Crina and Kirsten Get to Work

Black Women At Work

In recognition of Black History Month, we spend some time considering the state of black women at work in America, and the racism behind it. In this episode, we will see that Black women are paid less, have fewer benefits, are promoted with less frequency and occupy fewer management positions than their white counterparts. We also ask ourselves, and our listeners to take action to address these disparities that permeate every workplace.
 
SHOW NOTES
 
This episode is full of contradictions, which reflects the racism Black women face in the American workplace.  While Black women have always (and currently) participated more than white women in the labor force, regardless of age, marital status or the presence of children, they have not reaped the rewards of that higher level of participation.  
 
 Black women have been excluded from social programs because of their relatively high rates of employment as compared to white women, which is ironic when we consider the stereotype image of the black welfare mother with all the kids - turns out those programs did not even cover Black women when they began.  Legislative protections for workers have excluded Black women because the industries they have typically occupied have been excluded, such as household workers and agriculture.  Racism is many awful and injurious things, but it is also ironic.  
 
Studies show this reality affects the way Black women feel about their work - and we know from prior episodes the importance of our perceptions about the workplace.
According to a Gallup poll, Black women are less likely to feel valued, less likely to feel they are treated with respect, and less likely to feel treated fairly at work than any other group. Despite these feelings, Black women remain highly ambitious and ready to succeed in the workplace.
 
Tune in to find out what organizations and individuals can do about racism directed at Black women in the workplace.
 
Good Reads:
Black Women in the Workplace
Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination.
The “Angry Black Woman” Stereotype at Work
Black Women's Equal Pay Day Equals An Extra 214 Days Of Work
SYSTEMIC RACISM AND THE GENDER PAY GAP

Fear Is A Powerful Teacher

Fear has the power to motivate us to act; educate us about who we are; inspire us to change; and provide us with so very many opportunities to find ease, meaning and joy. 
 
SHOW NOTES
Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, we are talking about FEAR!!  We can do this together - pour yourself a cup of tea and take a deep breath, let’s wade into the dark waters of fear and find the clear water.  
 
Signposts for this episode:
 
How does fear help us?
How does fear stop us?
How does fear impact our brains? Our performance? Our motivation?
What do you do when you’re afraid?
What do you do to avoid the things you’re afraid of: work too much? Get angry? 
 
Why Deal with Fear?
 
The first question you may ask yourself is why should we deal with big, hairy, scary fear?  Because it gets in the way of leading our fullest lives.  Remember the saying, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  If we are too afraid to take a shot, we miss it.  And the amazing Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  And one of our favorite stoics, Seneca, said, "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."  The quotations all tell us something about fear - what it gets in the way of, the benefits of conquering fear - and of course what we make up in our heads.
 
Addressing your fears allows you to be more of who you are in the world - oh yeah - and some of that ease, meaning and joy.
 
What is Fear?
 
At its basic level, fear is a physical and emotional response to some external stimulus. Sometimes the stimulus is known—like a loud, unexpected crash in the middle of the night—but often the trigger for fear is subconscious and is not easily traced, i.e. a dark basement or a steep ski slope.
 
Science tells us that some aspects of fear are evolutionary.  In other words, we are hard-wired with a set of autonomic responses that have been critical to our survival. Other fears are conditional i.e. developed through a complex set of interactions with the world and often through observing the behaviors of others.  It turns out there is quite a bit of debate about what we are born with and what is conditioned into us.  And some of the conditioning comes from the stuff we keep telling ourselves.
 
Is Fear Positive or Negative?
 
Most of us think that fear is negative because it can stop you from doing things.  Fear also has negative impacts on your physical health, memory, brain processing and mental health.
 
However, fear does have a positive side - the positive power to stimulate action and unlock potential. When we face our fears, acknowledge and give respect to the power within those fears (what is true), parce out what is not true and turn that power into action, we can make remarkable progress in our lives.
 
What are Some Workplace Fears
 
Workplace fears include fear of organizational change and fear of risk taking, which includes fear of failure, success, fear of what others will think, and fear of uncertainty.  Sometimes we are afraid to speak up at a meeting, express an unpopular or new view or opinion, ask for that raise - just so many things.
 
How Do We Overcome Fear
 
Tim Ferris has a great exercise - that has taken from the stoics - to overcome fear - in fact, he is such a believer in this process he says people would be better off addressing fears than setting goals.
 
