This week we continue our vocabulary-building series, “The Closing Word.” Each week we provide a new word to help build your vocabulary and show you how to specifically implement it in business. A well-spoken, intelligent agent inspires confidence with clients and colleagues alike.
This week’s closing word:
Pronounced: (EM-pah-thee)
Noun:
Understanding and entering into another’s feelings. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Notes on “empathy” versus “sympathy”:
Empathy is often confused with sympathy. Sympathy, properly speaking, is when you feel sorry for someone else’s misfortune. With empathy, you mentally place yourself in their position and gain an understanding of how they may feel.
Empathy is often developed through personal experience or reading novels in which you gain an intense understanding for other experiences and points of view.
Vocabulary.com shares this helpful mnemonic device:
If you’re feeling empathy, you’re in (“em“) the feeling. If it’s sympathy, you’re feeling sorry for someone.
Example:
“My father had passed just a year prior, so when our neighbor’s father died, I reached out her withempathy.”
