Applied Empathy: The New Language of Leadership

by Michael Ventura

Empathy is a squishy word. Sometimes it’s confused with sympathy or misinterpreted as “being nice.” That isn’t empathy. Empathy is about understanding. 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.

use empathy to look at problems differently and create solutions that not only disrupt conventions but use empathy as a powerful tool.

help them evolve their businesses with empathy.

Empathy lets us better understand the people we are trying to serve and gives us perspective and insight that can drive greater, more effective actions.

“If you don’t get into trouble, you’ll never learn how to get out of it.”

With empathy, complex problems become more understandable, teams become more effective, and companies become more nimble.

we’re able to do something special that consultants rarely get the chance to experience: we actually get to enact the solutions we recommend. We’re not just recommenders, we’re doers.

But too often the solutions the consultants produce are disconnected from the implementation.

In a word, the consultants lack empathy.

the connection between thinking and doing, between recommending and acting—that is what real empathic problem-solving requires.

I was unconsciously moving through life while my mind continued to race through an inner monologue at a million miles an hour.

I was always thinking about something else. Where I was going. The meeting I had just left. What I wanted for dinner. Anything other than the present moment

I have a friend who hosts a monthly dinner and leaves a card on every guest’s plate as a way of sparking new and deeper conversations around the table.

The more diverse the panelists, the more conflicting their views, the better the audience responds. Our listeners gain a more all-encompassing sense of empathy for a topic or an industry when they can hear about it from all of its different sides.

that your alumni are your strongest allies.

from ad hoc course work and education to a mission we called “lifelong learning.”

Jeff drew up a perfectly fitting analogy of the evolution of our company’s culture. He said that in a company’s early days, the founder is the sun. The founder provides light and warmth to help the company grow. He (in my case) is also a big force that holds the planets in orbit. Without the founder, all the planets would spin out, and the solar system would cease to exist. But as a company grows, it is often impossible for one person to remain the sun. It is frequently too much responsibility. And that was happening for us.

The world’s longest-lasting institutions are not businesses but religions, governments, and military forces. They generally succeed because they have the benefit of autocratically dictating the environment in which they operate. Businesses, on the other hand, have to operate within the context of the rapidly changing world around them. If a company cannot continually evolve at the pace of the world around it, it will surely fail.

my teachers taught me that our job is not to heal but to put our patients into a position to heal themselves.

our best work occurs not when we fix everything for our clients but when we empower them with the tools and the clarity to fix their own teams, products, culture, or business.

In its simplest form, Sub Rosa helps companies explore, learn, and grow with empathy.

The first step in the process uses a framework we call the Empathy Venn (EV) to guide a person or team in gaining perspective on a problem they need to solve. The EV is made up of three circles, each representing one of three “Cs”: company, consumers, context.

We utilize a basic five-step process for providing feedback. We refer to it by the acronym CLEAR: C: Check in L: Lead with data E: Emotion A: Agreement R: Resolution

I love to problem solve, and all of my businesses engage me in the solving of problems for others.

Most of us go through life playing it safe, not experimenting or trying new things.

applying empathy to solve complex problems for our partners,

When we fix a problem, we should also deliver to the client enough tools, lessons, and empowerment that they can begin to own their own future.

Pantone knew our philosophy on this and wanted to internalize some of the capabilities and services we were providing. We agreed wholeheartedly and locked arms with the team to help them do just that. We worked collaboratively to identify the company’s existing skills gaps and realized that it needed some new talent. But that talent would replace work we at Sub Rosa were doing. So after we helped Pantone recruit the right people, the new hires first worked for Sub Rosa for a short time in our studio, where they learned the job. After a few months, they moved full-time to the Pantone offices.