The Empathy Tour Executive Summary

Originally published on theempathytour.co/blog on December 18th, 2020

By Jyoti Jani Patel & Emily Griffin

Throughout Fall 2020, we explored the hearts and minds of 14 remarkable business leaders across tech and social impact companies. We sought to understand how they’re powering themselves and their organizations with empathy through an extraordinarily challenging year.

Amidst the tumult of the global pandemic, we believe the critical challenge of our time is to weave meaningful connections between our personal life, workplaces and global issues — including racial justice, mental health, political organizing, climate change and the ethics of technology — demonstrating that everything is connected, and everything is at stake.

Each week this fall, we produced weekly features on our website and social media channels, sharing distilled wisdom from our exclusive interviews with visionary leaders, plus actionable prompts and resources for you and your team to enliven your leadership journey.

We asked the same 4 questions of each leader we interviewed. We’d like to take you on a tour of the questions, and highlight the themes and key learnings.

Let’s dive in…

• • •

An Interconnected Global View

We asked: What global issue are you most passionate about & invested in right now? (i.e. racial justice, climate crisis, political organizing, mental health, ethics of tech)

Based on the unique lived experience of each leader, different global issues were highlighted — ranging from climate, addiction, racism, and the breakdown of civil society. Everyone acknowledged how interconnected and intersectional both our trauma and potential healing is. This validated and emphasized the sentiment we echoed throughout the tour: Everything is connected, and everything’s at stake. It also inspired us to further explore the concept of collective liberation as a path forward.

Specifically, we heard:

• Claudius Mbemba pointed to racial justice as the key issue we need to overcome before we can appropriately address some of the other big, interconnected issues. White women leaders like Cleo Barnett and Emily Best were highly invested as allies in this movement too, through their artful organizations.
• Lauren Sato spoke to the need of building a system that’s more inclusive and resilient for everyone, and investing in root-cause solutions like Ada Developers Academy who are infusing tech with trained, underrepresented talent.
• We need to partner with and empower BIPOC leaders who come from the communities that they’re aiming to serve, in order to change systems — how Victoria Santos and Ananda Valenzuela illustrate.
• How the monetization of disinformation and the “us vs them” divide undermines our ability to effectively respond to current events, driving Aaron Hurst to build a platform that promotes human connection as an antidote for divisiveness.
• Sheryl Cababa warns that throwing virtuous side hustle money at a problem once it happens, or simply saying they care, doesn’t absolve leaders of their accountability for creating a problematic, toxic environment in the first place.
• We need buy-in and participation from everyone if we’re if we’re going to overcome the challenges humanity faces. There are really meaningful changes that every person can make, which Martine Stillman likens to pieces in a mosaic of the future which we are collectively creating.

Organizational Strength & Team Health

We asked: What are you sensing your team most needs at this moment in order to be fully engaged and feeling purposeful at work? Tell us how you have been responding and adapting to those needs together.

The stories we heard further validated that leaders and teams are struggling to maintain team culture, connection, and big picture thinking as they navigate the unexpected reality of fully remote work. This group of leaders are recognizing and responding to these challenges in unique ways that center care and connection, acknowledging the different needs of everyone on their teams.

Specifically, we heard:

• Humaira Ahmed called out hustle culture as excluding working parents, especially mothers, and the urgency in dismantling systemic bias, acknowledging that everyone’s reality in 2020 is unique to their roles and circumstances.
• Tim Salau, Daniela Tudor and Emily Best both spoke to the importance of providing employees time and resources to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Specifically, creating cultures that promote space to rest, and that foster personal agency for each individual’s mental health and well-being choices.
• Many of our guests acknowledged the challenges of navigating complex emotions. Cleo Barnett and Emily Best spoke to the tremendous opportunity to channel those feelings as fuel for their teams to get better at navigating conflict and uncertainty, as well as create and dream beyond this tumult of this year.
• The realities of remote work have introduced huge gaps in connection and team bonding. With no more “water cooler” moments, we heard many leaders leaning into the power of virtual playtime, with Alonda Williams sharing much needed moments of bonding through playing “Zoom Pictionary” and “Guess the Desk”.
• Naveen Jain shared that his team has not been able to organically build on strategic ideas as well in the virtual space, with tactical work taking priority. Alonda Williams has been able to use the power of remote collaboration to include working level employees in strategic planning and ideation around social justice. Ananda Valenzuela also emphasized how critical it is to not only listen, but center voices at the margins to guide decision making through complexity.

Successfully Navigating The Tension

We asked: We see the need to overcome the invasive pressure of mainstream business culture to develop new definitions of impactful, nimble, and innovative organizations. Talk to us about tensions you feel around this problem and your journey to address it.

Every single leader we interviewed openly acknowledged their experience with the tension between the need to prioritize growth and earnings, and the need to cultivate time and space for creativity, renewal, and well-being. We learned that it most shows up at the boundaries of their organizational systems, where their values meet the values of their stakeholder groups. It’s no surprise that this tension follows the flow of money, surfacing most with customers, shareholders, and investors.

