The Uber driver asked, “What do you do?” There was dead silence. Why were two erudite executive coaches silent? During our ensuing conversation that evening, Gary Ranker and I both confessed to feeling embarrassed about introducing ourselves as coaches. What’s this about? Gary is well known as a coach for leaders with global responsibilities and […]

Both sympathy and empathy convey recognition, and both forge a bond, but the one is an embrace, the other an encounter. Sympathy overcomes differences through imaginative acts of identification; empathy attends to another person on his or her own terms… Empathy is a more demanding exercise, at least in listening; the listener has to get […]