Empathy is a crucial part of our lives because it is connected with out innate need for socializing. Being empathetic means to be able to have an open mind, and using that openness to be receptive to receiving new information to which we may or may not agree regardless. Empathy is critical to our lives because we need it to deepen our relationships. That may be with faimily, friends, my partner, co-workers, or really anybody I interact with. Empathy means to be able to understand other people's points of of view and realizing that everybody has something important to say. Empathy has helped me develop my social intelligence, making me more aware that someone else's views are influenced by a different background from mine. It doesn't mean the person is right or wrong, it just adds an extra layer of perspective to the conversation, and to my thoughts.
A big aspect of building software is the design, because the software is always build for a customer and that customer has to be able to use without any problems. Empathy is linked to design because you want to understand what are your customer's needs, to be able to design a software for them. Another componenet is that when you release a software for thousands of people around the world, there are going to be some people who might have different capabilities and you will need to do some modifications to accomodate for their specific needs. To me, that is empathetic software making, to receive feedback and think of the whole spectrum of people who will be using your software.
Empathy is very important because people in your team will share different perspectives, and that is an asset. Having a team with different views will help you question many things about your work that you might have never even been aware of if it wasn't because of someone on your team giving you feedback. It is also very important to have the open mindset of receiving that feedback, instead of closing off to only do what you want.
4. Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
There's been many situations where my job requires me to make changes to complex excel files because a certain manager wants to have a specific view of the financials, or they want to change the filters for the financials reports we use. We exchanged a couple emails where she explained to me why she wanted the changes. I understood her reasons, and I ended up accomodating for her needs and changed many things around the file. I incorporated new tabs, even though she was the only manager out of 15 that requested those needs.
5. When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios?
I think it can be hard to be empathetic when you are in disagreement with someone over something you are very passionate about. You might sometimes think that you definitely know the correct solution to something, and you can't open yourself to other answers. I think a way to improve these situations is simply to be aware that you need to be open to the idea that other people can also be right, it's all about perspective. It might not be easy sometimes, but it is the right thing to do. And definitely something that we should all be working towards to.