Future-Proof Your Career

In this latest episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we tackle the tricky topic of empathy. What is it? How do you use it? And can you grow - or shrink - your empathy? 

We all think we know what empathy is, but as ever, we ask a real expert. Dr Lauren Kerwin is a Harvard- and UCLA- Trained Psychologist with over 20 years of experience treating borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorders, depression, anxiety and trauma in teens and adults.

Lauren also has lots of experience in a corporate context, providing executive coaching and organisational psychology support to highly successful start-ups through to their public listings, with a particular focus on employee selection and training, information sharing, and interpersonal interactions.

Understandably this incredible CV has seen Lauren featured on CNN and the Today Show, and in Forbes, HuffPost, and the New York Times, to name but a handful of news outlets.=

We learned loads from Dr Kerwin, so here are the top tips that I took away:

Empathy is about understanding, not emotion: though compassion is important, you’re not trying to feel what the other person is feeling. You’re trying to understand why they feel the way they do.

Perspective adds value: no position is less valid or valuable because they’re seeing it through a different lens to you. 

Don’t walk in their shoes, keep one foot in yours: While trying to empathise don’t lose your own perspective. You need to try to retain some balance and objectivity.

Everyone has an answer: the role of a leader is increasingly to uncover those answers and give people the confidence to share them.

Respect not agreement: you don’t need to agree with someone to empathise. Sometimes the most important time to be empathetic is when you disagree.

Show people they are valued: even if you ultimately disagree, be clear that the other person’s position was appreciated, otherwise they might not share it in the future.

Thanks for listening to this episode of our Future-proof Your Career. After each episode I’ll be collecting my notes from our guest here.

In this episode we spoke to Dr Simon Moore. Simon is a doctor of Psychophysiological Psychology and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. He leads a team of researchers at IB, a business he founded to help brands to better understand their customers and employees.

Here are my key takeaways from the conversation:

What are you listening for?

Simon highlighted that we often go into a conversation or interview situation with a bias. We’re not neutral as listeners, we often want something from the conversation. Be aware of this. Consider your biases and your own objectives and try to see the conversation through that lens.

There are different modes of listening

Sometimes you might be listening in an informational mode, looking to fill in the blanks on your mental questionnaire. Sometimes your mode might be more empathetic, where you’re trying to extract or understand the emotional context behind the words

Think about which mode you’re in when you’re going into a conversation. Which one should you be in? What information are you missing by being in one mode or the other?

What’s behind the words?

Though we have to respect what people say, it’s worth sometimes being a little sceptical and questioning the drivers behind those words. Look for signals beyond the vocal for what’s really going on: gestures, behaviour, visual cues from both the person and their surroundings. What can you take from the objects and pictures with which they surround themselves?

Who are you listening to?

Simon talked to us about four different categories of people - categories that help us to understand their desires and their behaviours. Planners, adventurers, sociables and individualists. These categories are laid out in more detail in this interview with Simon that is well worth a read: https://insidebe.com/articles/interview-with-simon-moore/

Shut up and count to ten

We talked about a variety of techniques for listening, not least enforcing a little silence - especially on yourself, if you’re prone to fill in every gap in the conversation. Give people room to speak and expand by making yourself count to ten in your head before you speak.

Make a movie

If you really want to understand someone, try Simon’s technique of making a movie in your head of what they’re saying. It’s comparable to how writing things down can help you to learn them. But making a mental movie of someone’s story won’t just help you to understand the details, it will help you to empathise with their situation - putting yourself in their shoes.

Thanks for listening to this first episode of our new season of Talk About Tomorrow, focused exclusively on how you can Future-proof Your Career! After each episode I’ll be collecting my notes from our guest here.

In this episode we spoke to Chris Warburton, award-winning BBC journalist. radio presenter and host of a series of excellent podcasts including Ecstasy: The Battle of Rave, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, The End of Days, and most recently, Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game, about Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto.

Chris covers a huge range of topics for the BBC, from major sporting events, to politics, to once even a live heart transplant. So he was the ideal person to talk to us about how you ask good questions.

