Empathy Diagnostics

Dr Jackie King has developed a series of self-administered assessments relating to empathy. These relate to understanding empathy for yourself, empathy for others and empathy within organisations. The assessments included as part of the Ultimate Leadership Framework have been developed utilising the foundations of existing measures and research, with the design thinking lens outlined in The Ultimate Other, and practices from the Ultimate Leadership Framework programmes applied.  The evidence-base for these tools offer diverse perspectives on self-discovery, empathy, personal growth, introspection, already developed indexes, and strengths-based approaches. These elements are synthesised and triangulated in the Ultimate Leadership Framework, through the lenses of design thinking and empathy for self, as well as cognitive, emotional and compassionate empathy. Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person's perspective and thoughts. Emotional empathy is the ability to share and feel another person's emotions. Compassionate empathy combines both, allowing one to understand another's feelings and to be motivated to help. 

The premise of Jackie’s approach is that one cannot have empathy for others without empathy for oneself. From the time of the classic philosophers, knowledge of oneself was considered the highest for of wisdom. This focus on self-empathy as a precondition of empathy for others, through the design process, makes Jackie’s offering unique amongst other leadership offerings.