Tim suggests three sheets for this exercise.  
 
On the first sheet define what you are afraid of, what are the worst things that can happen - try to come up with a column of at least 10 and closer to 20 awful things.  For each of the awful things, figure out how you might prevent the awful thing in the second column or steps for a repair in the third column.
 
On the second sheet list all the benefits of an attempt, of partial success or wild success. Will you be rich and famous (if you want to), will you build confidence, learn skills, have an experience, free yourself from something?
 
One the last sheet list the cost of inaction - what will doing nothing look like in 6 months, a year or three years.
 
References and Good Reads:
 
(PDF) Fear as a strategy: Effects and impact within the organization
Impact of Fear and Anxiety | Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing
Sigal Barsade - Knowledge@Wharton
Why you should define your fears instead of your goals | Tim Ferriss - Bing video

What to Wear?

OMG…Who doesn’t love talking about clothes? Not only does that outfit make you look super cute (yes, we’re talking to you, friend!) your clothes affect your feelings, how your job performance,the environment, and other working women! Clothes are another opportunity to make choices about how we live in and show up in the world.  We can use clothes to be more of our authentic selve - to make a political statement - or to live out our deepest values around the environment and worker rights.   
SHOW NOTES
Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our hosts discuss - drum roll please - clothes!  What do clothes have to do with ease, meaning and joy?!  Turns out it is a lot - and what we may think is a light subject in fact brings us deep into creating meaning in our lives.
 
The idea for this show came from a listener who sent us a Wall Street Journal article on the pandemic closet purge.  It turns out many of us are cleaning our closets because our experiences during this pandemic have changed what we wear and how we see clothing.  What to Wear The Pandemic Closet Purge is Under Way, Anne Marie Chaker.  Chaker says that nearly seventy-five percent of respondents in a November 2021 survey by consumer research firm CivicScience of more than 4,200 U.S. adults said their closets contain many things they will never wear again. Only 15% said they want to leave their closets as-is.  The pandemic closet purge isn’t merely an exercise in swapping formal clothes for casual ones. This closet purge is more of a desire to simplify during complicated, uncertain times. 
 
As Crina says, what she thought would be a light show on clothes and women and work, went deep - into meaning.  Women have always been using clothes to fit in, express themselves and at times make political statements.
 
We pick clothes because they make us feel good in some way - maybe for comfort, maybe for fun, maybe to express something, or maybe to fit in, feel a part of the group - or set us apart from the group.
 
Women wore green, white and violet jewelry during the suffrage movement to signal GWV - or Get, Women the Vote.  A century later, in the 1980s, women wore “feminized” suits with big shoulder pads and bow ties to mimic male professional dress style in an attempt to access the social and economic capital that lay on the other side of the glass ceiling. If the Clothes Fit: A Feminist Takes on Fashion - Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)
 
What we wear affects our mental state.  So called “power clothes” can make us better negotiators; wearing a uniform can make us more conscious of our job duties, and, in fact, just looking at a lab coat can make us more accurate and precise.
 
What we wear affects the environment.  We have drastically increased the amount of clothing produced - and much of it is synthetic fabrics that do not biodegrade.
 
What we wear also affects the people who produce it - who are mostly women.  An estimated 60 million workers power the global garment industry and the fashion industry is not known for providing women worker friendly wages or benefits.  In fact, it is just the opposite.
 
So when we consider how clothes affect our feelings, how clothes affect our job performance, and the impact of our choices on the environment and other working women, what is a woman to do?  Simply put, clothes are another opportunity to make choices about how we live in and show up in the world.  We can use clothes to be more of our authentic selve - to make a political statement - or to live out our deepest values around the environment and worker rights.  
 
Good Reads:
 
The Inherent Sexism in Women’s Professional Clothing – FEM Newsmagazine (femmagazine.com)
 
If the Clothes Fit: A Feminist Takes on Fashion - Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)
 
How Women Have Used Fashion As A Feminist Tool Throughout History (bustle.com)
 
Does What We Wear To Work Affect Our Productivity? | Hive
 
Research Shows That the Clothes You Wear Actually Change the Way You Perform | Inc.com
 
Exploring Enclothed Cognition (schoolofselfimage.com)
 
Gender Discrimination — Clean Clothes Campaign

Resilience: How to survive (and maybe even thrive!) in difficult situations.

