Understanding Others; the Active Aspect of Caring

Understanding others is part of your Empathy -a component of your Social Competence.

While Empathy, in general, is related to your awareness, needs, and concerns of others; Understanding Others senses the feelings and perspectives of other people and makes you take an active interest in their concerns.

People who have this competence usually:

• Are attentive to emotional cues
• Listen well to what people say
• Show sensitivity to other people's feelings
• Understand other people perspectives
• Help out without expectations

At a personal level, relationships are built by understanding other people. At a business level, businesses thrive when companies truly understand their customer's needs, feelings, perspectives - that's usually the purpose of marketing research: it aims to understand customer's needs and wants.

Service; the Anticipation of Your Customers’ Needs

Servicing others is part of your Empathy - a component of your Social Competence.

While Empathy, in general, is related to your awareness, needs and concerns of others -Servicing Others relates to anticipating, recognizing and meeting customers’ needs.

People who have this competence usually:

•          Understand customers’ needs by matching them to services or products
•          Seek ways to increase customers satisfaction and loyalty
•          Are always available and ready to offer appropriate assistance
•          Grasp and understand customers perspectives, preferences, needs and wants
•          Acts as a trusted advisor to a customer, with all honesty - building strong relationships

The purpose of a business is not to make a sale, but to make and keep a customer by providing valuable service.

We'll continue next week.

Cheers!

Enhance your Organization by Leveraging Diversity

Leveraging Diversity is part of your Empathy - a component of your Social Competence.

While Empathy, in general, is related to your awareness, needs and concerns of others -Leveraging Diversity relates to your ability to cultivate opportunities with different kinds of people.

People who have this competence usually:

• Respect and relate well to people from varied backgrounds
• Understand diverse worldviews and perspectives 
• Are sensitive to group differences
• See diversity as an opportunity
• Create an environment where diverse people and views can thrive

People, in general, need to be valued based on their moral values, knowledge, performance, and success rather than their background.

Diversity of people brings diversity of ideas to a business - it boosts competitiveness since diversity is most likely to enhance organizational flexibility allowing a rapid adaptation to shifting markets.

Written by John Krumbach,
VP of Finances, ISU Corp