Empathy In Small Business

Being a small business owner can be a very challenging task. I think we can all agree on the fact that running a small business takes hard work, and determination. But what about empathy? Does empathy play an important role in making a business successful? Large Corporate businesses often lack that sense of empathy that is found in smaller businesses, but empathy has its time and place. Too much of it can lend its self to disaster. So where do find a balance of empathy? I think everyone has their own opinion on what empathy should look or feel like, and how it should be applied to those around us. Take a small privately own retail store for example. Most of the time people go to these stores to find what are thought to be higher quality

You will have regular costumers, and many times you begin to develop a sort of friendship with these costumers. It is much easier for the employees to bargain products with costumers they have develop a relationship with, than it is to bargain with a new costumer,or those that come in trying to get the best deal. Shouldn't we as employee's treat all customers equally? I mean every costumer has struggles that they might face on a daily bases. Do we take the time to understand the persons financial situation, or other problems they might bring in with them? Paul Bloom would argue against this. The key often is not empathy, but rather compassion. We can definitely take in to consideration what this person’s problem is and do our best to fix it, but we can’t let our emotions and feelings for this person overtake us. We have to take in to account how our actions might affect our business, co-workers, and future costumers. You just can’t go around giving away free stuff to everyone that walks in the door. I feel that this is a critical point made. Because it is impossible for us to have the same feelings for someone we don’t know as oppose to someone we have know for a long time. Yet many of us still let this happen time and time again, its just not our human nature to treat everyone

Think of how your attitude might affect those costumers that walk through the door, your co-workers, and most importantly your boss. Maybe you have had a really bad day so far, or you are dreading having to do something after work. Many of us have very stressful jobs that start to wear on us after a few hours. David Foster Wallace in his talk ‘This Water’ gives us clues of how we can still be successful on days like these. We have a choice, we can think only of ourselves, and go about with a selfish attitude. Saying and doing things that make us feel better, or we can put aside the troubles we may be having, and come into work with a more positive attitude. Realizing that everything we say and do not only affects ourselves, but also those around us. If you have worked in retail you know that if one employee comes in with a negative vibe, that negativity starts the domino effect. First spreading to other co-workers and eventually the costumers. Too much of this and the business begins to slowly fall apart. I can recall several times of going to work at my old job. We had a manger that seemed like he was never in a good mood. You could definitely tell that after a few hours his attitude began to reflect off to his employees. Here we have all these pissed off employees out there helping the costumers. These negative thoughts start to consume everyone’s mind and employees are making more