Empathy and care Sample Clauses

Empathy and care. Among the factors of trust building, empathy and care contribute essentially, prevailing over honesty and openness, commitment and dedication, and even competence and experience. People’s perception that the communicator cares about their fears and concerns counts enormously especially when the topic at hand is not very familiar. A good practice in showing empathy is: - when the source observes the “Cardinal rules” of risk and crisis communication developed by Xxxxx Xxxxxxx in 1988 and largely distributed: “Rule number 6, Speak clearly and with compassion”. Compassion means that the source is perceptive of and respectful of the “passion” or feelings and concerns of the listener. This can be likened to empathy, defined in the classical medical paper by Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx (1991)7 as: “the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s shoes”. Such understanding can be purely cognitive or it can be emotional, or have components of both. The successful physician “directs his arguments to the expressed commitments and concerns” of the patient when dialoguing. It’s one more dimension of what has been said in all the best practice examples above. It is a bad practice: - when the source appears to be “deaf” to the concerns and interests of the audience, and insists on imposing the source’s own point of view or interpretation of facts. It seems like a way to deny the people, and it raises suspicion and can diminish credibility.