As an architect, the foremost important skill is ... empathy. It is the ability to perceive and comprehend things from the perspective of others, empathize with their emotions and feelings, and envision oneself in their position.
We live in a world where things are reduced to two camps, its us vs them. Where in fact if you take the effort to bridge the distance, you’ll see that there is more that unites us than that separates us from each other. But therefore you need to be willing to take the first step and that requires courage and empathy.
The IT industry is not different from the ‘real’ world with its own dichotomy of business versus IT. And unfortunately it always seems that these 2 camps are on a collision course, especially when things are not going as planned.
As an architect, I am continually navigating between these two "camps" or as Gregor Hophe would phrase it, I’m riding the ‘architecture elevator’. Empathy is the key to success in this profession, as it enables me to better understand the requirements of clients, stakeholders, and software engineering teams.
The good news is that empathy can be developed. As humans we are naturally wired for empathy. So start training your empathy muscle, be interested in others, learn about their needs, take the time to listen and try to understand their perspective.
I like to end with the following quote from Barack Obama:
“The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes.”