassion is defined as the willingness to relieve the other person of their suffering. 

Sounds better?  Yes? No?  Well, read on....

Now how does this help you and your organization to succeed?

Well it helps in following ways:

• It helps to review and get rid of age old practices that are causing grief to our employees.
• It helps to relate with one another in more humane terms
• It helps to re-structure our work culture to accommodate diversity
• It encourages people to be more value driven and results driven.  This in turn, helps to mitigate office politics, leading to more productive and positive work culture.
• It provides more hope to your people
• It assists in rewarding people for their hard work
• It nurtures people to seek their skills development and chart their own career path within an organization.

Compassion is a very strong emotion and can drive an organization to success if utilized in the right fashion.  

Today, when the competition is at its peak, jobs at all time low, a drop of compassion in the work culture can make a lot of difference to promote a good work ethics and people to explore their potentials at their ease.

People need more humanity in this world. Forget the rat race.  Instead the concept should be = Run your own Race.  Be a Role Model for others to find and take inspiration from you.  Empower your people by being more Human.

Be Ready to Act in the name of Compassion, if you want to be Employee - Centric!

- Article contributed by Entrenador Shruti Misra, a Neuro-Leadership & Entrepreneur Coach