When was the last time you eagerly dived into a task you didn’t connect with, believe in or understand? If I told you to spend hours creating a complex spreadsheet but never told you why, or where your efforts would lead, how inclined would you be to do it? Yet every day, employees are asked to produce deliverables, attend meetings, or spend time away from their families on work that … [Read more...]
How Purpose Leads to Company Success
What is your long game? Why do your employees come to work every day? What are you here to provide to your customers? What impact do you want your business or brand to have on the world? The Dalai Lama talks about starting to work on the change you seek, even if you don’t live to see it come to fruition. To have real impact, we should all operate our companies like this. For too … [Read more...]
3 Ways to Practice Empathy at Work
At a book signing, the panel moderator told me that she recommended my book, The Empathy Edge, to her friend - let’s call her Jennifer. Jennifer was in a really bad work situation with what she deemed an out of touch manager. Her boss treated her badly, didn’t listen to her ideas and generally acted like he was too busy to be there for his team. Jennifer was pretty fed up by this point, and … [Read more...]
Empathy for Others Starts with Empathy for Yourself
Empathy seems like such an outward, selfless act. And in many ways, it is. You must focus on another person, make space for them, and get out of how you see the situation through your own eyes and hold space as well for they see it. This all sounds very noble. Until a very broken person attempts to be empathetic. That’s like trying to help others put on their oxygen masks when you are about to … [Read more...]
3 Ways to Use Empathetic Insights to Repair a Bad Customer Experience
Have you ever gotten an email from customer service or an answer from a sales rep that left you feeling hopelessly misunderstood? This seems to happen to me more as I get older, and while I completely admit that the common denominator is me, nine times out of ten, it is a result of a brand representative not truly listening to me or “getting” the real issue. When an eCommerce site screwed up … [Read more...]
Go Beyond the Focus Group for Better Customer Insights
Focus groups make me cringe. These false environments place target customers in a room where they are asked a series of questions about what they think of products, services, or ad campaigns. We pay them to be there, get them in a room where they feel under pressure to offer an opinion or make one up, and to consider products or services in an artificial context that doesn’t at all … [Read more...]
3 Tips to Deliver a Great Speech
Have you had to deliver this yet? That once-in-a-lifetime speech. You know the kind of speech I’m referring to: the pivotal presentation that defines a person, cause or culture -- that crucial communications moment your audience members will remember for weeks afterward. This could be a TEDx talk, like one I recently did for TEDx CWRU, or your first all-hands meeting as CEO, or your … [Read more...]
How to Redefine Success with Empathy
Modern market trends, as well as the pandemic, show us that leaders and brands acting with genuine empathy are winning right now. When companies have been there for the community, valued employees, even made tough decisions like layoffs or closures with respect - the market has paid attention. Just look at the media attention lavished on Zoom for offering free K-12 access to schools, Salesforce … [Read more...]
3 Leadership and Innovation Lessons from 50 Empathy Interviews
50 EPISODES! I’ve now recorded 50 episodes of The Empathy Edge Podcast and have learned so much from these inspiring leaders, changemakers, and rockstars. This podcast was a way for me to continue my research and my own learnings about empathy in action after I was done writing the book. And man, I’m so glad I am doing this! If you’ve been listening, you’ve heard from CEO’s, CMO’s, … [Read more...]
5 Tips To End Social Media Overwhelm For Your Business
It’s a Tuesday afternoon. I have to leave, like, NOW to pick up my toddler from preschool. My old black lab has just laid his face in my lap and given me the “Shouldn’t we be walking right now?” eyes. But I’m stalling because for the last hour, I’ve been staring at Twitter, trying to come up with clever tweets. I pull up Facebook and immediately feel less-than. I click over to LinkedIn and … [Read more...]
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