Why do people who send group wishes have an "empathy defect"

I looked at the mass blessings bombarding me with a helpless smile. How could this person not pay attention to this for a year or two? Scrolling up, there were copy-pastes of his New Year's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, May Day, and last year's Spring Festival. I even doubted whether he knew who I was.

I believe his original intention is good, so we don't need to overly criticize him for being "hypocritical" or "formalistic". But no matter what, I would never dare to recruit such a person when recruiting, nor would I recommend him to others. Why? Because he is not good enough in at least a few key qualities.

01. Lack of empathy

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes and understand their feelings. People who send group wishes are poor in this aspect.

1.1 Lack of empathy: What kind of person is the other person?

The people who receive the mass blessings may be elders, classmates or colleagues in terms of their roles; they may be close friends, acquaintances or just acquaintances in terms of their closeness. Can the tone of blessing for these people be the same? The same text content will inevitably bring a weird feeling, for example:

• My best friend is unhappy: I’m calling for war for you, and you’re sending group text messages to me?

• Customer's embarrassment: Do we know each other well? You call me brother or sister...

Even if there is no such deviation, if you find a universal and vague greeting, it will feel like scratching an itch. What communication effect will it have? People are not idiots. They can tell at a glance that you are sending a mass message and your sincerity is limited. They even feel bad to reply to you with a "have fun together" - why should I type a reply manually when you can just bombard me with one click?

1.2 Lack of “putting one’s place”: What is the other person’s situation?

The scene determines the audience's expectations to a large extent. The group blessing will eventually fall into the scene of a single chat, and the other party's expectations may be: xx has replied to my message, there is an important notification. But you are so good, just show your presence and recite a poem to everyone: I wish you well with the sound of firecrackers...

There are so many cases like this that we automatically lower our expectations for news during the holidays, but we still can’t resist the madness of some people. They calculate the timing and bombard in advance: I’m afraid that the firecrackers on the morning of the first day of the new year will be too loud and you won’t be able to hear my blessings…

What is the biggest problem here? It is the forced mismatch of scenarios: a one-to-one scenario is forced with a one-to-many experience. The gap between the experience and expectations will inevitably lead to disappointment and disgust.

You may say that the public account push is also a one-to-one scenario that provides one-to-many broadcasting! Come on, that is the expectation of users before subscribing, what about you? When I add you as a friend, do I want to focus on you and listen to your broadcast blessings?

1.3 Lack of empathy = difficulty influencing others

If it is a closed job (such as programming, experimental research), lack of empathy is acceptable. But if it is an open job, directly facing customers/users, it will really be a blind eye.

For example, in administration, it is important to understand the difference between internal documents and single-point communication. Many HRBPs like to copy company terms and communicate rigidly during single-point communication.

For example, when it comes to door-to-door marketing, you should know that the slogans for stalls in science and technology parks and university towns must be different, and the flyers distributed to girls may be very different from those to boys.

For example, when reviewing product data at the end of the year, if the data you publish has nothing to do with individual users, it is not appropriate to use push.

People who send mass blessings are lacking in the ability to "put themselves in other people's shoes". They are also likely to perform mediocrely in external communication and influencing others, and have low satisfaction levels. How dare I hire them?

02 Being unstable in self-requirements

In fact, these friends who send group blessings have high self-requirements. They require themselves to show some appreciation to their relatives and friends during festivals and holidays to maintain their relationship. They even tried to send individual blessings to do better, but they couldn't stick to it.

Why?

2.1 Give in to your own comfort

In the process of editing blessings individually, we will feel tired, troublesome and hard. If we do not have stable self-requirements, our mentality will immediately turn into self-paralysis and self-comfort:

It's not that bad, right? Others do it too! It's not that important, so it's OK...

This is because one's self-requirements are unstable and one is prone to give in to self-comfort. Then one will regret - comfort oneself - regret - comfort oneself, and the cycle repeats itself.

2.2 Unstable is worse than stable.

In the workplace, instability in self-requirements is more worrying to managers than stability.

He may come to you on a whim and enthusiastically start a project, ask for a team, and be full of energy and fighting spirit. But when he encounters obstacles and difficulties, he becomes depressed, lowers his self-requirements, makes excuses, and delivers sloppily, and a large amount of team resources, time costs, and opportunity costs are lost.

For people who always have low self-requirements, we can estimate their output more accurately, so that we won’t be caught off guard whether to cut them off or find someone to replace them.

Of course, either one is not good for the team, and we need to demand ourselves to maintain stable teammates at an upper-middle level.

03 Not smart enough in strategy selection

Some friends may say that human energy is limited, so how can we pursue perfection in everything? Even if we pursue perfection in some things, the cost-effectiveness is very low.

That's right. But I want to say that cost-effectiveness may be a cover for lack of ingenuity. Take the task of sending group text messages to maintain relationships as an example. We can completely use ingenuity at a low cost to achieve better results.

3.1 Peak-shifted delivery

Don't join in the group messages during the Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. It will only make people annoyed.

You can wish your female friends a happy "Girls' Day" the day before Women's Day, send blessings to colleagues with children on Children's Day, and send gratitude text messages to seniors in the workplace on Teachers' Day...

This not only shares the pressure of maintaining daily relationships, but also gains more attention and impression points. Anyone who uses it knows the effect.

3.2 Borrowing tools and techniques

If you want to send group text messages, Excelsms can help you do it. It also supports setting variables in text messages and filling in different content (such as names) according to different objects.

(Don’t know how to get the Excel version of the address book? Have you heard of QQ Sync Assistant?)

If you want to send a WeChat message, you can just copy a general one, use the PC version of WeChat to select the person - paste - add the other party's nickname. It is not much trouble, and the actual effect is very good (the reply rate is almost 100%, and some people will be moved by your exclusive blessings).

What to do if you have too many contacts? You can also use the money for a dinner party to pack a QQ QR code red envelope (WeChat is not available for the time being, it will be invalid), send it to your circle of friends, and say "long time no contact, thank you for not blocking me, scan the code to receive the red envelope and chat with me", doesn't it sound good?

3.3 Pursuing better does not mean going to great lengths

There are many optimization strategies, and the cost is not necessarily high. Why do many people still use the crudest mass blessing method? Maybe they are not paying enough attention, or maybe they are not smart enough.

In the eyes of smart people, pursuing better does not mean going to great lengths.

In real work, we often encounter similar situations. For example, when developing a certain APP function, a junior comes to tell you that this optimization cannot be done and the cost-effectiveness is not high. But when you go around and propose a coping strategy, you find that the obstacle is solved and the developer says it can be done in half a day. The gap in the middle may be experience or spirituality.

If someone repeatedly uses poor strategies without optimizing them, or is unable to optimize them, how can I have the confidence to hire him to work with me?

04 Conclusion

Poor empathy, unstable self-requirements, and unwise strategic choices are the three main reasons why I will never hire people who send mass blessings. It's not that these people are necessarily like this, but from my perspective, it is likely to be like this.

I am not exaggerating, but I think that life is like work, and life and work are inherently connected. If someone's social behavior and strategies are so crude, how can we expect him to perform well at work?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.