Applied Empathy

by Michael Ventura

  MAKING BRILLIANCE A HABIT

  Built into Sub Rosa is the belief that if we are doing our job well and applying empathy to solve complex problems for our partners, we should at some point create our own obsolescence. 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.

  This sort of thinking isn’t consistent with many of the agencies in the industry, which pursue annual retainer after annual retainer, seeking the oh-so-comforting normalized cash flow we agency owners ask for in our prayers before bed.

  I’ve always seen this differently. There are plenty of big, ambitious businesses out there with problems that need solving, so I know there’s plenty more work to be had. And with a long-term retainer, at a certain point both sides start spending a lot of time managing the retainer—the agency people analyzing whether hours are burning high, pushing the agency team to the brink, or burning low and the client wondering if it is getting its money’s worth. It’s a constant calibration contest and a highly unempathic way of managing a partnership.

  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.

  In addition, we gave a series of training sessions for existing Pantone employees to help them increase their capabilities and familiarity with the sort of work we were doing. Within about eighteen months, the Pantone team was completely empowered to do this work themselves.

  It was a beautiful thing to see unfold.

  The story gets a little sappy at this point, but it’s the truth. One day we received the nicest letter we’ve ever gotten from a client, six beautiful pages from one of our key contacts at Pantone. She wrote that we had helped reinvigorate the company and ultimately ushered forth a bright new chapter for the business. She said the work we had done had singlehandedly helped retain some of the top talent within the company who had been looking toward the door.

  That letter hung on our studio wall for a long time. Not only was it a nice thing to read, but, more important, it reminded us why we do what we do. When we help a company awaken and embrace its most innate gifts—when we help it realize how great it can really be—we are reminded that this is what we’re here to do.

  THE GREATER GOOD

  Empathic leadership isn’t always easy. Sometimes it is thankless and often grueling, but I know that everyone on my team has the same spirit of inspiration and hope that I do. We believe in the power of empathy as a tool to help leaders take a different view of themselves and the companies where they work. If we can do that, if we can help ignite more passion and understanding in the leaders of companies that have the largest impact on the world, we might just help create the empathic shift we all want to see in the world around us.

  Every company has something special and powerful that makes it tick. If it doesn’t, it’s probably already out of business. Empathy is a powerful tool to identify that aspect of your own business. Talk to your customers and employees. What do they value about you and the work the company does? Task yourself with understanding what is truly special about the business. If you have a hard time discovering this, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Not all businesses are sitting on something as prominent as the Color of the Year, but there’s always something you can latch on to and develop.

  When you find it, treasure it. Make it a meaningful part of your business. Ritualize it by practicing it and celebrating it. Find ways to promote it in your marketing and communications. In your interviews with prospective new employees, look for it in them. Bring it to the center of your business, and let it be your North Star. Without it, you’ll drift along directionless.

  CHAPTER SEVEN EXERCISES

  Ritualizing Empathy

  Rituals can come in all shapes and sizes. This series of exercises is designed to help you understand what you are being relied upon for, as well as what you rely on most often. Exploring these will help you to dimensionalize the creation of rituals at a variety of levels for yourself and the people around you.

  Personal Rituals

  Take a moment to think about an aspect of yourself you’d like to nurture. Perhaps you need to give your physical body more self-care. Or maybe you want to find a regular time to decompress at the end of the day. Tune in to yourself, and see what your inner self needs. How you choose to solve this need is entirely up to you; that’s not the point of the exercise. The point is to ritualize the internal check-in, to find time each day to pause and go inward, asking yourself what you need. This self-inquiry is an essential part of developing empathy for yourself, and by habitualizing this behavior, you’ll find your understanding of yourself heightened over time.

  One-on-One Rituals

  Who are the people you interact with most regularly? Think about those relationships and ask yourself how they could be improved. Often you’ll find that simply increasing your commitment to open and honest conversation—focusing on sharing your own perspectives on a particular topic—can be a simple but powerful tool to creating deeper connection. Or maybe you need the opposite: to give others the opportunity to share their perception of what they see going on. Take the time to connect with a colleague or partner, and make an effort to do this sort of work at the same time each day, week, or month. After you’ve spent a few sessions exploring this together, you’ll likely find that the repetition and ritualization of this behavior has created a reliable structure and “safe space” for sharing with honesty.