WOW! Resilience is amazing! Not only is it a powerful tool to minimize stress, improve performance and create more ease, meaning and joy…it’s something we can all develop in ourselves! Simple, daily practices have proven effective at building resilience and helping folks deal with difficult situations; manage emotions and generate a positive outlook about life. We could use some of that right now! 
 
SHOW NOTES
On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, the timely topic for tillitating tete a tete between our co-hosts is resilience.  Let’s be honest - we are two years into a pandemic, regardless of your political persuasion many feel political and economic certainty and, oh yes, let’s add all of the regular challenges of being human in this world.  IT’S A LOT!  So what do we need - of course we need ease, meaning and joy - and there are good things out there - a dear friend, a beautiful sunrise, a long walk, a sweet dog - lot’s of good things.  We just need to get ourselves in a place where we can enjoy those things and that is where resilience comes in.
 
Adversity doesn't discriminate. If we are alive, we are going to have to, or have already had to, deal with some tough times.  Navigating those tough times requires resilience - and resiliency is something we control.  
 
In the world of positive psychology, resilience is being able to recover and adapt quickly from a traumatic event or stressor. In other words, it’s a kind of inner strength.  Generally speaking, resilient people have a positive outlook; deal with difficult situations with ease and don’t exhibit excessive negative emotions during difficult times.  
 
Resilience helps us minimize stress, improve performance and leads to more ease, meaning and joy at work.  But a word of caution -  some folks are critical of the ' ‘resilience movement” because it puts the burden on the individuals who have little control over the systems they’re affected by.  Think of racism or sexism or ableism.  While resilience can be very helpful in these situations, an individual’s resilience does not, for example, resolve racism.  Resilience can help us manage but it is not a solution for systemic distrimination.
 
The good news is that because there is a concrete set of behaviors and skills associated with resilience, you can learn to be more resilient.
 
One, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in, they're not delusional. But, resilience people seem to accept that suffering or challenges are part of every human existence.
 
Two, resilient people are really good at choosing where to focus their attention. They analyze a situation and focus on the things they can change and accept the things they cannot change. 
It is not about diminishing the negative as much as it is focusing on where they can get traction in changing their situation. 
 
Three, resilient people ask themselves, iIs what I'm doing helping or harming me?"  They seem to be aware of whether their actions are taking them in the directions they want to go - or not.  This requires self-awareness and honesty.  
 
Four, resilient people respond to stress rather than reacting and to stress and mental agility, which is the ability  to cognitively take a step back from the experience,  label thoughts and emotions and change their attention and/or the narrative about the situation.
 
Five,  resilient people compartmentalize so that they are not juggling or managing too much. This is similar to where resilient people direct their attention - and sometimes it makes sense to ignore some things and focus on others..
 
Six, resilient people understand the importance of connection - knowing they have a circle of support and being able to reach out if necessary.
 
Seven,  humor, which is an indicator of a positive outlook in general, also contributes to resilience - for all of the reasons - endorphins, a flat stomach  . . ..
 
Eight,  resilient people have optimism and hope or or belief or something like it - this can be a small kernel of hope or a belief that something good will happen.
 
Resiliency is a skill we can learn and improve over time and with practice.  Resiliency can be as small and simple as enjoying a hot bath at the end of a hard day or as big and complicated as losing a job,  taking  steps to redefine what we want in a job and getting out there to get it.
 
References and good reads:
 
5 Ways to Boost Your Resilience at Work
 
Lucy Hone: 3 secrets of resilient people | TED Talk

End of the Year Tune-Up Part 2: Setting Intentions

Twelve months from now you will feel, experience, imagine and embody something. Do you want to be in the drivers’ seat or leave it up to chance? Setting intentions and working toward your goals is the way to get, become, dare we say manifest(?) exactly what you want for yourself, your life and your work. 
 
SHOW NOTES 
 
In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, we get to ring in the New Year with Part 2 of a 2 part series on Reflections and Realizing Intentions.  In Episode 75 (what?!! 75 episodes!) we learned about the power of reflection.  Reflecting on the past year is a great start to setting intentions for the new year - and this episode focuses on how to make those intentions real.  As Crina says - and she says someone else said it - you are going to be someone in 12 months, you are going to have done things in 12 months and experienced things in 12 months - so who do you want to be and what do you want those things done and experiences had to be?
 
