S1/E13: #The Power of Intercultural Empathy - How Empathy Supports a Positive Expat Experience with Marinda Seisenberger

Show notes

Are you an empathetic human being? Are you able to understand another person's thoughts and feelings in a situation from their point of view, rather than your own? In this episode, Frauke and Marie-Christine are not only exploring why empathy and more specifically intercultural empathy is such a powerful skill and how it supports a positive expat experience but they also wonder what steps we can take to become more interculturally empathetic.

Episode Highlights

(00:02:29) Culture Chat: Frauke and Marie-Christine welcome Marinda Seisenberger, who is the global head of trainers, consultants, coaches and a DE&I Strategy Consultant at ICU Business Consulting GmbH. Marinda's passion in life is to make the world home for everybody by training and coaching on intercultural difference. She states that part of being an expat is to make an impact in a country other than your own and empathy can go a long way to helping you to do that. Hence, empathy is not just a future skill but something everyone should aspire to have and practice. Empathy is something the world needs.

Intercultural empathy is one of the key skills needed to develop a real understanding across cultures. The ability to perceive and feel the world as it is perceived by a culture different from our own is of great significance in many ways. First, it is the prerequisite for effective communication. Empathy leads us not only to experience the feelings of another but also to reflect on those feelings and compare them to our own. Only when one truly understands what the other is thinking are we able to get access to ideal communication. Second, intercultural empathy is essential in helping us to build social connections and establish good relationships.

„I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.“

• Mahatma Gandhi –

Resources:

Goleman, D. (2012). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. United Kingdom: Random House Publishing Group.

Research Study: Chopik, W. J., O’Brien, E., & Konrath, S. H. (2017). Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48(1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022116673910

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