Christian Communication Skills Ep 10

Pastor Spell discusses exercises to build the skill of empathy. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hi, and welcome to Know Your Bible Institute classes. My name is Pastor Lynnwood Spell, and we are all about the Word of God, learning the Word of God, how to better practice God's Word so we can hear the Lord, the Spirit of God, speak to us in our lives, in our presence. Today's session will be on Christian communication. How can we speak the truth in love as the Word of God commands us, learning how to practice compassion and empathy with our words. Today we will discuss how to build the skill of empathy. Empathy isn't a trait you either have or don't have, it's a skill that improves with deliberate practice. Just as musicians don't become virtuosos by reading music theory alone, but by practicing their instruments daily, you don't become empathetic by understanding empathy concepts. You become empathetic by also practicing empathetic interactions repeatedly until they become second nature. The challenge most people face is that they approach empathy passively, hoping it will improve through osmosis or good intentions. They learn about empathy, feel inspired, but then return to their regular patterns of interaction, wondering why nothing has changed. Meaningful skill development requires active, intentional practice, and that's exactly what we want to discuss on today. Think about how you learned any significant skill in your life. I don't know, riding a bicycle, speaking a new language, playing a sport, mastering a professional competency. In every case, improvement came through repeated practice, making mistakes, receiving feedback, adjusting your approach, and trying again. Empathy development follows the same path. You need structured exercises, real world applications, reflection on what's working and what isn't, and a commitment to showing up for practice even when it feels awkward or difficult. The practices we will look at in this session today are designed to build different dimensions of your capacity to empathize. There is a daily empathy check-in, which helps create a rhythm of intentional practice by having you focus on empathetic responding in specific interactions throughout your day. Rather than trying to be empathetic all the time, which often leads to some empathy fatigue or abandonment altogether, you choose three interactions daily where you'll consciously practice empathy, then reflect on how it went. This approach has several advantages. First, it's sustainable. Three intentional interactions per day is achievable even in busy schedules. And second, it's measurable. You can track your progress and notice patterns over time. And lastly, it's forgiving because if you miss a day or struggle with the particular interaction, you simply can try again the next day. Fourth, it builds the habit gradually. After weeks of daily practice, empathetic responding begins to feel more natural and automatic. Marcus is a barista, and his story illustrates how quickly intentional practice creates results. Within just one week of consciously practicing empathy with customers, he transformed routine transactions into meaningful human connections. He started noticing people's emotional states, responding to their unspoken needs, and creating a coffee shop experience that people remembered not just for the beverages, but how they felt seen and cared for. Empathic listening exercises build your capacity to hear beyond words. Listening for feelings behind complaints trains you to recognize that when someone says this traffic is terrible, they're often expressing frustration, stress, or anxiety about being late. And responding to that emotional reality creates connection in a way that commensurates about traffic, creates a connection in a way that lamenting bad traffic never could. Listening for needs behind statements helps you understand when someone says, My kids are grown and don't need me anymore, it's not really about their child's independence, it's about an unmet need for purpose, significance, or value in their own lives. So again, as an empathetic listener, you listen beneath the surface expression. There's something deeper going on, and our empathetic listening skills will help us see it. Next, we'll do perspective taking exercises that will stretch your ability to understand experiences radically different from your own. The Daily News empathy practice has you read news stories not just for information, but to imaginatively inhabit different perspectives. How might the various people in this story be feeling? What might they be needing? What fears or hopes might be driving their actions? This practice expand your empathy beyond your immediate circle to encompass humanity more broadly. Then there's the difficult person practice. This is perhaps the most transformative exercise in today's session. Everyone has people in their lives they find challenging. You know, someone who irritates, frustrates, or confuses you. This practice asks you to generate compassionate explanations for that person's behavior. Not to excuse it, but to understand it. Sarah's experience with her interruptive coworker Mike demonstrates the power of this practice. By imagining possible context for his behavior, you know, maybe he grew up needing to speak loudly to be heard, or maybe he's insecure about his expertise. Maybe his previous job punished silence. You know, Sarah shifted from judgment to curiosity. She became less annoyed and more compassionate, which actually improved their working relationship. The empathy in challenging situations practice is something else we'll discuss, prepares you for when empathy is most needed, but at the same time most difficult. Like during conflict, or when you're receiving criticism, or when you're dealing with anger, or when someone's behavior has negatively affected you. These are the moments when most people