Last year we focused our “intentions” episode on setting mental intentions to achieve who we want to be, how we want to feel and how we want to react.
 
Take some time to reflect on last year - and organize the reflections.  It can be as simple as good and bad or you can define the categories you most resonate with.  Kirsten uses emotional, physical, work, relational, financial and spiritual.  Pick whatever feels right.
 
Once we reflect on last year, think about what we want to repeat (or not) in the coming year. We can set specific goals - anything from finding that new job, going on a date a month or creating one new experience a month - whatever our jam is, this is the time to clearly define it and set a goal.  And those goals can mirror your reflections - or not.
 
Once we set goals, we can direct our intentions to make those goals come to life.  How do we focus our intentions so that “stuff happens?” Depak Chopra writes, “intention is the starting point of every dream. It is the creative power that fulfills all of our needs, whether for money, relationships, spiritual awakening, or love.”  So, Depak, how does that work?
 
Many people find that reminders are helpful - post goals on the bathroom mirror, create a vision board or a vision box, journal and make a commitment to review that goals list once a week or once a month.  If we set a goal in January that does not feel good in August, dump it.  We can be flexible and allow for the space to change our minds.
 
Some people believe that just imagining it can make it so - those are The Secret folks.  And while there is certainly magic in the Universe and sometimes those things just happen - it’s usually not the case.  A friend of Kirsten has had many goals of owning a second home somewhere and the opportunity seems to appear out of nowhere - so much so that the friend’s husband has asked her to stop.  This is not most of our experiences.
 
Other people advocate for positive thinking, but it turns out that is not what it is cracked up to be.  Gabriele Oettingen is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and at the University of Hamburg. She wrote “Rethinking Positive Thinking” which synthesizes 20 years of research on the science of human motivation.  The research shows that positive thinking is much less promising than we think.  In the moment, positive thinking gives us pleasure, but in the long run if we simply have positive thoughts, we put in less energy and have fewer successes towards our goals. This leads to reduced happiness and loss of motivation.  
 
Positive thinking is very helpful to explore possibilities in the future - and here is the catch, when positive thinking is combined with a good sense of reality. 
 
It turns out that small steps and planning have a lot of influence on whether you achieve your goals.  
 
It is important to take one small step towards your goal - and then another and another and another - and soon enough you will be there.  Kirsten tells a story about Dr. Nicole LePera who essentially changed her whole life by starting with drinking a glass of water every morning to begin to hydrate her body for the day.  If you want to save $1000, start with $100 - or even $10. 
 
Another strategy is to plan, which is well articulated in a system called WOOP - in fact that is the name of the website advocating this method.  According to the WOOP (which stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, plan) website, “The obstacles that we think most impede us from fulfilling our wishes can actually help us to realize them. WOOP instructs us to dream our future dreams but then to imagine what obstacles inside ourselves prevent us from achieving these dreams.”  In other words, we need to understand what we want, what does getting it look like, what will get in our way and how to we get around, through or over that obstacle.
 
The New Year is a great time to go through this process of reflection, goal setting, intention setting and directing and goal actualization, but we can do this any time of year or multiple times a year.  Our lives are precious - creating something we love will give us ease, meaning and joy!

