The Continuum from Pity to Compassion

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In order to understand how to design games that include experiences that will help people to feel empathy (Empathy Exercises), I need to be able to understand the range of feeling from pity to compassion.
Here is a chart I came up with that outlines the similarities and differences. It is a draft – so any feedback is welcome.
Rather than repeat the phrases “people feeling emotion” and “people experiencing problems/challenges” throughout the chart, I decided to refer to them as:
  • Person A (people feeling emotion)
  • Person B (people experiencing problems/challenges).

With Empathy Exercises, this chart raises the question, how do you bring someone from pity to at least empathy? 
To start to answer that, let’s start with why it is difficult, if not impossible, to create or market a product when you are feeling pity for prospects or customers. There are two main reasons:
  • You can’t relate to your prospects’ or customers’ problems
  • You don’t think they can solve the problems they have

If you can’t relate to your prospects or customers problems, then you will never understand what they are experiencing. This is where the games in Empathy Exercises can help change that perception (and I have a post about this for tomorrow/Wednesday).

What does it mean to understand what someone else is going through and walk in their shoes? 

Here’s an example. Lets say two people just met in a doctor’s waiting room. One is waiting to hear about the results from his series of blood tests for AIDs. The other is waiting to hear about the results of his biopsy for Stage 4 lung cancer. Both have very different ailments. Both have very different lives. However, the connecting experience is that they both have life thretening ailments and are waiting to hear about their results. Both are most likely feeling similar anxiety to hear about their health conditions, although they are different.
This is what is meant by walking in someone else’s shoes. It may not be an exact situation, but it is about the similarities of the situation. In this case, both are in the situation of waiting to hear news about their lives and what’s next.
The second reason is more problematic and harder to solve. If you don’t think your prospects or customers can solve their problem, then you have a respect problem. And the only way to repair a respect problem is through you and your perspective of your customers and prospects. No one can make you respect anyone else; that is a choice. Often the way to improve respect between people is to start treating them with respect with the hope that grows.

Keep in mind, if you don’t respect someone, that doesn’t mean the other person does not respect you. In fact, the other person may hold you in high regard.

Empathy Exercies may help here because it is possible that if you can relate to someone’s problems, respect may grow out of that. It may be a way to build respect through understanding, but there is no guarantee. There may be deeper issues at hand to cause the lack of spect.

Now, if you fix these problems, you may still have a challenge with your customer and why they won’t buy your product: they don’t recognize that they have a problem. That’s a different type of problem. That means either:

  • You aren’t clearly communicating what you do
  • The prospect/customer simply doesn’t relate to having the problem you solve
  • The prospect/customer doesn’t see his problem as necessary to fix

In some way, you aren’t relating to your prospect or customer so he understands what you do. Again, this is where Empathy Exercises could help you better relate to your customer and inform them of your product and services.

The bottom line: to connect with prospcts and customers you cannot feel pity. Great products are created when you feel empathy for your customers and prospects and want to help them fix their problem. Great marketing happens when you feel compassion and want to solve problems with your prospects and customers and include them in the process. More on that soon.

The Continuum from Pity to Compassion

2 thoughts on “The Continuum from Pity to Compassion”

  2. Hi Linda! Apologies that it took me so long to respond. I saw your comment. Thought: I need to respond to this. Got overwhelmed. And here I am!
    Glad you like it 🙂 and thanks for reading it!
    Yes, this comes from a bunch of ressearch from Brene Brown, psychology research about terms and phrases, especially empathy, sympathy and contempt, the book Against Empathy by Paul Bloom, readings and reseach on curosity, and the like.
    If you want more details, feel free to contact me at info@gearmark.com or through Twitter or LinkedIn. More than happy to discuss. Thanks again!!

    Reply

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