Table Of ContentPRACTICAL EMPATHY
FOR COLLABORATION AND CREATIVITY IN YOUR WORK
Indi Young
Rosenfeld Media
Brooklyn, New York
Practical Empathy
For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work
By Indi Young
Rosenfeld Media, LLC
457 Third Street, #4R
Brooklyn, New York
11215 USA
On the Web: www.rosenfeldmedia.com
Please send errors to: [email protected]
Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld
Managing Editor: Marta Justak
Interior Layout Tech: Danielle Foster
Cover Design: The Heads of State
Indexer: Sharon Shock
Proofreader: Sue Boshers
Illustrations: Brad Colbow
@2015 Rosenfeld Media, LLC
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1-933820-48-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-933820-48-4
LCCN: 2014955523
Printed and bound in the United States of America
For all the engineers, designers, writers, craftspeople,
problem-solvers, managers, organizers, and leaders who
have the honesty and passion to help others, to make
stuff happen, and to make it work better. Your energy
and enthusiasm sustains everyone around you.
Also to Matt Stephens
August 10, 1964–March 30, 2010
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is for developers, designers, writers, and decision-makers.
It’s a book about developing and applying empathy in your work,
which means there is a broad range of things you can use it for. It can
help you improve the things you make: policies, processes, products,
services, and written content. It can help you improve the way you
interact with people. So if you are involved in any of these things at
work (and who isn’t?), this book is meant for you. Additionally, the
phrase in your work can represent the things you do that you don’t
necessarily get paid for: volunteer work, class projects, hobbies, clubs,
associations, etc. So the empathy skills you learn in this book will
bleed into areas of your life far beyond what is traditionally consid-
ered to be a paid career.
This book will help you become more aware of your unconscious
habits. If you are in a frame of mind where you’re able to make some
internal changes to your own thinking, this book is for you. It will
help you become more mentally and emotionally mature. If you’re
not in that frame of mind, the concepts in this book will provide you
with a solid framework for improving your career skills.
If you are a manager of any type—responsible for a group of people
or accountable for certain numbers on your organization’s profit-and-
loss report—this book is for you. It will help you support the people
on your team in a way that will help them shine. And it will help you
see a path forward through the jungle of options that will more faith-
fully and successfully support the people you are trying to help.
What’s in This Book?
There are nine chapters in this book grouped into three areas:
• What role does empathy play in your work?
• Developing empathy
• Applying empathy (in the things you create, as you collaborate,
and within your organization as a whole)
iv
What Role Does Empathy Play in Your Work?
Chapter 1, “Business Is Out of Balance,” outlines the core reasons
why focusing only on numeric measurements and scientific-
sounding reassurances blinds your decision-making and
communication clarity. Including word-based explanations
paints the “why” half of the picture.
Chapter 2, “Empathy Brings Balance,” explains how empathy is not
just walking in someone’s shoes. You must first develop empathy to
be able to wield it.
Chapter 3, “Put Empathy to Work,” demonstrates how empathy feeds
into your development cycles. You can develop and apply empathy
purely within your mind, or you can develop written artifacts that
will remind you or your team of what you learned.
Developing Empathy
Chapter 4, “A New Way to Listen,” contains guidelines for your
practice of listening. A good listener concentrates only on what is
being said, and this support establishes trust and rapport.
Chapter 5, “Make Sense of What You Heard,” makes the case for
reviewing each story and writing summaries of the concepts, as
a way of letting your understanding of each person simmer and
deepen. Summarizing is an optional, but powerful, way to clarify
your understanding and also see where you can improve your
listening skills.
Applying Empathy
Chapter 6, “Apply Empathy to What You Create,” covers how to find
patterns in your listening sessions and then use those patterns to
clarify behavioral audience segments and inspire ideas. An empa-
thetic mindset helps you encourage others to solve more varied,
enduring challenges.
How to Use This Book v
Chapter 7, “Apply Empathy with People at Work,” encourages you
to employ listening sessions to better understand and support
your peers, your direct reports, and your higher-ups. Awareness of
your own reactions and the reactions of other people will help you
improve your collaboration style.
Chapter 8, “Apply Empathy Within Your Organization,” walks you
through a series of paths you might take within your organization
to make small changes and blaze a trail away from the competition.