abandon empathy in favor of defensiveness or counterattack or even shutdown. But these are also the moments when empathy creates the most powerful impact. Learning to maintain empathetic presence during difficulty is advanced emotional skill that transforms how you navigate conflict and maintain relationships through challenges. Then we'll do the self-emphyce. This recognizes a crucial truth. You cannot sustainably offer empathy to others if you withhold it from yourself. The daily self-emphyks you to turn the same compassionate awareness inward. What did I feel today? What needs of mind were met or unmet? What was I trying to accomplish through my actions? How can I be more compassionate toward myself? This practice prevents the empathy burnout that comes from constantly caring for others while neglecting your own emotional needs. There's a story about Rebecca and her teacher, which shows us how self-empathy transforms your capacity to offer empathy. When Rebecca's teacher learned to speak to herself with the same compassion she offered her students, she recovered from difficult moments more quickly and had more emotional resources available for her students. Self-criticism depletes empathy capacity. Self-compassion replenishes it. Then we'll do a practice, the empathy across differences practice. This will prepare you for increasingly diverse and interconnected exchanges in the world. There in this there is the assumption challenge where we look at generating alternative explanations whenever you make assumptions about someone's behavior. It breaks down the rigid thinking that prevents cross-cultural, cross-generational, and cross-value empathy. The story about Robert's experience with Jessica and her phone use during meetings demonstrates how assumptions block understanding while curiosity creates bridges. Each of these practices builds different empathy muscles, and together they create comprehensive empathy fitness. This session provides challenges that focus your practice on specific domains, family, relationships, service interactions, difficult people, and conflict situations. This structured approach ensures you're developing versatility in your empathy practice, not just strengthening one dimension while neglecting others. By the end of this session, you'll have a complete empathy training program that you can follow for weeks or months, watching your capacity for understanding, connection, and authentic relating grow steadily over time. So save this, like it, and prepare to listen to this lesson over and over to help encourage your empathy skills. You can purchase this book. This is book one in our series, A Beginner's Guide to Effective Nonviolent Communication Strategies, part one, the foundation of empathy, available on Amazon.com. So now let's look at our different empathy skills. Number one, the daily empathy check-in. The daily empathy check-in provides a three point or three interactions that you will track. Each day, choose three interactions where you intentionally focus on empathetic responding. A morning check-in before your day begins, set an intention to practice empathy. The midday reflection, this is when you notice one interaction where you could have been more empathetic. And then the evening review, reflect on moments when you successfully connected empathetically. Here is a short story for the Daily Empathy Check In. Coffee shop employee Marcus decided to use his job as empathy practice. Instead of rushing through orders, he started really looking at customers and noticing their emotional state. Day one, he noticed a woman who seemed anxious and rushed. Instead of his usual Next, he said, Good morning. Looks like you've got a busy day ahead. On the third day, a man ordered coffee, but seemed sad. Marcus added, I hope your day gets better along with his coffee. And then day seven, a regular customer seemed different, a little quieter than usual. Marcus said, Hey, you seem a little down today. Everything okay? The customer's eyes filled with tears. My dad's in the hospital. Thanks for noticing. Within a week of intentional practice, Marcus transformed routine transactions into moments of human connection. By paying attention and responding to those body language clues that we've talked about before, Marcus was able to empathize and make better the experience of his customers. That's practice number one, the daily empathy check-in, where we set an intention to increase our empathetic practices throughout the day. Practice number two, the empathetic listening exercise. Exercise A is listening for feelings. Exercise B will be listening for the feelings behind the complaint. So the empathetic listening exercise come in two parts. Part A, listening for feelings, and part B listening for the feeling behind the complaint. So for part A to listen for feelings for one week in every conversation, try to identify at least one feeling the other person is experiencing. Don't necessarily reflect it back. Just practice noticing and naming emotions. And then for exercise B, listening for the feeling behind the complaint. When someone complains to you, practice identifying the feeling behind their complaint. So here are some common complaints, but the hidden feelings behind those complaints. We said this one earlier. This traffic is terrible. What are some hidden feelings? Could be fatigue. They're tired, they're ready to get home, could be frustrated, could be stressed, could be worried about being late. All of those are hidden feelings behind the common complaint, or could be hidden feelings behind the common complaint. This traffic is terrible. Here's another one. My boss is so unreasonable. What are the healing what are the hidden feelings? Unappreciated possibly. Powerless, frustrated. It's not what they said, but it's being said. Here's another one. I can't get anything done today. What are the hidden feelings, most likely? Overwhelmed, feeling scattered, feeling