Sometimes people give such great talks that they make you want to cry. One of those people is my girl Carrie Kintz at That Church Conference. I could listen to her talk all day long. Here’s some of her top quotes and key thoughts:
- Empathy is the cornerstone of your digital communications plan.
- When you look at data online, when we first get to know each other, all you know about me are a few data points. You sometimes don’t know how to talk to me. As a person coming to your church, I don’t necessarily know how to talk to you.
- We don’t want to lose the ability to talk to each other.
- Empathy is not sympathy.
- Empathy is not compassion.
- Empathy is not pity.
- Definition of empathy: The ability to understand AND SHARE the feelings of another. The key is “AND SHARE” is critical in digital communications.
- Phil 2:3-4
- It means looking into someone’s eyes and saying “I see you.”
- 1 Corinthians 9:22
- Empathy connects us to one another.
- The church has a reputation of treating people with contempt. We cannot lose sight of empathy.
- Hebrews 4:14 (We have a great high priest in Christ… let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need)
- Data without empathy can be cold, hard and calculating.
- Learn to read data and remember that data represents people.
- Data is the story that your audience tells you about you.
- Is your content the right content for your audience?
- Do not rely solely on data to tell you about your audience. People are more than numbers.
- Use data as a guide for your audience.
- What do you want people to do?
- Where do you want people to go?
- How do you want them to connect?
- Emotions without empathy can be wild, uncontrolled, and selfish.
- Learn how to read emotions being expressed. Remember: emotions come from people.
- Do not respond emotion-for-emotion with your audience all the time.
- Empathy does not mean you have to match the emotion of the other person.
- Take people on a journey to the end result.
- The end of the journey of your audience may simply be acceptance.
- Data + Empathy = Engagement, Relationships & Growth
- Use data to identify your key audience and use emotion to tap into your audience’s hearts and minds.
- Use empathy to tie data and emotion together into highly shareable, conversational content.
- Be smart about when to use empathy. It doesn’t have to be all the time. You don’t want to manipulate people.
- Be slow to speak, and only after having first listened quietly, so that you may understand the meaning, leanings, and wishes of those who do speak. Thus you will better know when to speak and when to be silent. –St. Ignatius
- The first key to empathy is to listen.
- Don’t listen to respond, but listen to understand.
- Ask contextual questions.
- Tap into common human experiences.
- Connect yourself to your audience.
- Consume the Word. It has to be your foundation.
- The Word keeps you in the Truth.
- The Word gives you the Lord’s perspective on people.
- The Bible is essential to what we do.
- We compartmentalize everything and take ourselves out of humanity. We have to enter back in.
- We have to put ourselves in the shoes of our audience if we want to reach them, and we have the greatest example of that in Jesus Christ.
- Effective ministry is being able to put ourselves in the shoes of the people we are in ministry to and with.
Follow Carrie on Twitter at @CarrieKintz.
Follow your favorite church branding and design specialist at @AlyHathcock.
Oh, and because I love Carrie and I love #ThatCC so much, I’m giving away 7 30-minute branding and visual identity consulting sessions via skype. All you have to do is email me at alyhathcock1@gmail.com with the subject line “ThatCC Consulting Session #Free”
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