Making Empathy Count: Toward Building an Empathic Culture

by Minter Dial, Lena Rantsevich

This white paper, with lead authors Minter Dial (speaker and author) and Lena Rantsevich (founder of Reputy.io), was written using the outputs of an immersive session held in London UK, on July 4, 2023, featuring 25 contributors from a wide array of backgrounds, including business owners, scientists, investors, psychologists, anthropologists, business coaches, Web3 and AI experts, startup founders and artists.The purpose of this white paper is to look at the relevance of empathy in the workplace, explore how to evaluate and measure it, and investigate how better to match candidates with companies. With a complex business outlook, rising mental health conditions and difficulties in recruiting, retaining and motivating talent, the team that contributed to the writing of this white paper saw empathy as a key quality for business leaders.

The road to evaluating and measuring empathy, as well as building an empathic culture, is paved with challenges, starting with the actual definition of empathy. Even among the participants of the workshop, we saw how varied is the understanding of empathy. Measuring empathy to compare with a norm (which is not defined) and checking the progress appears to be complicated, as there is neither a common taxonomy, nor recommended techniques. Empathy is a very special trait and there are typically two parties the one emitting empathy and the other receiving it. In this exchange’, there are bound to be different scales and ways of evaluating empathy. For executives looking to infuse empathy into the business or to use artificial intelligence in a more empathic manner, there is a balance to strike between purpose and culture with effectiveness and profitability. For businesses wishing to create a more empathic culture, it behoves HR to hire people who fit with the business’ culture and intentions.

This paper will look at some of the key questions and practical tools that surround the idea of intentionally making your business culture – and any AI used to support your efforts – more empathic. This paper wishes to set out the strategic issues and challenges involved with making empathy count.

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Here is a list in, alphabetical order (by last name), of the
Aitsi-Selmi MD PhD, Amina
Aranki, Faris
Borrelli, Michael
Chun, Seana
Cooper, Anwen
Gilgur, David
Glennon, Karen
Gildea, Ruairi
Jackson, Emma
Kamofsky, Deb
Kirwan, Ed
Mayhew, Nick
Pathak, Suchi
Phelan, Matt
Polyushkevych, Anfisa
Rahman, Shama, PhD
Robinson, Lena
Rolet, Nicole
Shanahan, Rae
Singh, Abhishek
Slavin, Kirill
Szummer, Martin, PhD
Vargas Gibsone, Bernardo
Velzeboer, Petra
With a further contribution
Yates, Dave, PhD

48 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 25, 2023

About the author

Minter Dial is a professional speaker, author & consultant on Leadership, Branding and Transformation.

His three published books include: Heartificial Empathy (Dec 2018), Futureproof (Sep 2017) and The Last Ring Home (Nov 2016). His newest book comes out January 2021: You Lead, How Being Yourself Makes You A Better Leader (Kogan Page).

Minter has given over 500 talks and seminars to audiences in five continents about topics ranging from new tech trends to branding and digital strategy in the digital era. Minter was ranked top 3 speaker at the Adobe EMEA Summit 2014, 2015 and 2016. His core strength is making brand and digital strategies come to life through his experiential programs.

Prior to running The Myndset Co., Minter led a 16-year international career with the L'Oréal Group – including 9 different assignments in France, England, USA and Canada. In his last post with L'Oréal, Minter was a member of the worldwide Executive Committee of the Professional Products Division. Previously, Minter was Managing Director of the Canadian subsidiary (L'Oréal PPD) and MD Worldwide of the brand REDKEN, 5th Ave NYC.

Before working at L'Oreal, Minter began his career in Product Marketing for the investment bank, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, NYC, for 4 years. Then, he joined a startup, The Myriad Group, Travel Agency for Entertainers, based in Washington DC, for two years, before returning to Europe to do his MBA.

In terms of studies, Minter was educated at Eton College (1978-1982), received his BA in Trilingual Literature from Yale University (1987) and gained his MBA at INSEAD, Fontainebleau (1993).

Minter is board member of the ECV School, based in Paris, and previously NED of Lastminute.com Group. He is passionate about languages, all racquet sports and the Grateful Dead.