Here are my key takeaways from the conversation:

Create a personal editorial policy

Think about how your own behaviour and presentation when you’re asking questions. Do you maximise the chance of getting the right answers? For example, think about:

• What tone should I be using?
• Do I have the right level of formality or informality?
• Am I using the right language to ask questions? E.g. jargon?

Prepare in advance

Do your research. You might not be an expert in the subject - that’s why you’re the one asking the questions! But you need to know enough to shape your questions appropriately and ensure that you’re asking the most important ones. Think about the audience for the answers too: are you asking these questions on someone else’s behalf, and if so, are you getting the answers that they need and in a format they can understand?

Have a game plan

Don’t just think about your questions, think about the answers that you might get from the person you are speaking to. How will you respond to those answers? What is your follow-up?

Switch modes - the ‘red light moment’

Chris talked about the difference between the off-air conversation and the on-air conversation - when the red light goes on to tell everyone that the mics are live and that you are broadcasting. Before the red light goes on, you might be putting the other person at ease, asking them social questions and building rapport. Once the light goes on, it’s about getting answers. Think about this in your conversations. It’s fine to switch modes between the social chit-chat and the important business. But think about the transition. And just because the red light is on, it doesn’t mean anything goes. You can be forceful but you want to be able to end the conversation on good terms.

Listen and take notes

Take notes of the other person’s answers throughout the conversation. It shows you’re listening, ensures you capture the answers properly, and helps you to structure the rest of the conversation. You can always refer back to them if you want to explore a particular answer in more depth, even if it was much earlier in the conversation.

Use open and closed questions

Open questions allow the interviewee to return long form answers that might be packed with information but that might be vague. Follow these up with closed questions that have a fixed range of answers to lock down critical details. For example, an open question might be “Tell me what you want to achieve with this project?” whereas a closed question would be “What is your budget for this?”

Useful reading:

https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions

https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2021/02/01/why-asking-questions-is-good-for-your-brand-and-your-career/?sh=6f0cff751c23

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/how-to-do-life/202102/the-art-of-asking-questions

Welcome to Future-proof Your Career, your guide to the most important skills for a long, successful working life. This special season of the Talk About Tomorrow podcast will explore in depth the idea of the Three Cs, three skill groups that are critical to success, in a business or as an entrepreneur. The ability to curate information, create new things, and communicate ideas. In each episode we explore a facet of one of these skills, alongside a guest.

Tom and Katharine talk about laziness: as a motivator for innovation and as a challenge to wasted effort. Are you lazy enough to be useful?

Plus, it’s the end of this season for the podcast. Five seasons now! All very different in length and format. But this has been the first with a co-host and though we’re biased, we think it has been great!

We’ll be back for season 6 tackling some new topics in a few months.

Katharine and Tom discuss the concept of Net Luxury - an approach to addressing climate change based on the continuing reluctance of many people to make real change. Can we convince people to cut back? Or can we make saving ourselves (the planet will be just fine) seem even more appealing than you'd think it ought to be?

The shape of the most successful organisations is changing. Companies are shrinking and distributing their work across partners and semi-autonomous units, giving them scale, agility and reduced risk. As usual, Tom explains and Katharine interrogates!

The shape of the most successful organisations is changing. Companies are shrinking and distributing their work across partners and semi-autonomous units, giving them scale, agility and reduced risk. As usual, Tom explains and Katharine interrogates!

Tom and Katharine discuss our response to the explosion of choice faced by the modern consumer: the return of the intermediary, offering advice, direction and editorial input. Why do we value influencers? What role for AI in the future of our decisions on music, travel and finance? Find out in this episode.

Note: the book reference in the episode is Barry Schwartz's 'The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less' from all the way back in 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

We've spent the last twenty years trying to eliminate friction from the interactions between brands and customers. But is this always the right approach? In this episode we talk about the concept of 'good friction', those moments where you want to slow and deepen the conversation.