You are a part of someone else´s experience. We are each other’s reality.
Individuals, groups, leaders and organizations develop through communication that leads to increased knowledge about oneself and others and the common reality.
Empathy is a key factor in both personal and in group development,
Empathy is an antidote to false consensus and to the Abilene Paradox in groups and in private relationships. (Se the first five minutes of this old You Tube video to see what the Abilene Paradox is about)
The goal is to enlarge your “Empathy window” and together achieve free and respectful communication and by that discover a solid ground for creativity.
Susan Whelan and Will Schutz have described different stages in group development. “Empathy play” facilitates the group process as the group moves through these stages.
The stages can in short be described as 1, Belonging and Dependency (childhood), 2, Independency (puberty), 3, Openness and mutually dependency (adulthood).
A “first person” (subjective) view of empathy:
DE Harding´s and Richard Lang´s game changing works are in the deepest sense about the roots of both empathy and love.
See this very short You Tube presentation of their paradigm changing perspective and you get a glimpse of it. Nithya Shanti
A “third person” (objective) view of empathy:
See Jeremy Rifkins film The Empathic Civilization on TED.