ineffective. Listen to this story. Linda is a receptionist, and she started practicing with her patient complaints at the medical office where she worked. Here's how she used to respond. A patient would say, I've been waiting 45 minutes. This is ridiculous. She used to say things like, Well, the doctor is running behind. He'll be with you soon. But this is how she started a new empathetic response. The patient says, I've been waiting 45 minutes. This is ridiculous. Linda's new response. I can see that you're really frustrated about the wait. That is a long time to sit here, especially when you probably have other things you need to do today. Let me check on your appointment status. Now, the number of patient complaints Linda received dropped significantly because people felt heard and understood. Let's look at practice number three. That's practice number two, empathetic listening exercises, where we practice listening for feelings and then we practice identifying the feelings behind people's complaints. Many times, let me just add this in here. Many times when people complain, we don't want to listen. We don't want to hear when people complain. What's going to be helpful? You don't have to respond to the complaint. Respond to the feelings you hear beneath the complaint. And it will take some growing to not be annoyed by others' complaints. People complain. That's what people do. And it's very easy sometimes to become aggravated by folks who are complainers, who are negative. You don't have to become a complaining person to empathize with a complaining person. And honestly, the more you're able to empathize with them, helping them see their own feelings, you'll be able to help them move from that complaining personality, possibly altogether. Here's our third practice for developing your empathy skills. Practice number three, perspective taking exercises. This one will be very helpful. Exercise A is called the daily news empathy practice, and exercise B is called the difficult person practice. So, under perspective taking exercises, the daily news empathy practice is when you read a news story and practice imagining how different people involved might be feeling. This could be any story that you see in the news. Imagine for a moment it's about you or about someone you love and how might you feel. Exercise B, the difficult person exercise. All you have to do is think of someone you find difficult. For one week, each day, imagine one possible reason why they might behave the way they do that would make you feel compassion towards them. So here's the story. First one, the difficult co-worker. Sarah couldn't stand her co-worker, Mike. He was constantly interrupting in meetings, and he seemed like he needed to be the center of attention. So for her empathy practice, she tried to imagine what might be behind his behavior. All in her head, she just tried to imagine things that would help her feel compassionate towards him. Maybe he grew up in a loud family where you had to speak loudly to be heard. Maybe he's insecure about his expertise and compensates by talking too much. Or maybe his previous job punished people who didn't speak up. You know, by the end of the week, Sarah found herself less annoyed by Mike and more curious about his spirit his experience. She even started appreciating some of his contributions that she'd previously dismissed. All because she started to imagine and empathize with him, he became less annoying to her. For the newspaper, the daily news empathy. Simply choose a story. It could be a light story, a lighthearted story. It could be a heavy, sorrowful story. But sit with that story as though you were one of the people in it, and begin to imagine their feelings. This will strengthen your capacity to empathize with other people. Practice number four, empathy in challenging situations. Here's the how do we empathize in challenging situations? Here's the exercise. It's called the anger practice. When someone is angry with you, practice empathizing with their anger rather than defending yourself immediately. Again, if someone's angry with you, empathize with their anger as opposed to defending yourself. So what are the steps to doing this? Well, first, take a take a breath, you know, take a deep breath. But then secondly, try to understand what need of theirs might not be met. What do they need that they're not getting? Thirdly, reflect on what you're hearing. Next, ask if you've understood them correctly. And then lastly, address the content of their concern. So here's this story about Jennifer. Jennifer is a store clerk. She's working customer service when an angry customer approached with a broken item. The customer says, This piece of junk broke after two days. I want my money back. And I'm never shopping here again. Jennifer's internal reaction, defensive. It's not her fault the item broke. But here's Jennifer's empathetic response. Oh, that's really frustrating, sir. You trusted this product to work and it let you down almost immediately. Of course you want your money back. Let me see what I can do to make this right. While the customer's shoulders relaxed, thank you. I was just really disappointed because I needed this for a project. By empathizing with his frustration rather than getting defensive, Jennifer turned a negative interaction into a positive one. And who knows, he may shop there again. Here's the next practice. When receiving criticism, practice finding the grain of truth or valid concern within it, even if it's delivered poorly. Here's practice number five. Self-empathy. Before we can truly empathize with others, we need to develop empathy for ourselves. So here's a couple exercises for self-empathy. First, exercise A, the daily self-empathy check-in. Each evening, ask yourself these check-in questions. What did I feel today? What needs were met or unmet? What was I trying to accomplish through my actions? And how can I be more compassionate towards myself? Examine