Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Maria Ross
Started reading
March 31, 2020
when you don’t know “the rules” inherent to a particular topic, you’re not afraid to break them.
You can explore in innovative ways, ask taboo questions without hesitation, and tease out unexpected conclusions.
For thirty minutes each day, her team met in a circle and did various exercises to help them “stay in love with people.”
being nice when someone is yelling at you requires a lot of human development and careful system design.
You don’t have to have personal experience with a specific set of circumstances to have empathy. You just need to understand and respect the steps taken along that journey.
Empathy is a perception, urge, or mindset. It has to do with putting yourself in someone else’s place and imagining what life is like for them. Compassion, to me, is activity, decision making, or response. It has to do with taking action that results in kindness, typically toward another person or group.
I think of empathy as the engine but compassion as the result, or the expression of empathy. Compassion doesn’t always stem from empathy. It can, but it doesn’t have to.
He defines empathy as “the ability to recognize and share other people’s feelings,” and he believes it’s “the most important instrument in a leader’s toolbox.”
the ability to sit with discomfort and not have to fix it;
moving through the world with an understanding that everyone is struggling and trying their best—and holding that in your heart to let it shape your interactions with people.
Empathy means being willing and able to see, understand, and (where appropriate) feel another person’s perspective and, further, to use that information to act compassionately.
Empathy drives compassionate action, and such action is what can drive business success.
“To me, compassion is empathy in action.”
“If you treat others like you want to be treated, your frame of reference is yourself.”
A better way to act with empathy is to follow what has become known as the Platinum Rule: Treat others as they want to be treated.
Nadella strongly believes that empathy is the driver of innovation.
Nadella sees empathy as “a key source of business innovation. He said that although many regard it as a ‘soft skill,’ not especially relevant to the ‘hard work of business,’ it is a wellspring for innovation, since innovation comes from one’s ability to grasp customers’ unmet, unarticulated needs.”
Google’s “most important and productive new ideas come from B-teams comprised of employees who don’t always have to be the smartest people in the room.”
Because empathetic businesses better understand their customers and can anticipate their wants and needs—delivering solutions to the market that customers crave. The more in tune with your customers you can be, the faster you can deliver such products or services to them before your competitors catch on.
Empathy can help leaders determine the right pricing, features, packaging, and even content and messaging that will most appeal to this person. And it will help them figure out the best way to promote the offering and get in front of this customer.
empathy in action: understanding what your customer wants to feel.
“It is a delivery vehicle for a change in the lives, emotions, or hearts of the person you wish to serve with that product. Design the change and then you’ll back into the product.”
In order to know what customers desire, we must see things from their perspective: empathize with them. Most people only make decisions to add things to their lives when those things fulfill a specific vision for themselves.
This ‘visionary empathy’—believing in a better future for the people who use your products—is an important consideration when we think about his impact on so many lives.”
Products that are able to connect with users’ aspirations are able to deliver better experiences. This is how products succeed—and business grows.
The study revealed six decidedly un-STEM traits that were linked to individual success: “being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others’ different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.”
millennials are loyal to companies and brands that care and make a difference.
They expect cognitive diversity: “a diversity of thoughts, ideas, philosophies, and in solving business problems through the culture of collaboration.”
71 percent of millennials want their coworkers to be like a “second family,” and 75 percent of them believe that their employer should mentor and nurture their innate talents.
This generation craves a different kind of working experience, one in which their input is valued, their community is fostered, and their employers care about creating a better world.
Additionally, 60 percent of millennials are open to new job opportunities—and only 29 percent of them are engaged at work. Many of them disengage when they feel they are not understood, respected, or listened to—the basic ingredients of an empathetic culture.
Many of them disengage when they feel they are not understood, respected, or listened to—the basic ingredients of an empathetic culture.
“This is no longer an opportunity for organizations: it’s now a required obligation for future competitiveness, in order to retain and engage top talent,” says Dhawan. “These generations were raised from childhood to university in an environment where there is so much more work being done around empathy. They are wired to think this way as a business advantage. And they won’t go work for organizations that don’t behave this way.”
2018 Accenture study found that this generation is actually staunchly loyal... but only to brands that make them feel valued.
