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Empathy
tweak the changes accordingly and guess what? People start believing they’re a part of the change.
willing to embrace the change. And then perhaps they even that is how you end up with what’s happening in the world today. who are actually just unwilling to do it, which you don’t know
While empathy is primarily about listening, the process people what they think but if they don’t trust the person asking presented is key, and they can be fairly simple.
“The most amazing leaders start to recognize when something’s not working, and they’re doing the same thing or trying everything they’ve tried in the past and nothing seems to get them moving
“Those questions are the basis for starting a discovery process,” she adds. “Then all they have to do is begin having they can actually open up a dialogue that will create change.”
For clients with the budget to do discovery-based learning, through this process to get the answers they need. Even if the and “Who do I want to learn it from?”
She also emphasizes the importance of building trust and rapport with a spirit of vulnerability when asking for this feedback. For example, share that you don’t know the answer to the problem and that you want to learn from the other party
For a deeper dive into how empathy drives transformation, Bell wrote a book that shows you how to use it to ignite action, clarity and growth for both products and people.
can sense when someone is hiding something, so leaders need to be able to speak openly and honestly about why the issue is important and how the feedback will be used.
“The ‘A’ stands for anchor, ‘I’ is for inquire and ‘R’ stands for reframe,” she explains. “When you can start with anchoring yourself into your reason why — this is what I’m intending — that helps calm your own nervous system so that when you’re from a place of ‘I want to understand who you are.’ And once you inquire, you hear what they have to say, so then reframing is for the purpose of speaking back to them what you heard.
“For example, if you told me that you felt distanced from you were to tell me that and I worked through it using this AIR method, then a reframe statement might be, ‘I hear you’re saying
“When you do that, what happens is building trust in a way so that the other person feels heard,” she adds. “It doesn’t empathy. I don’t think most people in businesses or even families if you stop trying to get agreement and you start trying to get trying to force agreement to one side or the other.”
seriously diving into their own leadership skills, both from a personal and professional standpoint, to become the type of
“That’s been a request more recently from my clients now,” she says. “I have seen that as leadership is changing hands to lead so we can close the gap between people. Empathy is a R
22 February 2026 Render
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