A Remedial Course in

EmpathyKaren L Bachmann

@karenbachmann #stc14

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“I think you all really care a lot about empathy. I think you all really know that it’s important. I just don’t think you are always very good at it.”

~ Karen McGrane

IA Summit 2013 Closing Plenary http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/10/18/ia-summit-2013-karen-mcgranes-closing-plenary/

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WHY?

WHY?

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Sympathy

Pity

Kindness

Happy for

Any emotional reaction to someone’s situation

What empathy is not...

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GreaterGood: Ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

Merriam-Webster: the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions; the ability to share someone else's feelings

What is empathy?

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Affective empathy: sensations and feelings we get in response to others’ emotions

Cognitive empathy: ability to identify and understand other peoples’ emotions

Emotional intelligence: the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions

Variations on a theme

A mindful, intellectual process for sharing an

emotional connection with another person

My working definition of empathy

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Biologically wired to care

Limbic System by Bruce Blaus (Wikimedia Commons)

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Feeling vs. ThinkingWhere did we go wrong?

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Scalability of empathy

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Scalability of empathy

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Why are we like this?

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Data > People

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Business vs. Empathy“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

‘Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XNKe1cGucY 18:26

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A remedial course

“Empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on, intellectually.”

~Tim Minchin

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Innovation and creativity emerges from caring about people facing problems

Empathy is critical to economic innovation

Trust economy is about people

Sharing economy is about trust

Communication is harder and more critical than ever and empathy builds connections

Why do we need to return to empathy?

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Wired: A related example

How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other

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Change our language

Use the language of people we engage with

Take care of the people you engage with in how we talk to them and of them

Change our approaches

Spend time really immersed in the “problem space”

Change ourselves

Practice empathy

How?

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Users, certainly

Teams and collaborators

Partners and extended teams

Peers and colleagues

Everyone?

Mankind is my business

“I believe empathy is the most

essential quality of civilization.” ~ Robert Ebert

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Actively listen, don’t judge

Read stories, real stories, of people you engage with

Expose yourself to more people regularly – be curious

Model, mirror, imagine

Be mindful and correct yourself, but don’t recriminate

What we can do

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So let’s connect: @karenbachmannwww.linkedin.com/pub/karen-bachmann/4/a/884/

“Ten years from now many of the information you learn at the conference will be out of date, the only thing will last is the relationship you build today.” ~ Cam Mi Pham

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http://www.freeimages.com/photo/948501

http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1079133

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blausen_0614_LimbicSystem.png#filelinks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indig1.jpg

https://www.flickr.com/photos/globalcitizen01/5908582098/sizes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sanzio_01_Plato_Aristotle.jpg

http://www.datanami.com/2014/01/10/universities_roll_out_new_big_data_programs/

Image credits

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Chimamanda Adichie, Single Story

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, How to Build a Culture of Empathy?

Bobby K. Cheon, Vani A. Mathur, Joan Y. Chiao, Empathy as cultural process: insights from the cultural neuroscience of empathy

Kevin Dulle, Apathy to Empathy: A Business Shift

Will Evans, Design Ethnography for Lean Teams

Greater Good: Empathy

Robert Lee Hotz, Tracing the Origins of Human Empathy

Megan Kapera, Why Empathy is Good Business

Roman Krznaric on Greater Good, Six habits of highly empathetic people

ReadingsUnlike most references in a slide deck, this list is not citations as much as some of the resources that I’ve found interesting and useful at this point in my personal journey with developing empathy. I hope that you find them helpful in your own journey.

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Selwa Luke, How To Care: Three Empathy Building Exercises For Work And Home

Karen McGrane, IA Summit 2013 Closing Plenary: Slides and Audio

Don Norman, Error Messages are Evil

Dev Patnaik, Innovation Starts with Empathy

Jeremy Rifkin, ‘The Empathic Civilization’: Rethinking Human Nature in the Biosphere Era

Skills you need: What is empathy?

Jason Tanz, How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other

Reading to come: Indi Young, Practical Empathy

Readings