This week we are going to get all touchy feely and learn some German words at the same time. The first word of the week is Fingerspitzengefül, which is a lovely compound German word packed with meaning and umlauts. Fingerspitzengefül (pronounced finger-shpit-zen-geh-fool) translated literally means “finger tips feeling.” Native English speakers might call it “touch” or “intuitive sense,” but none of those words does justice to the German.
Fingerspitzengefül is like having nerve endings scattered outside the body, reporting instantly, combined with the ability to integrate all that information into a seamless mental picture. With fingerspitzengefül, you can see and react to things that are outside your immediate informational flow. A person exhibiting fingerspitzengefül seems to have an almost intuitive feel for the the whole (bonus German word: gestalt) of a situation, be it a key negotiation or an opposing team on the soccer field. Finger-touch lets you anticipate, guess-ahead, shorten time in your favor. Wayne Gretzky of hockey fame once said he was so good because he could “skate to where the puck was going to be.” Battle commanders have been said to show fingerspitzengefül: Rommel and Patton among them, but we might also say, Belisarius or Alexander could feel the whole battlefield too. Fingerspitzengefül takes a smaller opposing force and makes it virtually invincible–you are David to everyone’s Goliath. Finger-tips-feeling is a skill, and it can be learned.
Which brings us to our second German word: einfühlung. Einfühlung (pronounced ine-fuh-lung) literally means “feeling into”; it often gets translated into English as “empathy.” Here again, the actual meaning is much richer. “Feeling into” is the ability to be in the mind of another—almost as if you have moved your sense of self outside your own body. To go back to the battlefield, a commander having einfühlung feels the space his troops are in as if he is there himself. The commander feels into his opponent; how he will react, move, what he will see, or ignore. The word “empathy” captures some of this but misses vast swaths of the intent of einfühlung.
Einfühlung is the key to getting fingerspitzengefül. Feeling-into is the mental scaffold that finger-tips-feeling fills out; the two capabilities make a formidable, unstoppable leader. Even if you’re not a leader, they make a better person. What underpins each of these characteristics is the mental agility to get out of your own head and into another’s and to do it so thoroughly that you know what they are going to do before they do it themselves. It is the equivalent of playing poker and seeing everyone’s hands as the game progresses. At home, you can anticipate the need of a spouse or a child and help before being asked. With a friend, you are checking in before she calls, because you just know that something is up. Einfühlung, believe it or not, can reduce suffering. That alone makes it a skill worth acquiring.
Why should we want these superpowers? After all, not all of us want to be Rommel commanding the Deutsches Afrika Korps. What good can einfühlung and fingerspitzengefül do for us daily? In a business sense, employing these skills makes for more successful outcomes and happier teams. You cannot develop any understanding of fingerspitzengefül unless you work with people you trust implicitly (they are part of your nerve endings; they also have to react in ways independently of you that you already know they will do). Healthy trust and shared goals are a great way to work. Do all this, and your work environment will be highly functional; job satisfaction will increase; empowerment becomes a lived reality. Then there is the act of “feeling into,” a skill sorely lacking in most social interactions today. To einfühlung another, even a competitor, is a lovely act. Feeling-into is not a capitulation, not an act of weakness, but an ingenious act of strength. Einfühlung, when well done, can be the act of loving one’s enemies. Feeling-into is caring about an outcome enough to sublimate your own ego and take on the mind of another; it is strength through weakness.
Try them for a few weeks and see for yourself. Start with einfühlung. Pick a problematic situation you are facing with another person and practice feeling into the other. Let go of being right or wronged and become the other person. Practice prediction: think of exact phrases or actions your “other” will take but then go the extra step of thinking of what their rationale will be. Stay away from any self-righteousness around “knowing”—this is not an act of superiority. When you can do it and feel it as an act of service, move on to fingerspitzengefül. Good luck!