Term

Empathy

The ability to understand another person’s feelings and needs.

Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

Explained in

• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
• The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook, Bruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz

  The ability to feel and understand what another person is going through. In Perry’s model it grows out of early experience of care.

• On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy, Carl Rogers

  The ability to understand what another person feels and thinks, and to see the situation through their eyes. For Rogers, this is understanding together with the person, not reasoning about them from the outside.

• The Gift of Therapy, Irvin D. Yalom

  The ability to understand what another person feels, and to look at a situation from their side.

• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

  The ability to understand another person's feelings and to share them.

• Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World, Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

  The ability to feel what another person feels and to respond to it.

• Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix

  The ability to feel what another person is going through and to tell them so. The third step of the dialogue in the Imago method.

• The Art of Happiness, The Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler

  The ability to sense and understand what another person is going through, and to see a situation from their side.

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, Marshall B. Rosenberg

  In the author’s approach, attending to another person’s feelings and needs before explaining your own position. It does not mean agreement.

• Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion, George J. Thompson, Jerry B. Jenkins

  In Thompson's sense, the ability to see a situation through another person's eyes. It isn't pity or agreement — it's understanding.

• Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

  the ability to sense and understand what another person is going through, without living it as your own

• How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

  the ability to mentally step into someone else's shoes and feel what they see and want

• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, John Gray

  the ability to understand and share another person's feelings, even without agreeing with their point of view

All terms