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Empathy and Ethics: Drivers of our shifting culture...
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“We’re not trying to capture markets, we’re trying to change the world.” -- Bill Drayton
What is empathy? Not only feeling someone else’s pain but also acting to avoid causing harm and building the good. Applied empathy is seeing the environment and knowing how to act. The faster things move, the more critical that becomes – especially because so many people are being left out as change accelerates.
Existing institutions are often the same around the world in their lack of empathy. Change-making and community engagement is anathema to the very idea of discipline in public school teaching and top-down organizational policies/roles. The problem is the lack of a critical mass of individuals able to ask questions from empathetic perspectives as opposed to enforcing the rules. The result is what is happening in American corporate ethics, namely a shift from acting on ethical principles back toward rote compliance.
To combat that shift and keep facilitating change...
1) CEOs must ask questions about all those affected by the organization -- employees, stakeholders and general communities.
2) Management must operate according to not only rules and compliance but also values and principles
3) Ethical leadership must be implemented by every individual in an organization -- everyone must be empowered as an empathy activist.
Just as change occurs in societies with a high proportion of empowered, empathetic individuals in the general population, the same critical mass is necessary within organizations. Creating that empathy requires experiential learning; "It can be caught but not taught."
5 Key Takeaways:
• Things that are wrong may not be your fault but they are your responsibility
• Change is unpinned by listening with empathy and acting for equality
• Those most in need often have the least access to communication channels; learn to read the cues of others... this is a skill that requires continual practice
• Anyone not a master of empathy will be marginalized
• Leaders must be skilled at applying empathy to facilitate change
Think about what you are trying to achieve and compare it with your behavior. Are you acting with empathy?
Existing institutions are often the same around the world in their lack of empathy. Change-making and community engagement is anathema to the very idea of discipline in public school teaching and top-down organizational policies/roles. The problem is the lack of a critical mass of individuals able to ask questions from empathetic perspectives as opposed to enforcing the rules. The result is what is happening in American corporate ethics, namely a shift from acting on ethical principles back toward rote compliance.
To combat that shift and keep facilitating change...
1) CEOs must ask questions about all those affected by the organization -- employees, stakeholders and general communities.
2) Management must operate according to not only rules and compliance but also values and principles
3) Ethical leadership must be implemented by every individual in an organization -- everyone must be empowered as an empathy activist.
Just as change occurs in societies with a high proportion of empowered, empathetic individuals in the general population, the same critical mass is necessary within organizations. Creating that empathy requires experiential learning; "It can be caught but not taught."
5 Key Takeaways:
• Things that are wrong may not be your fault but they are your responsibility
• Change is unpinned by listening with empathy and acting for equality
• Those most in need often have the least access to communication channels; learn to read the cues of others... this is a skill that requires continual practice
• Anyone not a master of empathy will be marginalized
• Leaders must be skilled at applying empathy to facilitate change
Think about what you are trying to achieve and compare it with your behavior. Are you acting with empathy?
