Empathy Awakened - The Power of an Empathetic Organization - April Jeffries
--
Introduction
There is a wide explosion afoot to better connect with the people. After years of wading through big data and information overload, most recently in isolation, we are realizing the need to go beyond the data, to connect, get closer to people and understand the deeper “why” behind ever-shifting behaviors. Particularly now, in a world of high tech and digital communication, we long even more for the human touch, the opportunity to go deeper. Now is the time to rediscover the people we serve — who they are and who they are becoming, what drives them, what frustrates them and how best to delight them by providing for their emerging developing needs.
Definition: Empathy — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
It starts with empathy. Not the purely emotional kind but one that includes purposeful action and delivery. Action without empathy is reckless and meaningless, and empathy without action is sentimental and soft. As a powerful tool for growing businesses, brands, and organizations, empathy requires a complete circuit — from your head (the business question) to your heart (the people question) to your gut (intuitive understanding) to your hands and feet (motivated action). In fact, empathy is anything but a passive emotional response to another’s circumstances. It is a powerful instrument for problem-solving and it is physically rooted in who we are!
Watch outs — the Dark Side
Some may argue that the past year has pushed us into empathy overload. Our brains are bruised. Just as most weaknesses are strengths take to extreme, there are signs of the “dark side” of empathy particularly when it is inward, and inclusiveness is limited. This can force polarization, creating solidarity through a common enemy which effectively weaponizes empathy and encourages the “cancel culture” that often materializes. The pressure of being empathetic can be hard to handle. Stuck in our limited worlds makes it easy to project our own feelings on others and make leaps of faith that can feel like empathy. But we need to understand everyone’s context provides unique perspective and dictates how they feel. Effective empathy takes you out of your world and into the world of another to see and experience the tensions that inform broader insights.
Developing gut.
Applying an empathetic lens transforms an insight from one that will produce predictable solutions with little emotional relevance to one that taps into needs we didn’t know we had and feels more like an unexpected delightful gift. That kind of lens comes from getting close to living the tension and does not necessarily depend on one’s ability to express it. Once you’ve felt it, you know it.
Empathy of this kind is developed on 3 levels:
· Listen — Deep listening and courageous conversations are the entry point to developing the empathetic lens. Allowing for silence, probing for deeper answers, asking for examples and stories that illustrate are all ways to start peeling back the layers. Frequency and consistency builds connection and with time that intuitive gut can start to develop.
· Observe — Principles of ethnography leverage observation-based tools that can go even deeper. Recognizing contradictions, observing real versus claimed behaviors and beliefs, noticing dynamic shifts when others are present. These are critical in understanding real people in real life.
· Experience — to the extent that we can genuinely live with the ideas, realities and limitations of others, we can get close to what it feels like to be in someone else’s shoes. What is it like to shop with 1/3rd of your normal budget? Now add 3 more family members. Now add sustainability restrictions. You can quickly start to see where priorities truly lie and why.
Return on Empathy.
So, is empathy something nice to do or a business necessity? The tides have been shifting and the pandemic has certainly accelerated those shifts. How we segment our audiences, how we talk to them, the way they shop, the things they need. Seeing those shifts through an empathetic lens and getting ahead of them can lead to increased penetration and frequency.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the Return on Empathy and strong financial results of businesses identified as more empathetic as measured by social conversations, brand perception, diversity, and leadership. CEOs are sensing the need for their teams to be “closer to their audience” recognizing it as a fuel for innovation, supporting the design of new products and services that address emerging needs and create new habits and behaviors. Recognition of corporate reputation that includes a broader sense of empathy — social justice commitments or environmental promises, for example — are strong considerations for purchase decisions especially among Millennials and Gen Z’ers. Employees increasingly expect empathy in their workplaces and leaders see it positively linked to employee wellbeing, motivation, productivity, retention, engagement, team collaboration, reduced stress, increased morale, less burn out and more inclusive attitudes at work.
Build a culture of empathy
Creating a culture within an organization where connection with others beyond yourself is a habit, a way of being, requires consistent ongoing effort, driven by agreed to values and embedded within the daily workings of the organization. Creating a culture of empathy within an organization begins with a genuine assessment of the organization and setting appropriate goals for improvement. Using Behavior Science as a foundation allows for the examination of the factors driving behavior and behavior change within an organization. Be Sci principles can not only show us the “why?” but also the “so what?” and the “what now?”.
- Motivation — How motivated is your organization to change behavior to a more consumer-centric commitment? Are the benefits widely recognized and translated to daily business language? Is there confidence around what it means and an opportunity for people to receive guidance and feedback without risk?
- Ability — routines and ways of working that put consumer centricity at the heart of what you do. Do your teams have the skill and capabilities to be more empathetic? Is it timely, relevant, experiential? Are there programs that help to develop habits of empathy? Are they embedded in your daily routines?
- Processing — How much work does it take to be consumer-centric in your organization. How automatic is it for your teams to answer any strategic question with the consumer in mind?
- Physical — Is the physical setting conducive to always-on consumer centricity?
- Social — do the organizational norms and values support consumer centricity? Is empathy part of the values held by people in the organization?
The most effective empathy program addresses these questions and commits to an “always-on” program of consistent efforts.
Our Program
At Ipsos, we have developed a simple 4-step framework for building an empathetic organization.
4-Step Guide to Consumer Empathy
1. Build your Empathy Muscle. Keeping in mind that creating a culture is no small task, so positioning it as a critical “movement” within your organization is key. This period of cultural shapeshifting starts with training to build the necessary skills to get the most out of conversations, observations and sensorial experiences. We have also developed an empathy evaluator leveraging the Behavior Science principles referred to earlier.
2. Consistent, Easy Connection. Empathy is hardly a one-time engagement. Apply your newly developed empathy muscle to connect with real people in real life on a regular basis. Find the people who can best represent your target and decide on the best way to connect with them with the right frequency. We’ve learned so much about virtual connections and missed so much about face-to-face interactions so moving forward, be intentional about how to best connect given the ultimate objective.
3. Move to Action. The object of all business is to ultimately add value. So now is the time to do what you do best! Bring the thinking, access, and resources of your organization to the forefront and use them to address real problems. Take all you have done to the cognitive level, converting empathy experiences into tensions and implications to be answered by business solutions. Create human-centric ideas backed up with a detailed plan for action.
4. Develop an Empathy Ecosystem. Retaining learnings and enabling them to be shared throughout the business is key to getting maximum value from your program. Find ways to capture and retain knowledge using digital photos and videos when possible or tapping into your organizations knowledge management platform to help organize and make sense of the time you have spent. This will socialize what you have learned throughout the company, avoid repetitive learning and inspire a creative feedback loop through collaboration and collective knowledge.
Leveraging expertise across the process will help you to carefully craft an ongoing program of human connection.
- Put some science behind it. The Ipsos Behavioral Science and Ethnography Centers of excellence provide science-based grounding in the causes of behavior change as well as anthropological expertise in observation and questioning reflected in in our training designs.
- Human Understanding at Scale. History and experience provide deeper and comparative insights and keep you from having to start from zero. At Ipsos, we’ve been talking to people around the globe for 45 years, focused specifically on understanding people, markets and the societies they operate within. From this vantage, we see trends evolving in mid formation and our deep knowledge of cultural values, beliefs and quirks informs our process of empathy development.
- Syntheses and storytelling. Pulling it all together can be a time-consuming art form. Our Curation COE has mastered the skill of managing emotional and physical data and transforming it into powerful stories that bring insights to life.
