I don't know about best but other effective and often used methods of getting things from people include:
* Instilling a deep fear in them, so they avoid crossing you or look to you as their savior.
* Manipulating their sense of worth so they need what you are offering them to merely feel OK about themselves.
* Creating the impression that you are so important and highly valued by others that getting only the smallest amount of time from you is a great blessing.
* Telling them that other people are awful and out-to-get them, so that they need to work with you to oppose those other, awful people.
I try to avoid doing this kind of thing but these are methods that have made many people much money and earned them many dollars. Empathy is great, I support empathy and try to practice it whenever I can. It's also important to understand that real empathy isn't necessarily a skill that will help you get ahead in the present work world. Often it's a "skill" that others will aim to exploit in you.
Don't confuse being a good person and being a successful person. You might be able to be both but they definitely two different, uh, "paths". I'd encourage being a good person more than being a successful but I think everyone should have their eyes open concerning our modern world.
This is the dangerous line this article is suggestive toward: empathy as a tool for manipulative gain.
I wonder if someone truly naturally capable of understanding differing perspectives would even write such an article. It sounds more like a robot discovering a trick they can utilize to score points.
I think empathy is a sense. When I read some people talking about it in this way, it feels like deaf people thinking they're able to hear music because they found a trick of feeling the speaker's bass.
It's not hard to see how you might feel offended by a comment that took the very experience you were talking about (deafness) and used it to contrive an example of not one, but two repugnant qualities. Yet instead of lashing out, you channeled that into understanding, while still honoring your own reaction. That takes both subtlety and skill. Thanks for giving us an example of the thing we're talking about.
It's also the main thrust of famous works such as "How To Make Friends And Influence People".
Anywho, I used to be one of those kids with little to no capacity for empathy. I wasn't horrible, I would never have hurt anyone, but I had a really hard time relating (nor was I trying to). My pre-school teacher mentioned to my parents that something was off with me (they just thought I was a weird kid), it seemed I had no notion of social feedback, putting me somewhere on the autism spectrum.
Turns out I was going completely deaf, which on the long run ended up being a blessing in disguise (also because I more or less recovered my hearing later on).
Being deaf, you learn to read people as if they came with an instruction booklet, it comes very naturally. I saw how other people had those reactions, emotions showing in their faces, their body language and so on, and how it affected others. I started feigning it and playing with it, effectively manipulating people into reacting the way I wanted them to.
As time moved on, some of these things started coming naturally and it soon hit me like a brick: the best way to get things from others is to understand where they stand emotionally and to show reciprocation and support, i.e. empathy.
It often makes me wonder whether empathy is purely an acquired trait, or if some people have a strong predisposition for it.
The one major drawback of empathy, in my opinion, is feeling utterly useless when you see other people repeatedly hurting themselves, usually thinking they're doing the right thing. It pains me, deeply, but I suppose it's a necessary side-effect.