Pat Sikora: Another Generation of Teachers

Many years ago I had a training center on the west coast located in the San Mateo Presbyterian Church. During the several years we held LIFE Seminars at San Mateo many people came from all around the Western USA and learned about Listening, Renewed Thinking and Breaking Free From the Past. It was a wonderful few years filled with fun, fellowship and faithful followers of Jesus.

One of my favorite students was a mother and wife named Pat Sikora. She eagerly lapped up the knowledge and skills we offered and before long Pat was teaching others in California. Now Pat is a well known author and teacher with a speciality on small groups. Just go on Google and type in Pat Sikora and buy her books.

Mighty Oaks Ministry is one of her many ways to influence people. In a recent newsletter Pat mentions the things she learned at San Mateo.

Communicating with Empathy

Communication. It's the stuff of relationships, whether in the family, the church, your small group, or the workplace. It's also essential in helping people grow into the men and women God created them to be.

Unfortunately, as our society gets busier and the niceties of former days seem passe, communication can often be an obstacle to relationships rather than an asset. How can you develop the ability to be a more effective interpersonal communicator?

There are three core communication skills in healing relationships. I learned these many years ago from Gary Sweeten in a wonderful class that was then called Apples of Gold. He discusses it in the book, Listening For Heaven's Sake. These basic skills include empathy, warmth, and respect, which are essential before we can move into any form of helping relationship or any degree of intimacy.

We'll look at empathy in this issue, and warmth and respect in the next issue.

Empathy:

Empathy communicates an accurate understanding of the other person's needs, feelings, or ideas and is essential in interpersonal communication. Empathy shows our care and compassion for the other person, but it also helps them move toward health. Sympathy, on the other hand, simply brings the listener into the speaker's pity party.

Empathy does not say, "I know exactly how you feel." That's impossible. Even if we've experienced the same event, it's been screened through our own unique grid of emotions, personal history, and coping mechanisms. Rather, empathy says, "I understand what the issue is, and I believe I understand (or I want to) how you're feeling about it." An empathic response communicates an accurate perception of both the content of the issue and the speaker's feelings about that issue.

For example, your friend is ranting about not getting a coveted promotion at work. A strongly empathic response might be, "It sounds as if you're feeling angry because your boss passed you over for the promotion." The content is what happened--you were passed over for the promotion. The feelings are the person's response to the event--anger.

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