BOSTON–Over the last decade or so nearly every credit union leader or leader in training in credit unions has been taught about the importance of “empathy”—but what they haven’t been taught is the “new empathy,” which is especially about how they choose between email, instant messages or an-in person meeting when it comes to communicating—or more often, not communicating.
But that can be the difference between a happy face emoji or a frowning face emoji, a project that succeeds or one that fails and no one quite understands why, according to Erica Dhawan, who told the World CU Conference’s final session that it’s not about a new normal but a “better normal” and that CU leaders can’t afford to “revert back to old ways of leading, and that especially includes how communication has changed.
Dhawan, a leadership strategist and author, said organizations need to build “concrete empathy” if they want to be successful.
But as she stressed, it’s increasingly difficult to be empathetic when communications no longer take place in person and instead most often occur through instant messages, Slack or, horror to the newest generation of workers, e-mail, and when body language, facial expressions and tone are absent.
“If there's one thing I've learned about true human connection, it’s that it doesn't start with one more e-mail or meeting, it starts by doing something fun, it starts by creating new shared experiences, and it starts by connecting not only our minds but our bodies,” she said, before leading her audience in a group Bollywood dance.
‘The New Empathy’
Dhawan shared several examples of communications between managers and employees where each party was misunderstood, resulting in unfinished projects and frustration.
“I like to say that in today's marketplace, reading messages carefully is the new empathy,” Dhawan said. “Research shows that today three-fourths of our face-to-face collaboration is built on our nonverbal body language. The reality of our working world today is that up to 70% of our connections are virtual or hybrid. And we are dealing with a new generation of members that often expect a virtual relationship with us first…Interacting has never been easier, but productive collaboration can feel harder than ever.”
The question for every leader now, according to Dhawan, is how to “reimagine empathy” at a time research shows 50% of the time the tone of emails and other messages is misunderstood, and that includes video calls. The result can be no response from direct reports and other team members, she added.
Getting Ghosted
“Ghosting is not just a romantic issue, it's a business issue,” Dhawan said.
According to Dhawan, there is “one critical issue” that everyone must master: “connectional intelligence.”
“How are we thinking differently about how we're connected? I like to say empathy is no longer just about an eye contact or a handshake, it's about creating an environment where we maximize the collective knowledge of anyone and everyone, and we leverage the power of our connected era to do just that every single day,” Dhawan said. “We are no longer just sending body language cues--the handshake, the head nod, the lean in--we are sending a whole new set of empathy cues that either make or break a culture of respect and trust.”
‘No Longer Trivial Decisions’
The choice of communication medium is no longer a trivial decision, Dhawan suggested.
“They are new cues to others of issues like complexity, urgency, respect and priority,” she said.
Dhawan noted many people, especially the newest workers, detest using the phone or voicemail.
Just switching the medium with a target audience or another worker can have a 10x effect on engagement, according to Dhawan.
“Simply asking ourselves, ‘Am I using the right channels? Did I ask my member simple questions like, ‘What channels do you prefer to connect? How often do you want to hear from me in these channels? When issues are complex, what's your preferred method?’”
Dhawan drew laughs and nods of agreement from her audience by noting, for example, that among the most dreaded of communications is the “reply all” message.
Getting Policies in Place
For that reason some organizations have established policies, such as no one should reply to a message if their email is part of the CC list. Others use the subject line to indicate who should reply and by when.
“The digital native may want to hear from you more often to others that are fine with a more infrequent level of communication,” Dhawan said.
Other organizations have instituted policies for how often someone can speak during a video call in order to create engagement with everyone, especially introverts, and to address people “fighting for airtime.” Dhawan said research shows senior people tend to take up 80% of meeting time, which reduces the time for others and can stifle ideas.
Dhawan said the most successful organizations also:
- Send an agenda two days ahead of the meeting to give people time to prepare
- Start meetings on time
- End meetings five minutes early to respect people’s time
It’s Not About the Shoes
“So much of what we used to think of as empathy was this phrase about ‘The ability to step in the shoes of others while remaining in our own shoes’,” Dhawan observed. “But I think the reality is that with so many the connections, we can't always step into the shoes of another…So, we have to be proactive in different ways. Concrete empathy is not assuming; it's asking for feedback, checking in more regularly, making sure that we're maniacally clear in our communication in all formats, and also asking for their preferences so that we're tailoring and customizing it to different types of members.”
The Four Laws of Concrete Empathy
According to Dhawan, there are four laws to concrete empathy:
Value Visibly
“In-person connections, handshakes, head nods, team dinners--those things matter more than ever, so you don't want to be the colleague that has everyone back in the office and your door shut because you're on a screen or video calls all day,” Dhawan said. “We have to remember to move beyond the traditional ways we have always connected, and to ask how are we respecting people’s time and how are we practicing radical recognition.”
Dhawan urged CU leaders to create time so people don't feel interrupted
In addition to the demands/expectations of digital natives, who like frequent, short and fast messages, Dhawan said leaders need to be aware of “digital adapters,” who prefer in-person interaction and phone calls.
Three Questions
When thinking about connecting with the next generation of members, Dhawan said credit union leaders should be asking three questions:
- How do you prefer complex information be communicated?
- How do you prefer to receive urgent information versus non urgent information?
- How often do you want to hear from me
Communicate Carefully
The second law of Concrete Empathy, according to Dhawan, is to communicate carefully.
“We have to choose maniacal clarity and we have to choose the right channel,” she said.
Not doing those things right, she suggested, can lead to huge misunderstandings even when the message is simple.
Dhawan said one credit union she worked with created collaboration tool guidelines for expectations around different types of messages, such as IM, outlook, calls/meetings and individual group texts
Collaborate Confidentially
The third piece of Concrete Empathy involves collaborating carefully, according to Dhawan.
“As we think about collaboration today I really want to frame it in a way that allows us all to think about what are some of those new things that we can do in our credit union,” said Dhawan.
Among those new things, she suggested, is turning to different people or departments or even going outside the credit union for input, all as part of an effort to “connect more intelligently.”
“It’s very easy for us to tell our colleagues to collaborate with one another, but it can feel threatening to team identity, to their legitimacy, to the control they have over certain things, and so again making sure we're role modeling, making sure we're designing meetings in a way that connects and engages people” is important.
To help do that, Dhawan offered this checklist, below, for meetings.
Trust Totally
The final piece of Concrete Empathy, Dhawan said is to trust totally.
“Trust is about giving others the benefit of the doubt regularly. I call it hybrid water cooler moments,” Dhawan said. “Say I'm a digital native but I know these other individuals are digital adapters--how do we connect better?”
An example, Dhawan shared is how one manager uses the last two minutes of every meeting in which everyone is required to share ways the next meeting can be improved.
“It's almost like a meeting Net Promoter Score and it's completely changed the culture of the organization,” she said. “What does it look like for all of us to continue to create that culture of trust, to not assume but to ask to create that environment, where everyone is able to share?”
Finally, Dhawan offered this checklist, below.