Applied Empathy

1. Empathy is a vital, learnable skill for business success.

Empathy lets us see the world from other points of view and helps us form insights that can lead us to new and better ways of thinking, being, and doing.

Beyond being nice. Empathy is not merely sympathy or kindness; it is a deep understanding of others' perspectives. While often seen as a soft skill, applying empathy in business contexts yields tangible benefits, from improving products to enhancing team collaboration and leadership effectiveness. Companies like Xerox and the music industry paid dearly for lacking this perspective, missing major market shifts.

A skill, not innate. While some may have a natural inclination towards empathy, it is fundamentally a skill that can be developed and applied intentionally. The author's journey, starting a design firm after being fired, highlights how understanding people—bosses, colleagues, clients—was crucial for success even before the term "Applied Empathy" was coined. This skill is particularly valuable when facing problems outside one's usual expertise.

Problem-solving tool. Applied Empathy provides a structured approach to problem-solving by forcing us to step outside our own biases and viewpoints. It moves empathy from an abstract concept to a reliable, repeatable tool for gaining insights and driving effective action in any professional or personal challenge. The GE mammography project demonstrated how deep immersion and understanding patient fears led to innovative solutions beyond just the machine itself.

2. Applied Empathy starts with understanding yourself (Whole Self).

I’ve come to believe that we have within us seven distinct facets of self.

Know thyself first. Before effectively understanding others, it is crucial to understand your own inner world. The author's personal journey, including physical injury and exploration of Eastern medicine and spiritual practices, revealed the importance of connecting with different aspects of the self. This self-awareness is foundational to developing genuine empathy for others.

Seven facets of self. The concept of the Whole Self outlines seven distinct aspects within each person that, when aligned, lead to self-understanding and effective interaction with the world. These facets include the Physical, Emotional, Inspired, Community, Intellectual, Mindful, and Aspirational Selves. Recognizing and working with these different parts of yourself helps you understand your own biases, motivations, and how you show up in different situations.

Cultivating self-awareness. Practices like meditation, therapy, or even simple exercises like using your non-dominant hand can heighten self-awareness and presence. Understanding your Whole Self allows you to identify which "I" is driving your actions and align with your more essential, capable self. This internal clarity is a prerequisite for truly connecting with and understanding others.

3. The Seven Empathic Archetypes provide diverse lenses for understanding others.

The archetypes help shake us out of old patterns and guide us toward new, exciting paths.

Personas for perspective. The Seven Empathic Archetypes are distinct personas representing different ways of being and understanding the world. They serve as tools to help individuals step out of their default modes and cognitive biases, offering new perspectives on problems and people. Identifying with these archetypes helps pinpoint personal empathic strengths and weaknesses.

The seven archetypes:

• Sage: Be present, inhabit the here and now.
• Inquirer: Question, interrogate assumed truths.
• Convener: Host, anticipate the needs of others.
• Alchemist: Experiment, test and learn at all costs.
• Confidant: Listen, observe and absorb.
• Seeker: Dare, be confident and fearless.
• Cultivator: Commit, nurture with purpose and intentionally grow.

Developing flexibility. No one operates solely from one archetype; we all possess elements of each, though some are more comfortable than others. By intentionally practicing behaviors associated with less comfortable archetypes, individuals can increase their empathic dexterity. This flexibility enhances collaboration, management, and leadership by allowing for varied approaches to understanding different people and situations.

4. Applying empathy reveals opportunities by analyzing Company, Consumers, and Context (Empathy Venn).

When an Empathic Opportunity emerges, powerful growth can result.

The Empathy Venn framework. To gain a comprehensive understanding of a situation or problem, the Empathy Venn (EV) framework analyzes the intersection of three key areas: Company, Consumers, and Context. This structured approach ensures that analysis goes beyond internal perspectives to include external realities. It helps identify where needs, capabilities, and external forces align.