Moving past a focus on technology and methods will help your
organization think its own thoughts about the problems that could
be solved.
Chapter 9, “Where Do You Go from Here?” emphasizes “going small”
and slowly mixing the empathetic mindset into your normal work.
What Comes with This Book?
This book’s companion website ( rosenfeldmedia.com/books/
practical-empathy/) contains a blog and additional content. The
book’s diagrams and other illustrations are available under a
Creative Commons license (when possible) for you to download
and include in your own presentations. You can find these on Flickr
at www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/sets/.
vi How to Use This Book
FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
How are you using the word “empathy?”
This book is not about the kind of empathy where you feel the same
emotions as another person. It’s about understanding how another
person thinks—what’s going on inside her head and heart. And most
importantly, it’s about acknowledging her reasoning and emotions
as valid, even if they differ from your own understanding. This
acknowledgment has all sorts of practical applications, especially
in your work. This book explores using empathy in your work, both
in the way you make things and the way you interact with people.
Chapter 2 introduces the nuances among different types of empathy.
Can anyone learn how to be empathetic?
Curiosity about people is key to the empathetic mindset. A core
inquisitiveness about other people’s thinking and experiences is nec-
essary. This curiosity can be something that starts small and grows
over time. People who have received constant positive feedback for
speaking about themselves might have a hard time learning to be
curious about other people. In addition, people who are used to solv-
ing other people’s problems (like a doctor) will have a difficult time
turning off their deductive thought process in order to absorb more
detail through listening. These criteria are discussed in Chapter 2.
How should I train to increase my empathy skills?
Practice listening to people every chance you get. Practice shutting
down your inner voice so that you can hear more clearly and recog-
nize when you need to ask more to really understand something.
Practice recognizing your own emotional reactions, so you can
dissipate them before they distract you too much from listening to
others. In Chapter 4, there are some practice exercises to try out.
vii
What do I look for in a candidate when I
need to hire an empathetic person?
Look for core curiosity about other people. Look for the intent to
support others better. These are discussed in Chapter 2. Addition-
ally, look for the ability to listen, silence the inner voice, and dissipate
reactions, as explained in Chapter 4.
How can I train my team to be more empathetic?
Teach your team how to listen deeply and show them how to practice
by doing it yourself or with them, over lunch or during meetings.
Additionally, the experience of working through the stories and
creating summaries is a powerful way to improve listening skills.
Summaries are explained in Chapter 5.
How do I clearly convey insights I’ve gained
via empathy to my peers and decision-
makers, even across departments?
Repeat the clearest stories you’ve heard. When you open your mouth,
other people’s voices will come out. An important part of your job is
to “pollinate.” Get these perspectives out among the people of your
organization who need them. Suggestions how to do this appear in
Chapter 6.
How does empathy improve my
interaction design skills?
Empathy doesn’t directly help you lay out the steps of how a person
uses your solution. Empathy is knowledge that lines the inside of
your skull, awaiting the random creative inspiration. When the
inspiration happens, your collected knowledge serves as a founda-
tion to support, hone, or disprove the idea. Empathy helps your team
decide on the overall direction and flow of what you are making
so that it supports the intents of a specific set of people. Chapter 6
shows how this works, and Chapter 8 addresses it in the context of
your organization.
viii Frequently Asked Questions
CONTENTS
Foreword xii
Introduction xiv
CHAPTER 1
Business Is Out of Balance 1
Data and Analytics Take Priority 2
What Makes a Person Tick? 9
Rebalance Your Organization with Empathy 14
CHAPTER 2
Empathy Brings Balance 17
Empathy Is Not What You Might Think 18
Empathy Becomes Your Practice 26
Exhibit Understanding Instead of Competence 28
CHAPTER 3
Put Empathy to Work 33
Development Cycles 34
The Stages of Developing and Applying Empathy 35
The Logistics of Listening 39
CHAPTER 4
A New Way to Listen 47
This Is a Different Kind of Listening 49
Listen for Three Components 54
Follow the Peaks and Valleys 56
Be Supportive 63
Be Respectful 67
Neutralize Your Reactions 69
Harness Your Emotional Empathy 73
Practice Your Skills 74
Summary 76
ix
