Keynote: Making Empathy Actionable

Inclusion

Sharon Steed

Keynote: Making Empathy Actionable

by Sharon Steed

In this keynote at RubyConf 2023, Sharon Steed, the founder of Communilogue, focuses on the importance of making empathy actionable in the workplace. Steed, who is also a person who stutters, shares her personal experiences with vulnerability and communication challenges. She emphasizes that vulnerability is a shared human experience, which can help build meaningful relationships. Key points from her talk include:

The Role of Vulnerability in Empathy: Sharon discusses the need for individuals to feel safe and included to foster vulnerabilities that allow for empathetic connections.
Empathy and Business Success: She highlights that empathy can significantly impact a company's bottom line by driving trust, enhancing communication, promoting collaboration, and improving problem-solving capabilities.
Employee Engagement: The presentation underscores the correlation between empathy and employee engagement, outlining that companies with high empathy experience better profitability and lower turnover rates. According to Sharon, fostering an empathetic workplace leads to higher job satisfaction which retains talent.
Defining Empathy: Sharon points out that empathy, while commonly defined, often lacks a practical approach to implementation in daily interactions. She illustrates the concept through her own life experiences, particularly her stuttering, which has taught her the value of empathy at a young age.
Practical Steps to Foster Empathy: Steed encourages using actionable strategies to turn empathy from an abstract idea into tangible behaviors in professional settings.

Steed's deep understanding of empathy and her personal journey serve as powerful reminders of how bringing humanity into the workplace can transform relationships and improve organizational health.

00:00:18.439 I appreciate the part where you clap for me coming up, as if I did anything other than say exactly these words: that is Sharon.

00:00:24.320 Sharon is a person who will say words. That's actually the worst introduction ever, but I have a slightly better one for you.

00:00:29.439 I was excited to give it. I met Sharon first at Madison Ruby.

00:00:34.800 Jim, are you here? Jim Remmy, who organized the Madison Ruby conference, was very successful and popular. This was very early in my software career, and I went there and saw Sharon speak.

00:00:41.879 I was thoroughly impressed by the content. I remember having a conversation with you at that time, or maybe later when we invited you to speak at another conference at Open Source Bridge in Portland about your career and trying to decide how to turn this incredible skill of empathy that you possess into a career.

00:00:55.039 You have achieved exactly that. You are an incredibly impressive person, and I'm very proud to know you. So please, give a round of applause for Sharon Steed.

00:01:41.079 When's the last time you felt vulnerable at work? Well, I feel vulnerable all the time because I am a person who stutters.

00:01:56.159 I have always felt a little concerned and intimidated at times when I need to talk to people, as I never know how the words will come out of my mouth.

00:02:01.759 I never know if I'll be fluent, which happens occasionally, but a lot of the time, I’m not. I don’t know if people will feel uncomfortable every time they hear me talk, and I don’t know how they'll react. I sometimes fall back on old habits, like changing words or just avoiding conversations entirely.

00:02:15.800 However, even though stuttering has been a challenging part of my experience, it's also taught me something incredibly valuable: my vulnerability is a great way to help build sincere, good relationships with others.

00:02:29.440 We all have insecurities; we all have vulnerabilities. If vulnerability is the tie that binds us, then empathy becomes the thread that connects us. It’s in that consistent pursuit of understanding others that they feel more comfortable discussing their own vulnerabilities and insecurities.

00:03:11.959 If people feel safe, they feel included. So, as we pursue vulnerability, it is essential to make people feel safe and included in order to make empathy actionable.

00:04:00.840 Hello, my name is Sharon Steed. I am a keynote speaker and empathy consultant, and I am a person who stutters.

00:04:06.519 I'll talk more about the stuttering aspect as we go on, but first, I want to discuss my background and career. I've been a speaker for almost ten years now. I did my first talk at Madison Ruby, which is coming back in 2024. That's incredibly exciting!

00:04:18.519 I have a couple of courses available on LinkedIn—one is called "Driving Inclusion with Empathy," and the other is "Communicating with Empathy." Both have been incredibly popular. It's really cool to know that many people worldwide are passionate about engaging empathy and becoming better communicators.

00:04:39.840 I’ve spoken at many conferences and worked with a lot of companies. I think I’ve spoken on about five continents and twenty countries; it’s absolutely insane! I share this information to show how valuable empathy is. Everyone recognizes its importance.

00:05:01.120 However, it can be tricky to identify and apply. That’s what I’m here to discuss today: making empathy actionable.

00:05:17.520 To find empathy and turn it into action, we first need to discuss why empathy is essential. The first reason is that empathy drives companies' bottom lines.

00:05:29.440 Empathy builds trust, which significantly impacts how teams communicate, collaborate, innovate, and solve problems. Companies with high employee engagement experience 23% higher profitability.

00:05:41.479 That’s a lot more money your company can make, and it really boils down to teams being much more productive when they work well together. The challenge is that, according to Gallup, only 21% of employees agree that they trust leadership in their organizations.

00:06:01.759 Without empathy, a company is going to be less profitable. Without trust, there can be no empathy. Moreover, empathy increases employee engagement. Engaged employees are satisfied and productive.

00:06:22.640 Companies with low employee engagement experience 43% higher turnover. I often talk to HR groups, where they frequently mention how expensive it is to hire constantly. It takes considerable time.

00:06:42.160 I think the average time from when an employee leaves to when you hire another to be productive is about nine months. By fostering empathy, your company will avoid these issues.

00:07:01.120 Engaged employees will stay. To illustrate, 80% of employees are willing to leave their current roles, confident that they could find another job quickly. Employees are more inclined to stay in your company if you show them empathy.

00:07:23.960 The challenge is defining empathy. If we can’t define it, we can’t engage in empathetic behaviors. The dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. While that definition is fine, it doesn’t outline the "how."

00:07:41.120 As a noun, empathy is an idea; it remains intangible until given a definition that resonates with personal experience. For me, as a person who stutters, I learned what empathy was both the hard and easy way at a young age.

00:08:02.760 This is a photo of me around three years old, when I first showed signs of having a speech impediment. My parents weren't overly concerned then since many kids at that age either stutter or have speech difficulties.

00:08:24.640 Something like 95% of kids show a speech impediment between the ages of two and three, yet by five or six, they typically outgrow it. Unfortunately for me, that wasn't the case. Early on, I developed a communication neurosis. I would constantly overthink the words to use to convey my point and be as fluent as possible, resorting to filler words.

00:09:07.360 Eventually, I decided not to discuss topics where I knew I’d struggle to be fluent. Anytime I had to talk about myself, I became incredibly shy. This probably came off as smug, which I didn’t mean, but I was afraid of how I spoke.

00:09:38.760 So, I went through my schooling years, into college, and into my twenties, realizing that to create the life I wanted, I had to face my fear of talking. When you're young and at events, you have to introduce yourself, share your work, and navigate conversations. I ended up avoiding these situations because I feared how I would communicate.

00:10:16.080 At that time, I was seeing a speech therapist who said she could help me stutter less, but only if I became comfortable with stuttering. I was shocked and overwhelmed. How could I feel comfortable with something that caused me so much discomfort since childhood?

RubyConf 2023