Analyzing the three C's:

• Company: Examine internal elements like products/services, team, leadership, brand, and behaviors. Understand what makes the company tick and how it functions.
• Consumers: Identify all relevant audiences, not just end-users. This includes media, intermediaries, shareholders, and potential employees, understanding their needs and how they consume information.
• Context: Consider the broader ecosystem, including direct/indirect competitors, cultural zeitgeist, and technical trends. Understand the external forces shaping the environment.

Identifying opportunities. The overlap of these three circles represents an Empathic Opportunity – a sweet spot where the company's capabilities align with consumer needs within the current context. The Polaroid example illustrates how failing to consider the changing technological context (digital cameras) led to missing a critical opportunity and eventual bankruptcy, despite understanding their company and consumers.

5. Acting on empathic opportunities requires aligning internal People, Processes, and Principles.

Your products and services are artifacts of your culture and behaviors.

Internal readiness is key. Identifying an Empathic Opportunity is only the first step; acting upon it requires ensuring the company's internal structure is aligned. This involves examining and potentially adjusting the organization's people, processes, and principles. Without this internal alignment, even the best opportunities can be missed or mishandled.

Aligning internal elements:

• People: Do you have the right team with the necessary skills and mindset to pursue the opportunity? This may involve training existing staff or bringing in new talent.
• Processes: Do current operational procedures support the desired direction? Outdated or misaligned processes can hinder innovation and effective action.
• Principles: Are the company's core values and culture conducive to the opportunity? A risk-averse culture, for example, will struggle with opportunities requiring bold moves.

Culture shapes output. A company's products and services are direct reflections of its internal culture and behaviors. If a company aspires to be innovative but lacks innovative thinkers and processes, its output will not be innovative. The automotive client example shows how a desire to be seen as innovative required fundamental changes in team skills, operational processes, and even financial evaluation metrics to support risk-taking.

6. External alignment through Conversations, Behaviors, Relationships, and Memories brings empathy to the market.

The establishment of a brand memory is the greatest indicator of empathic alignment between a company and consumers with a shared context.

Connecting with the world. Once internal alignment is established, the next step is to translate the Empathic Opportunity into external action that resonates with audiences. This involves a deliberate approach to how the company interacts with the world, focusing on four key aspects. This moves beyond traditional marketing tactics to build genuine connections.

Four aspects of external alignment:

• Conversations: Clearly define what messages the company wants to communicate, to whom, through which channels, and most importantly, why. Authentic conversations build trust.
• Behaviors: Determine what specific actions the company wants to elicit from its audiences (e.g., purchase, engagement, advocacy). Conversations should strategically lead towards these desired behaviors.
• Relationships: Cultivate ongoing connections with consumers based on mutual understanding and value. This requires anticipating consumer needs and preferences for communication and interaction frequency.
• Memories: The ultimate goal is to imprint a lasting, meaningful memory in the minds of consumers about what the brand stands for. This is achieved when conversations, behaviors, and relationships are consistently aligned with the brand's purpose.

Building authentic connection. Brands like Nike, Tesla, and Amazon successfully create specific brand memories because their external interactions are consistently aligned with their core purpose. The fashion brand example illustrates how shifting from purely product-focused content to conversations about shared passions (music, design, food) built authentic connections, leading to increased engagement and sales.

7. Navigating organizational tensions is key to fostering an empathic culture.

The only way to get past them is to approach them with empathy for where the business is today and where it wants to go.

Challenges of change. Implementing empathy within an organization often surfaces inherent tensions that must be addressed. These are not binary choices but spectrums along which a company operates. Understanding where your organization sits on these spectrums is crucial for identifying areas needing adjustment to become more empathic and effective.

Four key tensions:

• Objective vs. Subjective Decision-Making: Balancing data-driven choices with intuition, perspective, and human factors. Empathy helps make subjective decisions more informed.
• Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Culture: Managing the flow of information and decision-making authority. Empathic cultures find ways to value input from all levels without falling into analysis paralysis.
• Human-Centered vs. Ecosystemic Thinking: Designing for the end-user while also considering the broader social, economic, and competitive context. The Hummer example shows the danger of focusing only on human-centered design without considering the ecosystem.
• Passive vs. Proactive Leadership: Deciding when to gather more information and when to act. Empathic leaders know how to consider diverse inputs without becoming paralyzed by conflicting data.