  Team Rituals

  Every team has rituals, whether or not that’s what they call them. Some groups have a weekly stand-up that helps to keep everyone informed and together, while others opt for a weekly happy hour to build camaraderie. Train an empathic lens on your team and ask yourself what is most lacking. Talk with other members of the team, and see what they think would be most beneficial to understanding one another. If people are craving more interpersonal/social time, find a way to create a regular series of activities that accomplishes this. On the other hand, maybe your team is yearning for more transparency. You might build a ritual around a behavior you want to use to accomplish this (e.g., encouraging the team to use a shared document or collaboration tool such as Slack to share their workload and resource constraints in real time). Again, be specific about the frequency and purpose of this new ritual, because those are the two primary ingredients necessary to having ritual create a new reality.

  Encouraging Empathy

  Empathy can and should be an essential part of your daily life, both in the workplace and in all of your relationships; but as we have seen, developing and applying empathy takes time and dedication.

  In my own journey to apply empathy, I’ve discovered certain mind-sets that can help hone that ability within all of us. I look at these as “encouragements”—things we can do to inspire ourselves and the teams around us. Each one is important on its own, but collectively, they create an empathic spirit that can help you explore, learn, and grow with empathy at the center.

  BE CURIOUS

  Curiosity is essential. It does for empathy the same thing that sunlight and rain do for plants. It feeds empathy. Learn to be a question asker. Seek out information at every opportunity. Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb in order to know someone or something more deeply. Curiosity helps us get outside of ourselves and see things from new perspectives.

  But remember that curiosity can sometimes make you uncomfortable. If that happens, recognize that you’re likely pushing up against some valuable sort of insight. Keep at it.


  BE HONEST

  Empathy requires unvarnished honesty with yourself and those around you. And it needs to receive honesty in return. If you feel you’re not getting the whole truth from the people you are trying to understand more fully, you need to address that with them and find a way to create the safety necessary for it to emerge.

  BE VULNERABLE

  Nobody’s perfect. When we attempt to present a perfect version of ourselves, we become unapproachable. People want to connect with each other on a real, human level. As a result, false perfection can often turn people off due to our apparent hubris or because it feels intimidating to them. Vulnerability comes from having the strength to know our flaws and own them when necessary. When you do this, people are able to see you for who you truly are, which gives them the confidence to share their own imperfections with you. Inside this sloppy, uncomfortable state of vulnerability is where we find the humanity within each other. Don’t run from it, settle into it. You may be surprised by what you find.

  BE OPEN-MINDED

  Insights can come from anywhere and everywhere. If while pursuing something with empathic intuition you suspect you’re headed toward a dead end—but you still have a feeling that you’re on the right path—don’t give up. Keep at it. Intuition and trusting in yourself are a critical part of cultivating an empathic form of leadership. Remember that being open-minded must also apply to the people with whom you are collaborating. Resist the tendency to pigeonhole them. Everyone is on his or her own journey, and you may be surprised to discover what people can do when you give them the space to connect to their inner self.

  BE SELFLESS

  Empathy sometimes requires selflessness. Sometimes you need to prioritize others in order to get to the right place. When people see that you’ve put their needs before your own, you will often find yourself in a position to lead from a place of authenticity and partnership.

  Selflessness can certainly feel uncomfortable at times. Though making it a priority in the cultivation of empathy is critical, always remember to check in with your Whole Self and ensure that you are feeling aligned and balanced. Doing so provides the stability needed to act selflessly with confidence.

  BE UNDETERRED

  Applying empathy isn’t always easy. Sometimes behaving from a place of empathy can be downright exhausting. But don’t give up on it. I have seen successful leaders go to great lengths to maintain empathy for their teams, their clients, or themselves—even when it feels as though they should give up. But every time you practice empathy, using it to lead with deeper understanding or tackle challenges with more meaningful perspective, you increase your capacity to do so. Growth isn’t always comfortable, but it’s always expansive.

  BE BRAVE

  Bravery is sort of a macropoint for all of the other characteristics because you won’t be able to achieve any of the others without it. But bravery isn’t as hard to develop as you might think. It is almost assuredly a side effect of applying empathy, in that it involves creating the space where our skills and gifts, and those of others, can be better known. This is what gives us the courage to be brave—knowing we are supported by a deeper awareness of ourselves and the world around us.

  Take these “encouragements” into consideration every day as you seek deeper understanding. Use the tools in this book when you need them, but also be open to creating your own. As your empathic instincts grow and improve, new insights will undoubtedly emerge. Trust them, and trust yourself to know what’s right for you on the path ahead.

