Empathy as a Skill

Humans at Work with Michael Glazer

Decades of declining empathy levels and skyrocketing levels of burnout and loneliness have left organizations disconnected, anxiety ridden and suffering in ways that contribute to low morale and high absenteeism. Too many of us have forgotten that human understanding is the core of all success. Whether we’re leading ourselves, others or organizations, cultivating the mindset and skill of empathy helps us all thrive.

Mimi Nicklin is the internationally bestselling author of Softening the Edge, the host of the Empathy for Breakfast Show podcast, the founder of Empathy Everywhere, the world’s first empathy platform, the CEO of the world’s most free advertising agency, Freedm.

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Episode Highlights

2:07 What links infinite growth of material consumption and empathy

5:27 Regenerative leadership

7:01 Balancing capitalism and humanism

9:56 How to move from responding to listening

13:25 The extent of human disconnectedness today

15:04 (Re)connecting with people is a choice

21:12 Making time to connect. How much time is needed

24:44 What we can learn from Zulu greetings

26:17 Mimi's story of creating an "empathy advantage"

33:26 The paradox of adding distance to build empathy

35:31 Using empathy to balance conflicting team needs

37:37 Links between creativity and empathy

39:27 Using empathy to deepen client relationships

44:11 The role of self-empathy

Mimi’s view on the greatest unmet wellbeing need at work today

“Ageism, because I think whether you're very young or on the top end of your career, there are very little systems and support...people that are 45-plus. The impact of that is huge and vast, all the way to people that are committing suicide, because they are horrendously thrown out when they turned 50. And nobody wants them anymore, particularly in creative industries, where where we tend to skew young. So I would say that the biggest impact on on workplaces from a wellness point of view is an inability to really understand the 'aging employee.'

And there is so much we could be using [their] experiences for in a way that creates more wellness, for them, and for everyone that gets to learn and grow and experience them. And instead, we are incredibly bad at integrating that we're incredibly bias and discriminatory and quite segregated.”

What “working with humans” means to Mimi

“The ability to work alongside our shared humanity, recognizing that we're all far more alike than we are different. And, we're people first. We are all human beings. There is a hugely innate amount of our being that is exactly the same well before we decipher, or define ourselves as one role or one skill set versus another. So, for me working with humans just means that we're working with people just like us.”

Resources

Follow Mimi: Empathy Everywhere and Freedm

Read: Softening the Edge

Listen: Empathy for Breakfast Show