Empathy: Empathy is seeing with eyes of another, listening with ears of another and

feeling with the heart of another. The ability to understand and share the feelings of
another. In order to understand another person, we need to try standing in his/her
shoes. Through empathy we learn of how other people would like to be treated by
us.
Systematically check your assumptions: Ask your colleagues for feedback and
constantly check your assumptions to make sure that you clearly understand the
situation.
Since we all are engineering students here, I would also like to connect these with
future professions. If you are a product design engineer, you must consider from the
perspective of the manufacturing engineer.
We can also make assumptions about people. We see a sticker on their bumper, or
hear them talk about a political candidate, or hear what they are doing for the
weekend and we assume we know what kind of person they must be. We often dont
realize our filters are operating like this and we arent letting the person fully reveal
themselves, but rather we are identifying who they must be and then putting them
in the box that fits.