  That’s the true nature of empathy—it’s a compass that will guide you when you need it most. Follow where it leads, and you will never be alone.

  Acknowledgments

  To Caroline,

  I wouldn’t be who I am today without you. My wife. My partner. My everything. You’ve taught me more about empathy than anyone else I know. Thank you. Thanks for your impeccable ability to understand me and help me to better understand the world.

  To my colleagues at Sub Rosa,

  Throughout the course of this book, I make mention of several of my colleagues. In addition to those mentioned, there are countless others, both present and former, who have contributed thought, discourse, and partnership to the concepts presented in this book. I’m truly grateful to all of you for the time we’ve shared together in our pursuit of understanding and applying empathy. This book is as much yours as it is my own.

  To my editors, Matthew Benjamin and Henry Ferris,

  You put me through a crash course in empathy for the editing process. It wasn’t always easy, but both of you were consummate gentlemen along the way, and the ideas within this book have been made better by your partnership.

  To my publishing team,

  Thanks to William Morris Endeavor (especially my agent, Margaret Riley King) and the team at Simon & Schuster for your continued support and collaboration throughout this process.

  To my family and friends,

  Many of the lessons I’ve learned along the way I owe to you. My parents and sister, my friends new and old, and my teachers—your respective senses of empathy have been part of the foundation on which this work is built. Thanks for believing in me.

  About the Author

  © RUVAN WIJESOORIYA

  Michael Ventura is the founder and CEO of Sub Rosa, a strategy and design studio that has worked with some of the world’s largest and most important brands, organizations, and start-ups—from GE, Nike, Citi, and Adobe to TED, the United Nations, and the White House. Additionally, Michael has served as a board member of and adviser to a variety of organizations, including Behance, the Burning Man Project, Cooper Hewitt, and the United Nations–affiliated Tribal Link Foundation. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, where he teaches design thinking and how to integrate empathy into the creative process. In his “free time” he operates a thriving indigenous medicine practice in which he works with patients from corporate CEOs to philanthropists to help them integrate their whole selves more fully. Applied Empathy is his first book.

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  Index

  A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

  Absolut Vodka, 14, 151–52

  advertising and marketing, 189, 191

  Albert (friend of author), 10–11

  Alchemist, 51, 59–60

  questions for, 83–84

  Alexandra (friend of author), 65

  alignment:

  external, 188–92, 198–201

  behaviors in, 188, 190–91, 200

  conversations in, 188–90, 199–200

  memories in, 188, 191–92, 201

  relationships in, 188, 191, 200–201

  internal, 98–99, 101, 106, 184–87, 192, 197–98

  alternative medicine, 139–46

  Chinese, 13, 139–40

  Amazon, 192

  analysis paralysis, 117, 126

  analysts, 195

  Apple Music, 3

  Applied Empathy, 1, 5, 8, 27, 31, 32

  Ap
plied Empathy podcasts, 103, 167

  archetypes, see Empathic Archetypes

  Aspirational Self, 72, 165

  five-minute contemplation for, 94–96

  Nike strategy and, 75, 81

  AT&T Park, 156–57

  automotive industry, 184–87

  GM Hummer, 123–25

  Tesla, 125–26, 184, 192

  Toyota Prius, 124–25

  B2B partners, 179

  barefoot running, 74

  Barretto, Gil, 64–68, 70, 81, 148

  baseball cards, 156

  behaviors, company, 178, 188, 190–91, 200

  Bikila, Abebe, 74

  Bokmeyer, Justin, 167–69, 173, 175

  Boring Company, The, 4

  Born to Run (McDougall), 74

  Boston Globe, 181

  bottom-up versus top-down culture, 110, 117–22

  exploring, 134

  brand, 97, 177–78

  guidelines for, 186

  indigeneity in, 161

  bravery, 232

  Bridgewater Associates, 129–31

  Brown, Brené, 38

  business:

  empathy and, 1–5

  see also company

  Calliope, 209–10

  cameras:

  digital, 182, 183

  Polaroid, 181–83, 196

  career and jobs, 210

  CEOs, 98, 102

  chakras, 72

  Chan, Dr. Tsoi Nam, 139–41, 143

  change, 122, 182

  Chinese medicine, 13, 139–40

  CLEAR process, 206–7