Most of our work involves convincing someone to do something - join our team, buy our product, use our new feature, refer us to your friends, invest in us, …. An inside-out way to convince someone is to focus on why we want it and what benefit we get from it. We believe in the outside-in way, where we figure out the benefit for others in doing what we want. Empathy allows us to put ourselves in their shoes and focus on their hopes, dreams, and challenges. We tap into this superpower to see reasons beyond our own motives. This empathy is not all goody-goody but extends to doing the right thing for someone even if it causes short-term pain - sharing negative feedback, nixing a project, turning down a potential customer. These tough decisions become easy when we know we are doing this for someone else’s best interests.