Constant calibration. Effective leaders recognize these tensions and continuously calibrate the organization's position along each spectrum. This requires awareness of the company's current state and its desired future. Embracing these tensions with openness allows for necessary adjustments in people, processes, and principles to build a more resilient and empathic culture.

8. Connecting to your company's origin story provides timeless guidance.

Often the best way we inspire our clients for the future is when we connect them to the most indigenous part of themselves, to understanding why they were founded and why they are still here.

Roots provide direction. In a rapidly changing world, companies can lose their sense of purpose and direction. Reconnecting with the organization's origin story—understanding why it was founded and its initial spirit—provides a powerful anchor and source of inspiration. This "brand indigeneity" is like the ancient wisdom that has sustained indigenous cultures for millennia.

Building blocks of lasting culture:

• Origin story: The foundational narrative of how and why the company began.
• Language: The shared lexicon and internal shorthand that defines the culture.
• Traditions: The rituals and practices that engage the community and reinforce values.
• Purpose: The fundamental reason for the company's existence.

Reviving the spirit. Companies like GE, founded on Thomas Edison's spirit of invention, falter when they deviate from this core purpose (e.g., becoming a bank). The Levi's Workshops project successfully revitalized the brand by connecting with its pioneer origins and translating that spirit of craft and adventure into modern-day collaborations and community engagement. This showed that the brand "does" rather than just "sells."

9. Rituals and consistent practice build empathic reality.

We don’t create a ritual for its own sake; we ultimately want it to become so interwoven into the tapestry of our culture that our reality changes—that we become what our rituals aim to personify.

Practice makes permanent. Developing empathy, both personally and organizationally, requires consistent practice and the establishment of intentional rituals. These rituals move empathy from an abstract idea to an ingrained behavior that shapes the company's reality. Treating the company like its own best client, as Sub Rosa does with "Sub Rosa Day," ensures internal focus and growth.

Examples of empathic rituals:

• Regular team check-ins: Going beyond work updates to understand personal well-being and struggles.
• Project retrospectives: Objectively evaluating completed work to identify lessons and opportunities for improvement.
• Skills development workshops: Addressing team deficiencies and fostering growth in areas like communication or specific methodologies.
• Structured feedback processes (e.g., CLEAR): Providing a framework for sharing information and emotions constructively.

Culture transformation. These rituals, when consistently practiced, become part of the organizational tapestry, changing the culture from within. They foster interpersonal empathy by demonstrating investment in team members' growth and understanding. The goal is for the rituals to become so natural that they transform the company's reality, making empathy an inherent part of how things are done.

10. Empathy is the foundation for effective leadership and personal growth.

Empathy for myself, an ability to view my own progress as objectively as possible, has been essential to my growth.

Leading with understanding. Effective leadership is deeply rooted in empathy – understanding the motivations, strengths, and challenges of team members. Leaders like Satya Nadella at Microsoft demonstrate how centering empathy can reorient a business and foster a thriving internal culture. Mentoring, when done empathically by listening and seeking to understand, is a powerful tool for developing others.

One career, many paths. In today's dynamic world, careers are rarely linear. Recognizing the consistent themes and core skills that run through seemingly disparate endeavors is key to personal fulfillment and effective leadership across different roles. The author's diverse pursuits (studio head, medicine practitioner, retailer) are unified by the core skill of problem-solving with empathy.

Unlocking innate gifts. Everyone possesses unique, powerful gifts, like a "tuba savant" who just hasn't tried playing yet. Applying empathy to yourself, through self-inquiry and experimenting with different perspectives (like the Empathic Archetypes), can help uncover these hidden talents. Fearlessly pursuing these gifts, even if they seem unconventional, leads to satisfying work and personal actualization.

Last updated: May 9, 2025