Specifically, we heard:

• Claudius Mbemba has developed a social impact mission by flipping who he considers his core customer. Rather than serving landlords first, he centers the needs of the underrepresented service provider for his startup Neu.
• Re-imagining capitalism & shareholder primacy had been a hot topic among CEOs and executives who are participating in a business round-table with Aaron Hurst.
• While many are innovating within the boundaries of capitalism, and advocating for the triple bottom line, Sheryl Cababa interrogated the inherent flaws and hidden hierarchy in that system that only fuels innovation if there’s a profit, declaring “What if it’s good for people and planet, but not profit? Then it doesn’t happen”.
• The artists and creators on the tour showed us the power of naming the source of the problem. While we called out mainstream business culture as the villain in our story (hear more about it on the webinar), Cleo Barnett shared her approach of “decolonizing work”. She drew clear connections between the lack of empathy and inclusion of different abilities and life situations in workplaces to the extractive and greed-driven mentality of colonialism.
• The systems thinkers on our guest list, Martine Stillman and Sheryl Cababa, both urge the business community to do a better job of holding themselves accountable to the ripple effects of their products. Martine openly acknowledged the dynamics of running a successful business which means sometimes working with folks who may not be values-aligned. However, their team uses their expertise and authority to help influence their clients to consider the long term effects of their decisions.
• Distribution of wealth and power is an equalizing force in our winner-takes-all society. With their team at RVC, Ananda Valenzuela harnesses the power of distributed organizational structures through holacracy.

Sensing & Envisioning The Future

We asked: Paint a picture of what it looks like when your company succeeds beyond the bottom line, and what does it look like when our business community is operating in alignment with what the world needs?

We loved ending our interviews on a high note, letting these leaders shine with their bold visions. When we heard them talk about these futures, we experienced how real they can actually feel, and yes, how much work we need to do to realize them. Having a strong vision in business becomes a magnetic force that attracts talent and keeps teams focused on building the road that leads to it, step by step.

Specifically, we heard:

• Tim Salau and his team at Guide believe the businesses that are going to shine in the next 10 to 20 years have cultures that are more focused on the welfare of humanity and are actively building that within the fabric of their companies.
• In response to widespread unfulfillment, Aaron Hurst and Imperative’s moonshot is to flip the statistic of 66% of people feeling unfulfilled at work, to 66% of people being fulfilled by 2030, through scaling their peer coaching platform.
• Emily Best wants us to take big swings at new systems beyond capitalism. Systems that, by design, continuously nourish and distribute wealth to the people who are doing the work.
• Can you imagine living in a world where illness and chronic disease is optional? It’s the driving force behind Naveen Jain’s company Viome.
• Shifting economic power to as many women and underrepresented folks as possible, is what Lauren Sato envisions. Diversifying the people building the products, and profiting with them (rather than off them) is key.
• A world where everyone has the freedom and the power to pursue meaningful work and have an orientation towards joy. Ananda Valenzuela sees us changing the world through prioritizing relationships every day.

• • •

Final Thoughts

In her interview, Alonda Williams reminded us, “After coming through 2020, we can handle anything.”

Ultimately, The Empathy Tour is about collectively exploring and taking a stand for a new way of working that works for everyone. This year, the nature of our interconnected reality truly revealed itself. Like the needle of a compass magnetically moving to a new true north, we witnessed a global community of business leaders re-orienting themselves and their organizations to the defining issues of our time.

Evolutionary Business

On the tour, we chose to feature leaders who are courageously chartering new frontiers. Through their stories, we learned that evolutionary business is more than what you do — it’s how you do it, who you do it with, and what you’re doing it for. Including and centering marginalized voices is not a diversity numbers game. It’s about inviting those voices into decision making, harmonizing power structures and taking bold swings at new systems. Fresh perspectives and disruptive methods help us see the forest for the trees. Evolutionary business is about seeing beyond the limits of current thinking to accelerate progress towards a healthy, interdependent ecosystem where we all thrive.

Creative Action

All leaders must continually think and act creatively to respond to urgent shifts, and fortify their team with a level of care that allows them to continue to move forward together. The dynamics of creativity are highly relational. Creative leaders know people need to feel safe to express themselves and be vulnerable with their ideas. The combination of play and accountability is powerful when we face new challenges and levels of uncertainty. It can build bridges where there aren’t any, and strengthen bonds that people can rely on.

Bold Leadership

The depth of awareness it takes to see our own complicity in holding up systems of harm (in mainstream business culture and beyond) requires heaps of empathy for ourselves, first and foremost. Bold leaders hold themselves to a higher standard, and demand that their business success and their humanity can live together in alignment. Bold leaders know in their bones that we’re at an inflection point in history, and how they respond now matters.

Even though we featured CEOs and Executives, we know that all of us have a unique and important role to play in building the mosaic of the future. No matter your role, level or sphere of influence, trust yourself to respond with conscious action from wherever you are.

Empathy starts with you in your body, and you’ll need it to fuel your resilience for our journey ahead. It requires us to embrace our wholeness, and elevate out of the false dichotomy of either/or thinking. Scarcity is a fallacy that drives competition and further divides us. None of us can make it to the future we want on our own. We’re being called to set aside our impulsive self interest long enough to listen deeply to ourselves and each other.

Thank you for joining us on The Empathy Tour! We are humbled and honored that you trusted us to guide you through the upheaval of this year. Together, we know that empathy holds the key to unlocking human health and progress. It starts with you.

All our love,

Jyoti & Emily