End of the Year Tune-Up Part 1: The Power of Reflection

Reflection is important for skill building, mastery, self awareness and self assessment.  We learn from what happened so next time it can be intentionally the same - or different.  This is a key component to creating ease, meaning and joy in your life and in your work. 
SHOW NOTES
Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our work babes reflect on the power of reflection.  Sometimes we intuitively know something is helpful, and that is true for reflection,  but the statistics on the effects of reflection are particularly compelling.
WARNING - do not proceed if you are going to beat yourself up about the past - this is a learning experience.  No beating up!
Reflection is pretty simple - it is thinking about what you do, say, feel, experience and perceive.  It is closely linked to the concept of learning from experience in that you think about what we do, feel and perceive and what happened, and consider whether we would do differently next time - or hopefully whether we have landed on the magic formula.
Thinking about what has happened is part of being human. However, the difference between causal ‘thinking’ and ‘reflective practice’ is that reflective practice requires a conscious effort to think about events, and develop insights into them. And here is that word again - curious!  It's about getting curious.  Once you get into the habit of using reflective practice, you will probably find it useful both at work and at home.
Reflection is important for skill building, mastery, self awareness and self assessment.  We learn from what happened so next time it can be intentionally the same - or different.  This is a key component to creating ease, meaning and joy in your life and in your work.  Looking back when things go well: we learn what worked for us and know we can use those behaviors or strategies again to our advantage.  Looking back when things go poorly: learning from hindsight is not about wishing you had done things differently, which is more like regret. It’s getting curious about whether there is anything you want to do differently going forward. But be careful of what is called hindsight bias: which is the tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were - meaning that we think we had more control over the outcome than we actually did.
WHAT THE DATA SAYS:
Recent research from the Harvard Business school into the power of reflection showed that when employees spent 15 minutes at the end of their day reflecting about what they’ve learned, they’ve improved their performance by 23%‌ in just 10 days, in comparison to those who did not reflect. Amazing - huh!  Can you imagine increasing your performance not just at work, but in your life as well just through 15 minutes of reflection?!.  
Giada De Stefano, professor at HEC Paris - an economics and business management school,  tells us we work five more weeks per year now than we did in the 1970s.  This means that gains in productivity are the result of working more - not working differently.  Stefano proposes that we do not need to give more time to work to increase performance and productivity.  In fact, we need to do less and think more.
To Stepfano’s point, studies have found that, once we have gathered a certain amount of experience, the benefit of continuing to perform similar tasks is far inferior to that of pairing that experience with efforts to analyze and reflect on it.   And it turns out that more training has its drawbacks as well - because according to BetterUp we forget about 75% of it!  Research has found that, regardless of work experience, all employees experience loss of knowledge over time. The amount of information that people remember depreciates over time, but this occurs at a significantly higher rate among individuals who work for organizations who don’t actively practice reflection (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011).  It turns out practice and training have their limits in increasing productivity.  Reflection is that secret sauce to add in.  
The data tells us that reflection not only improves productivity and performance, but it also makes us feel better.  Studies show that brief, positive reflection practices at the end of a work day can lead to decreased stress and improved health.  Bono, J. E., Glomb, T. M., Shen, W., Kim, E., & Koch, A. J. (2013). 
WHY DOES REFLECTION WORK:
Research shows reflection is critical to helping us deepen and integrate learning, and effectively apply it to our work and our lives. ( BetterUp)  It is like the glue of progress - it seems to help it all stick and be solid.
HOW TO BUILD REFLECTION INTO YOUR WORKPLACE
Reflection is simple and building reflection into your day can also be simple.  BetterUp has some great examples for managers, including:
Communicate the value of taking time for quality breaks 
Encourage employees to schedule whitespace into their day to allow for reflection
Hire a coach for yourself or your employees - or ask a trusted friend or colleague to be your reflection partner
Do a project post-mortem
Integrate reflection into meetings
We can also do this ourselves.  Self-reflection requires us to look at ourselves with interest, curiosity, and inquiry, particularly when exploring our thoughts, behaviors, perceptions and emotions. 
Set aside some time - even starting with once a week - the same day and time every weekCreate a list of questions for yourself
Learn to identify and question your assumptions and perceptions
Give yourself some time to check in to your feelings
Take time to reflect in-the-moment, whenever you try a new task
Talk with colleagues about your experiences
Ask for feedback and observation from co-workers/supervisors
Write down your reflections - even just brief phrases and sentences - looking back on these reflections is powerful.
As we end this year, this is a perfect time to look back as we move into a new year to set our intentions and plans for what we want to create for ourselves in the new year.
Good Reads:
The Power of Reflection in Workplace Learning
Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning by Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano, Bradley R. Staats :: SSRN
Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance - HBS Working Knowledge
How to Practice Self-Reflection at Work | by Neve McBeal | The Startup | Medium
The power of reflection at work: Insight by HEC Professor Giada di Stefano | HEC Paris
Reflective Practice | SkillsYouNeed
Getting started with Reflective Practice

Workplace Norms: What‘s ”normal” at work, anyway?