yourself, check in with yourself, with your feelings, empathize with yourself. And then the self-compassion practice is when you make a mistake or face a setback. Practice responding to yourself as you would to a good friend. We give our good friends and loved ones all the space in the world to make mistakes, to be human. We need to do that with ourselves. Here's a story of self-empathy breakthrough. Rebecca's a teacher and she's having a terrible day. She snapped at her students, forgotten an important meeting, and then spilled her coffee all on her lesson plan. Her old internal dialogue would sound something like this. You're such a terrible teacher. You can't handle anything. These kids deserve better. But now, since she's practicing self-empathy, her internal dialogue, oh, I'm having a really hard day, and that's human. You're tired, you're overwhelmed, and you're doing the best you can with what you have right now. Tomorrow you can try again. You see, this shift into self-talk helped Rebecca recover more quickly and actually be more present for her students the rest of the day. We need to empathize with ourselves, give ourselves the grace we are so quick and often to give to others. Practice number six, empathizing across differences. You know, one of empathy's greatest challenges, yet greatest opportunities, is connecting across differences of culture, background, experience, perspective. Here are a couple challenges, a couple exercises to help you. The first is the assumption challenge. For one week, whenever you find yourself making assumptions about someone's behavior or motivations, pause and generate three alternative explanations. What this will do is you will become less convinced of your initial thoughts and which are very judgmental oftentimes, and you will remove many of the feelings, the beliefs you created. And this will allow you to see the person and not your beliefs about the person. Then here is another exercise. Exercise B we call the curiosity practice. When encountering someone whose behavior or choices you don't understand, as opposed to judging them, get curious. Turn to wonder. Begin to ask yourself and and and desire to know what led to this as opposed to judging it. Here's a story about a generation gap. Robert's an older employee, and he's frustrated with his young colleague Jessica, who's always on her phone, even during meetings. His initial judgment, Robert thinks Jessica's disrespectful. She's unprofessional. She's one of those Generation Z or millennials. He's got all kinds of judgment in his mind. But then he started to become curious. Robert decided to get curious instead of annoyed. During a coffee break, one day he said, Jessica, I noticed you use your phone a lot during meetings. Help me understand what's that like for your generation? Jessica explained that she takes notes on her phone, looking up relevant information to contribute to discussions, and that for her generation, phones are tools for engagement, not always distractions. So Robert realized his assumption was wrong that Jessica was actually more engaged than he thought. She's just doing it in a different way than he's used to. So here are some empathy challenges for you. We've talked about quite a few exercises today. Week one, we want to challenge you to practice empathetic responses with family members. Notice how your relationships shift when people feel truly heard and seen. Challenge number two, we want you to use empathy with service workers, cashiers, waiters, random people you run into throughout the day. Notice how your empathy will affect their demeanor. Thirdly, we want you to practice empathy with someone you find difficult. You know that one that gets on your reserve nerves. Look for one thing you can genuinely appreciate about them. Focus on the goods. And then lastly, we want to challenge you to use empathy during a conflict or disagreement. Focus on understanding the other person's perspective before defending yourself or asserting your own. And so, conference line, we hope that has been helpful. We're going to open up the line for a few questions, responses on today.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

All participants are unmuted.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Any comments or questions from today's lesson practices on empathy. Again, this is from our first one of the first books in the series, The Foundation of Empathy, A Beginner's Guide to Effective Communication Strategies. This we've been reading from today is book one, The Foundation of Empathy. Okay, conference line, are y'all still there?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yes, we're still here, Pastor.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Well, praise God.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

I just wanted my answer. Yes, uh, I make sure I heard it right. You said you can uh learn empathy.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Okay, the reason I say that because I had this co-worker a long time ago, and they had a hundred, hundred positive things to words to say. Say, how you doing? I'm doing fantastic, I'm doing great. And he sort of practiced each one of them to the point where it got to the point where it just didn't seem genuine. So uh that's something to be aware of when we practice. I know my son, you know, they would say, You try to use psychology, I know what you're doing. Something to that effect, but needless to say, we just have to be on guard with our empathy as we learn how to empathize, make sure it's sincere to, and I guess the more you practice, the better you'll get at it.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Amen. And you'll see the you will see the the the smoke screens. People will say, I'm doing great, I'm doing fantastic, but their body language is saying something completely different. So we don't respond to what we hear, we respond to what we see, what we recognize, the clues that God is showing us right in our face. We it's better to believe what you see than what you hear, right? Because people will try to throw you off. I'm doing fine, I'm great, but but you don't look it. So what am I supposed to believe? And empathy gives us that skill of knowing how to how to basically pry without being intrusive.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

