Tell me about your vision.
Yeah, so my vision really is where we can collaborate
effectively and solve complex problems.
The pressing ones, the big ones.
But how do we do that?
We, as a hyper social species,
have this ability to collaborate.
It's called empathy.
But for far too long,
our understanding of empathy
has been something relatively simple.
It's been something of, you know,
it's a genetic lottery,
or it's a pseudo psychic ability,
or it's the ability to walk into a room
and just immediately know what everybody needs,
or it's being able to read someone's face.
But we're in the middle of a scientific revolution
when it comes to empathy.
In 2009, there was some research that came out
that showed that as a society,
our empathy levels for each other had dropped significantly.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
And after that, there was a ton of research
that went into it to understand why.
And then also, newer equipment, FMRI machines,
we were able to get more empirical data
about what empathy is.
So kind of, you know, 20th century understandings of empathy,
which most of us, it's made its way into common knowledge,
is really built around this idea of, you know,
it's kind of a genetic trait, similar to adult height, right?
But what we're learning now is that
it's actually a whole system within our bodies,
and it's influenced by our surroundings.
So our empathy levels fluctuate over time,
and they manifest themselves in different ways.
And so this means that if we understand
on a more technical level what empathy is,
like, we can reverse engineer collaboration,
and we can optimize how we communicate
and how we interact with each other
so that we can more effectively coordinate our work,
coordinate our behavior,
so that we can solve those big,
pressing, challenging problems together.
So if I finally grew up in a horrible home, for instance,
or I wasn't taking very well care of,
I end up in a home that does end up taking care of me.
My empathy for the home that does take care of me,
where it might've been non-existence before,
because I had no experience with a home that cared for me,
it's not gonna go through the roof,
but my disdain for my past,
what I grew up with is going to be enhanced
because of, my gosh, like, I don't wanna be like them,
I don't wanna associate with them at all anymore.
And that's that paradigm shift with the internet, right?
Having been more predominantly established,
it's far easier to find people outside
of your traditional upbringing
who can relate to what you're going through,
which would, once again,
provide that whether you're leaving the home or not,
there's a virtual version of that taking place
that might disrupt your relationships
in a way that then people seeing you on a daily basis
can't comprehend, or more, nobody can really see it.
I think that's one example.
I think the internet has definitely,
and social media for sure,
has made it easier for us to find our affinity groups,
to find the people who are like us.
But that also means that where you can be
in echo chambers a little bit,
where we're having fewer interactions
with people who are not like us.
So we're leaning more on stereotypes.
There's also a lot of cultural tropes that we see on TV,
and that's where we kind of get our impressions.
I am particularly interested in how this shows up
in the way that we build software and technology.
And in particular, this idea that there's a soft skill
and hard skill divide.
And that I've seen can really be to our detriment
because if I have a background in marketing
or strategic communications,
and I don't know what it's like to be a software developer,
then there's that friction of just like,
we don't understand how to work with each other.
And I had a background in this
because I came from strategic communications,
and a friend from high school asked me to join
his software company and lead it as a CEO.
He had a traditional engineering background,
and I didn't understand the role.
I didn't understand the specific things that he needed.
And we patted heads all the time,
but we were able to work through it
because we took the time to understand each other.
We developed specific shortcuts
for how we communicated with each other
based on our own lived experience
of trying to understand each other.
So I'll give you an example.
I'm someone who has big ideas.
I'm a visionary.
I like to talk about my ideas and externally process them.
My partner, Scott, is much more of a detail oriented person.
He's a very critical thinker.
So as soon as he sees the problems first.
So I would be giving this like,
we could do this and we could do this.
And he would interrupt me and say, well, actually.
And it would like deflate my balloon.
I share that with Scott sometimes.
Yeah, so what we did was we came up with a framework
because this was something that was happening over time.
And I was able to share like,
this is really disruptive for me
and it's hard for me to collaborate.
And he shared, well, it comes out of compassion
because I care about your idea and I wanna see you succeed.
And if I know something, and I had no idea,
I thought he was like, the way I had internalized it
was you're trying to make me look stupid.
Right?
So it was a mismatch.
Trying to prevent that from happening.
Yeah, and so I find that a lot of times,
in organizations, especially when we have different roles
where we have to collaborate with each other,
there's just these hidden mismatched meanings
that once we establish that we care about each other,
we can learn what each other needs
and then we can work together
to establish some communication frameworks.
So the one that Scott and I came up with was,
as soon as he sees me like, we could do this,
he'll pause and instead of immediately saying
what I should do or course correcting,
we've said, okay, what kind of feedback are you looking for?
Are you looking for macro feedback,
micro feedback or no feedback?
And that has been game changing.
And that is what empathy is, right?
It's a great boundary as well.
Yeah, well, and it's a way to shortcut and say,
okay, I recognize that I have this habit.
I see these challenges, but we've negotiated ahead of time,
how can we develop protocols to effectively collaborate?
It's big.
And yeah, and that's just one example.
Right.
So that's really what I'm trying to teach
is there is this technical side of empathy.
It's not walking into a room and immediately
like feeling everything that everyone's feeling.
There are people who are very sensitive to that.
I would consider myself one,
but it's really getting down to understanding each other's
mental models, establishing compassion,
and then improving our communication with each other
so that we can work together and take advantage
of our diverse thinking so that we can create
something amazing together.
It's huge.
So one thing that you sparked in my mind,
whether it's what you meant to or not, Andrea,
I think it's brilliant, it's genius,
being able to create frameworks for empathy.
And you've moved towards a common thread
that's often overlooked.
And that's not the case for everybody,
but most people are on TikTok,
or most people are on Facebook,
or most people are on Instagram,
or most people are using Google as a tool, et cetera.
