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
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