Perspective-Taking Exercise

Purpose

The Perspective-Taking Exercise trains participants to deliberately adopt another person’s viewpoint — a colleague, stakeholder, or customer. This reduces cognitive bias, increases empathy, and improves the quality of decisions by incorporating viewpoints that would otherwise be missed.

At a glance

How to run

1. Introduction (5 min): Explain perspective-taking vs. empathy: perspective-taking is a cognitive skill (understanding what someone thinks); empathy is affective (feeling what they feel). Both are trainable.
2. Identify the other (5 min): Each person selects a real person whose perspective they want to understand better (a colleague, a stakeholder, a customer).
3. Walk in their shoes (10 min): Answer a set of questions as if you were that person: What keeps me up at night? What am I most proud of? What frustrates me about the current situation? What do I need that I’m not getting?
4. Pair check (10 min): Share your perspective-take with a partner. The partner challenges: "Would [that person] actually say that? What might you be projecting?"
5. Insight extraction (5 min): Each person writes one thing they now see differently about the other person and one action they will take as a result.
6. Close (5 min): Group discussion: How did perspective-taking change your view? Where were your biggest blind spots?

Materials needed

• Perspective-taking question worksheet
• Pens and paper
• Timer

Pitfalls & common mistakes

• Projecting instead of perspective-taking: People often project their own feelings onto others. The pair check step mitigates this.
• Choosing easy targets: Encourage picking someone you disagree with or find difficult — that is where the most growth happens.
• Staying cognitive: Try to access both the thinking and feeling dimensions.
• Skipping the action step: Insight without action is wasted.

Inclusion & accessibility

• Allow participants to choose whether to share the identity of their "other" person.
• Provide worksheets in advance for those who need processing time.
• Be sensitive to power dynamics — asking someone to "understand their boss’s perspective" can feel dismissive if the power imbalance is the problem.
• Offer writing as an alternative to verbal sharing.

Variations

• Stakeholder mapping version: Apply perspective-taking to multiple stakeholders in a project.
• Customer empathy version: Use for product teams to step into the customer’s shoes.
• Conflict resolution version: Both parties in a conflict take each other’s perspective before meeting.

When NOT to use this

• When it is used to excuse harmful behaviour ("Try to see it from the bully’s perspective").
• When participants are asked to perspective-take on behalf of an entire group (leads to stereotyping).
• When the exercise replaces direct conversation with the actual person.

Source & further reading

• Adam Grant, *Think Again* (Viking, 2021)
• Daniel Goleman, *Emotional Intelligence* (Bantam, 1995)
• Roman Krznaric, *Empathy* (Rider, 2014)