And the byproduct of integrating empathy
into the development of the software itself
is that all of these people who are individualistically
using these tools, they're all gonna be affected by that.
For good and for bad.
If empathy is missing, then we're gonna yell at Siri
and Alexa.
I see it all the time.
I don't know, people getting so frustrated with those.
My sister one day, I heard her talking to Alexa,
and she said, thank you.
And after receiving what she did,
and she asked her so kindly for whatever it was.
And I was like, that's weird.
I've never heard that.
I immediately had a thought of wisdom.
I was like, oh my gosh,
her kids and my kids hear her do that, and they hear me.
Oh, I gotta be nice to this technology.
This is prime example of me setting the stage for my kids.
For what type, how do we, what tone do we use?
What cadence do we use?
How do we interact, not just with the machine,
but of course everybody in life,
what we practice like we play, ultimately.
Where are you going with this vision?
Because this is massive, huge.
Are you working with startups,
working with grand companies?
And yeah, what's not the end game,
but the path, the journey look like moving forward.
Yeah, you catch me at a really interesting moment
in my life right now.
I've been giving talks about this for over a decade.
Folks hire me to come in and give keynotes.
I've published a lot.
I've been working on a book for several years.
And Empathy in Tech is a community
that kind of grew very organically.
We're looking at moving into a nonprofit.
And I think that with a nonprofit model,
my hypothesis is that we would be able to scale
these ideas a lot more.
And the mission of the nonprofit is to accelerate
the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry
is a way to solve our most pressing and complex problems.
And doing that through education, skill development,
remapping stereotypes, especially around like geeks
don't have social skills or girls can't code.
There's a whole lot that goes into that
from a cultural standpoint.
So my thinking right now is that kind of bring that to life
in a more formal way is kind of the place
where I feel called.
I've been more of a content producer
and kind of more on the theory building.
I just had a meeting with my publisher today
and I think we're gonna put the book on pause
for a little bit, which is hard.
It's really, really hard.
I've done all the consulting,
but I feel like I want to get more in it.
I want to be less abstracted.
I want to, I'll give a workshop and a keynote,
but I'm not really interacting with people.
And so that's kind of, we have plans for an empathy
and tech conference in October.
So we're starting to get that underway,
but I'm really open right now.
I think the big challenge with this
is helping people recognize that there's a problem, right?
We have amazing folks who have brought empathy
to the forefront and like why it's important,
but I think it's still very theoretical.
I think that as a society,
it's still positioned as a nice to have.
It's something that is seen
as an extracurricular investment for organizations.
And to me, I think it's recognizing
that if your people can't collaborate,
that is one of the most important investments
that you could possibly make in any organization,
whether it's for-profit, nonprofit, whatever,
if you have a group of people who are together for a purpose,
the best investment you can make
is helping them interact better
so that they can achieve that goal.
So just recognizing more,
like tying the technical empathy
to the effective collaboration
and then the effective collaboration to the results.
I think there's still a little bit that as a society,
we haven't quite grasped that.
So that's one of my challenges now
is just helping people see the importance of this
and that there is a solution
and that there's new research that really backs up
kind of new ways of understanding and working with empathy.
How do leaders lean into funding the vision?
I think this is something I struggle with.
So I'll talk from personal experience.
I almost feel like I come at it from,
like rationally I know that resources
are the way to help me scale my vision.
It is exactly what I need to achieve that reality.
For me, I think some of it comes from a,
my relationship with money, personally,
we're feeling like it is mutually exclusive
for impact and money.
That if I want to achieve my vision,
like I have that idea,
but I don't almost want it to be tainted
by this idea of money.
So I think that's part of it.
It's almost this purity thing
that if I keep it small and there is also a level
of commitment to it, that when you launch a nonprofit,
those are articles of incorporation.
There's more administrative stuff.
When you bring on a team,
you're then responsible for paying their salaries
and making sure that they're good.
So there is other stuff that you have to do
to really build your vision
that doesn't feel like you're building your vision
because you can get so caught into the infrastructure
and the organizational stuff of it and the legal.
There's just a lot of stuff,
but being able to delegate, I think is really,
really critical.
So finding folks that you can build
excellent relationships with,
building that message where people want to support you.
But yeah, and then how do you lean into funding your vision?
I think that's a question I'm exploring right now myself.
There's a lot of different models.
There's membership sites where you sell access to content.
There is thought leadership where you get on stage
and you write.
I think there are more quiet and less visible ways
of funding your vision.
I think I've described,
like I sometimes do really well
with what I call boardroom advocacy.
So it's behind the scenes.
It's not like super protesty or anything.
It looks like I'm doing nothing,
but I'm really good at kind of shepherding a vision
and helping people who are at an organization,
kind of re-examine their values and look together.
So I've been successful with a number of boards
in doing that.
So some of it I think is just figuring out
what's going to fuel you.
And that's where I'm at this crossroads.
It's like, I've loved writing, I love speaking,
and now I'm kind of lonely.
Like it's, the feedback loop is really long.
I get people who send me messages on LinkedIn
and like, oh my gosh, your talk changed my career.
I saw you four years ago.
And it's like, that's great.
But you walk away from a keynote
and you don't know if you made an impact.
So I think what I'm exploring now is recognizing the need
that I need faster feedbacks loops
and I want to be more involved
in kind of the day-to-day side of things
and that that's what's gonna motivate me.
But for a time it was traveling and doing amazing talks
and getting to go to these cool places
and meeting all these amazing people,
but it shifts over time.
So I think being really in tune with what fuels you
because what fuels you is gonna fuel your vision
and recognizing like, this is something I try.
I struggle with my relationship with money, right?
It's like, I just don't want to think about it.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.