Cultivating an Empathic Organisational Culture
This empathic leadership workshop is designed to provide senior leaders and managers with the understanding of how to integrate a stronger culture of empathy in the workplace
Part One: Self-Awareness What is empathy and what is the value of integrating it more?
- Live it: I shall highlight the importance of being empathic to self, and what this looks like, in order to be able to be truly empathic with others. Participants will consider integrating self-empathy, overcoming the challenges of self-empathy, and create a self-care plan
- Model it: As a leader, you have the opportunity to set kind and productive norms so that they spread across your organization and create an environment of empathy and respect. Participants will discuss modelling empathy, and identify where personal behaviour changes in professional relationships can be implemented. Includes, building trust, honesty, fairness, acceptance, presence and kindness, with a brief reflection on DISC types; how personal behaviour may be impacting others, and what adaptions can be made?
Part Two: Connection
- Connect with yourself: In order to integrate empathy with corporate learning, we must learn how to put people into an empathetic state of mind. Those who can connect with others tend to succeed, while others become alienated and unhappy. Because people are often disconnected not only from each other, but also from themselves, existing more in the head, than in the heart, it is important to establish time to connect with the self. Participants will be invited to participate in a connecting with self-experience.
- Connect with others: Participants will learn, observe, experience, and put into practice empathic listening.
- Difficult Conversations and Empathic Listening: We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. An empathetic person listens to the other person’s perspectives and emotions, connecting and resonating with the feelings and experiences of others. By doing so, empathy serves to prevent conflict from escalating and enables conflicting parties to build trust, strengthens relationships, and increase understanding. We shall address challenging case studies and discuss what responding with empathy looks like.
Part Three: Growing an empathic culture
- Improving empathy between teams: Sometimes, albeit unconsciously, one group perceives another group to be a potential rival when competing for resources, status or power. When someone or a group of people are viewed as ‘other’ it can be difficult to empathise, whereas, when people are viewed as ‘the same as’, it is easier to relate and empathise. We shall address: ‘How can people be inspired and motivated to cultivate empathy with ‘the other’ team?’
- Implementing an empathy building framework and measuring its integration progress. We shall discuss how to support the development of empathy within teams and direct reports through:
- Emotional empathy – the ability to sense the feelings of the other person in a particular situation.
- Behavioural empathy – the ability to adjust our actions and demonstrate that their thoughts and emotions are understood
- Corporate empathy: On the basis of what has been brought to awareness so far, participants will be coached on creating the Lottoland vision of empathy; what is the company empathic cultural vision, and specific goals, and how will we know when an empathic culture is being lived and what is the strategy for bringing this to life (30 mins)
Part 4: Reflection and Action:
Reflection on the learning, with clear action steps.
Reflection on the learning, with clear action steps.