Workplace norms are those rules, behaviors and ways of going that define how we work together.  When teams discuss and define their norms, they create safe workplaces for folks to succeed. When we are unaware of our workplace norms, we can fall prey to unspoken rules about professionalism, duty, work, etc that are difficult to navigate; frequently confusing and often rooted in sexism and racism.
 
SHOW NOTES
Norms are essentially expectations of the group and can be conscious and formal, or unconscious and informal. A couple of examples of group norms at work include the expectation that all members show up at group meeting times, that all group members focus on the group instead of personal matters (for example, turning cell phones and other distractions off), and that group members finish their part of the work by the established due date. Norms are also expectations such as don’t disagree with the boss or don’t ask your assistant to perform personal errands for you.
 
Gender norms are particularly problematic at work.  Gender norms are learned in the home and reinforced in school, at work, in our institutions and in our social interactions.  They perpetuate power differentials and equality and often negatively impact women.
 
Norms around race, while more complicated, are created similarly to the way gender norms are created.  White norms often define what is “professional” at work - in everything from hair to grammar.  Defining professional as primarily white cultural norms excludes and separates people from other cultures from the workplace.
 
Norms do have a positive side - they simplify group process - when we know the “rules” we know how to act and do not have to guess.  
 
There are two kinds of workplace norms - technical norms and social norms.  Technical norms focus on skills and information and are communicated by policies, procedures and rules.  Social norms guide interactions, particularly with regard to conflict, challenge, accountability and disagreement. Social norms are transmitted through observation or trial and error.  For example, not disagreeing with the boss is learned by observing not from the employee handbook. 
 
Workplace norms change over time, which is good because there are some workplace norms that need to change.  Top candidates for change include getting rid of long and painful meetings, mandatory afterwork events, set work hours, coming to work sick, work - life separation and micromanaging.  What would you add?
 
GOOD READS
Establishing and Maintaining Group Norms
Politics, love & slacking: Managing new workplace norms | HR Morning
7 Workplace Norms That Need to End in the New Normal (idesign.com)
The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards (ssir.org)  

Empathy: Cultivating Compassion at Work

Cultivating an empathetic workplace is all the rage, but how do we do it? It begins with a commitment to ensure that empathy is baked into your workplace culture. Next, you and your coworkers need to be willing and able to recognize and respond to each other’s emotions. Finally, when you truly act in order to relieve each other’s suffering, you may have found the key to unlocking the benefits of empathy.
 
SHOW NOTES
Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our gals engage in an exciting exchange on empathy.  Let’s get clear about what we are talking about.  We often use sympathy, empathy and compassion interchangeably and narrowing down on what each means helps us better understand the concepts.
 
Sympathy means we can understand what the other person is feeling.
Empathy means that we feel what a person is feeling.
Compassion is the willingness to feel what a person is feeling and to relieve the suffering of another.
 
Now that we know what we are talking about, why are we talking about empathy?  Because it turns out it is a really good thing and we all should want to give and receive more of it in the workplace.  We rarely “should” on our listeners, but this is a first for a reason.  Empathy is powerful.
 
Of course, Brene Brown has created a spectacular and hilarious video should be the first stop on a tour of empathy. Brené Brown on Empathy - Bing video
It turns out that we are hardwired for empathy.  Children as young as two demonstrate an appreciation that others hold perspectives different than their own, as evidenced in a study at Lund University in 2018.  Lund University, And research at the University of Virginia found when people saw their friends experiencing threats, they experienced activity in the same part of their brain which was affected when they were personally threatened. See - literally - empathy is wired into our brains.
 
Empathy contributes to better mental health, better physical health and more ease with work-life balance for employees.  And it turns out that what is good for employees is good for employers - empathy increases innovation, engagement, inclusivity and performance, according to a .2021 study by Catalyst.
 
What about the gender gap in empathy?  Women self-report that they are more empathetic; however, it turns out the vast majority of studies on this issue report no significant gender difference in empathy ability.
 
How can we bring more empathy to work:
 
Give your full attention to people
Consider other people’s perspectives
Actively support people 
Start meetings, calls, emails and other communication with a personal check in
Open your written communication with a signal of gratitude
Ask specific questions (not “how’s it going) and be curious about the answer/body language
Speak directly with individuals
Show active listening skills
Follow up after life events (how was your time with your parents this weekend?)
Create more informed policies and statements about social issues
See The Power of Empathy in Times of Crisis and Beyond (Report)