Our natural tendency to see world as we are rather than as things are limits our abilities to connect with others and to make more appropriate or effective choices based on what's right for whole – be it a team, organization, customers, or business partners. If we are not empathic to our colleagues, customers, and clients' perspectives, we will not be effective in selling our ideas, programs, and products.

Likewise, some organizational cultures value and foster empathy more than others. At one point, I coached in a Fortune 100 company where a command and control management style predominated. Empathy was dismissed as a sign of weakness and management failed to see power it held in driving motivation and performance, and achieving results.

Another reason people are cautious about demonstrating empathy is a fear that if I show that I understand, care about, and acknowledge other person's reality that means that I agree with them, and therefore I weaken my interests. However, acknowledging another's perspective and taking it into account, does not imply or mean that we have to agree with them.

While some folks are naturally hard wired to be empathic, anyone can develop empathy behaviors. How do you do that?

- Practice listening when someone approaches you to talk and express feelings if you would typically feel too busy to talk and brush them off.

- Try using open-ended inquiry, such as "tell me more about that" to make sure you understand other person's point of view and their motivation, both in emotion and content.

- Be aware of your ability to adjust your style and approach based on needs and style you are working with., not only verbally but also in para-language such as tone, pitch, volume and pace, non-verbal body language, and dress.

Be aware that even those of us who are more naturally empathic can fail to demonstrate this ability, when we're dealing with something that we have an emotional charge or investment in.

A final safety tip: If you want to demonstrate or develop empathy and experience its' potential power, you must necessarily let go of need and desire to be right, even if you feel and believe passionately in your idea or position. Being right and being empathically curious just don't go together.

(c) Copyright 2003. Manya Arond-Thomas, all rights reserved.

The key is to focus in on one thing that person has that you want to emulate. So many people have thing's to teach you.

You should also look at role models who are at same stage you are so that you can better measure yourself against what they're doing. For instance, who are people in your age group who are more successful than you and why? Yet role models can change by month. You always have to study people, studying what works and what doesn't, always looking for ways to make yourself and your team more successful. There is no overestimating value of this. Because it's very simple: If we are not getting better, we are getting worse. There's no staying same. So I and constantly looking for new role models who might teach me new lessons.

So when you go looking for role models you are not looking for people who do things easy way. You're not looking for people who take shortcuts. You are looking for people who inspire you to seek new heights.