And the way you sound, the tone of your voice, also like you're doing great.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Well, that could shut it down a little more. I would go more along the lines of someone says, I'm doing great. But here's the empathic response. Someone says, Oh, I'm doing great. Or maybe they don't say it that way. That's a little upbeat. I'm doing great. Okay. You know, your response is, well, I noticed you came in a little down than normal. Your shoulders a little slunched. You can provide details, you can provide the information that you're using, but it's empathy because you're connecting with the feelings you see. And I like what you said there, Evangelist. Oh, it doesn't sound great. It sounds a little melancholy. You know, that is inquiring. People love to feel interesting. When you show interest, that in and of itself helps when you show people that you're interested in their experiences, what they're going through. Not by telling them how to feel, not by correcting them, not by advising them, not by, you know, educating them, giving them something they never thought of, or trying to do so at least. That's not the way. But empathy, showing that interest, that curiosity, how are they feeling? That works. That goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Yes, and that reminds me of something my daughter does for my grandbabies. You know, sometimes she comes to, you know, home and says, you know, how was school? It's okay. And then that leads to another question of it was, you know, how come it wasn't great? What happened? You know, try to get that interaction going. And then the morning, you know, especially when you were single, you know, you know the child, you need that little communication so you can be in touch with your feelings. And I the reason I have I don't know what the issue with, because back in my days, it's like we couldn't afford these type of feelings, you know. You like, you come on, yeah, you miss with, yeah, you still got to do work, you got to still, and the interaction we're not there.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

You better suck it up. You look, Evangelist Weeds, you come from the generation of we know how to suck it up and keep it going.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

But actually, you don't express every feeling either.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Oh no. Well, here's the thing: you you learn who you can and who you can't. You got folks in your life you can't because they're not skilled enough. They don't know how to handle what you're feeling. But the beautiful thing is you are becoming that person in your family where people can express themselves to because your responses are going to be patterned for effectiveness. You're not going to respond out of your best thoughts. You're going to respond out of your educated thoughts, which are going to be by and large way more effective because you're utilizing the wisdom, the wisdom of God. And I'll give you one more thing before we leave on today for your daughters, something that we use with our kids, something we learned. Instead of asking, how was your day today? Because you're going to always get it was fine, it was good, you're going to get that same response, you're looking for more detail. Our questions are, what was your favorite part of school today? What was the worst part of school today? What did you like most at school today? Questions with more specifics that will cause the kids to open up a lot more. Some of my children are definitely just like their daddy because you know they'll say things like, and I ask them, what was your favorite part of school today? You know, they'll be like, Lunch! I like lunch. That was my best part. Lunch was great today. So, you know, you get to get from them that those details. But then honestly, you know, there'll be times when, you know, especially for one of my children, her favorite times in school is art. And she goes into detail about all of the things she did in art. Now I asked her, how was school today? She'll say, fine. I asked her, what was your favorite part of school today? She'll say, hmm, she's thinking. And then she'll say, art class. And so, what did you do in art? We drew this, we painted that. And so that's something you can pass on for your grandkids, for your daughter, children, to ask more specific, more pointed questions. This will help you empathize a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Thank you, Pastor.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Absolutely. To God be the glory. We're going to wrap up this session. Thank you all so much for joining. Won't you pray with me? Father God, we come in Jesus' name, thanking you for the privilege of prayer, thanking you for the opportunity to beseech your heavenly throne. And all the more, Father, that in this life you teach us, you make us better. Grow these your people, your children, Father God, for the sake of your kingdom. Bless their families, grow their families, Father God, as witnesses, as the compassionate witnesses in the world, the empathizers that help bring people and families together in peace and in love. Father, bless us as we go forward in this day, Father. Strengthen us, use us more and more in thy service, and we will be children. Careful now and always to give you the glory, honor, and praise. And it's in Jesus' name we pray and ask it all for his sake. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, God bless you. We'll talk to you on tomorrow.