Month: August 2013
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Why Don’t We Empathize First?
Last week, I advised empathizing before advising. To attempt to remedy my hypocrisy, I will now empathize with the desire not to empathize. Because there really are a bunch of good and legitimate reasons we try other tacks. I’ll say some reasons I don’t empathize, so I’m not speculating too much about general motivations, but…
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Reminder: Empathize First!
If you’re talking to someone who is seeking support, it is incredibly useful to empathize before giving advice. This is true even if the person is nominally seeking advice. I know to do this, but in the past few weeks, it’s happened at least three times that I can think of that I’ve been in…
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Conversation Rules for My Birthday Party
The feedback I got indicated that the “ask a personal question” rule was the most helpful. I suspect that setting the intention to have good conversations in the first place was more effective than the specific ruleset, but it’s hard to know with these things. I consider the ruleset an alpha version, and I want…