Empathy Expansion Kit: Building Empathetic Teams Remotely

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Skash** (0:17)
Hello, and welcome back to the show. In this short Empathy Expansion Kit episode, we are covering the topic of building empathetic teams remotely.
I'm Stephen Skash here with Tulio Siragusa. Hey, Tulio.

**Tulio Siragusa** (0:32)
Hello. I do love that beat when the show starts. It's always had a good mood.

**Stephen Skash** (0:40)
So this is an interesting topic. For a lot of new companies, it's been a relatively new challenge since the pandemic. We've had portions of our business remote for 15 years, so we've been doing this for a while.
But with the pandemic, that changed everything for a lot of companies. And I think everyone could do a much better job. We're all trying to sort of figure this out. It's brought us into each other's homes to some extent, but it's also separated us in other ways, just not being around each other. So we're going to kind of dive into how do we build empathetic teams remotely? And I think the first thing is really to kind of promote a human-first approach in all interactions. Promote connection. I mean, I say that a lot. This is what this podcast is a big part of. It's about is connection. So that can come in the many different ways that you interact, like in those staff meetings, right, where everyone's getting together remotely. But before diving in to business, let's take a few moments to connect. Try and figure out things other than just the weather. Talked about this in the past. There are other things going on in people's lives, and sometimes the weather, though, is seriously going on in their lives, for sure. But ask about their lives.

**Tulio Siragusa** (2:10)
We did a whole episode on this too, very early on.

**Stephen Skash** (2:14)
We did, for sure. Go back if you want a full deep dive on how to get involved in those conversations. I generally, I mean, it's have curiosity. I think that's really kind of a key. Promoting those human first interactions, lead by example. Leaders, managers, you got to model those empathetic behaviors.
Showing understanding during stressful times, sharing your experiences and struggles, actively supporting team members' growth and well-being. Julio, I know this is a big topic for you. What comes to mind trying to get there with that human connection?

**Tulio Siragusa** (3:00)
To me, it comes down to creating a safe space for vulnerability.
And people think being vulnerable is a weakness, but it is the most powerful thing you could do if you model it correctly as a leader.
If you can create a space where there's an opportunity to talk about either whether you made a mistake or you need support on something. So there's a few things that can help with this, right? One, you can encourage this concept of Rose and Thorn sharing. I think of it as like every meeting should start with a little celebration. Talk about what you want to celebrate. What was a win for you last week? And it doesn't have to be a big win. It could just be something like that was meaningful to you personally. I had this win last week. So you start with a little celebration. It's like, this is my win. And then talk about what challenge you're having that you need to face this coming week. Maybe you need some support or something, or maybe you're in your head about it, or maybe you just feel like it's an unsurpassable mountain, right? So you talk about something positive, a win and then something not necessarily negative, but it's more like a challenge, a struggle. And so it's a mixture of celebrating, so everybody's like celebrating with you, but also it creates a psychological need to want to continue celebrating. So if you present the problem, then the natural tendency is, let's get this problem resolved so we can all celebrate with you. So it's an opportunity. And this practice creates a habit of openly sharing empathetically what's going on, the good and the not so good. The other thing too is to, and by the way, as a leader, model that. Be the first to model that. So in a check-in, don't just let the entire team check in, check in yourself too, lead it, set the example. Open door policy, we've talked about that. It's a little different when it's virtual, because it's remote. We're talking about how to do this remotely. So make it clear that any team members are welcome to reach out on any topic to anyone in the organization. This is an opportunity for whether it's you need personal or professional support, or you have established hours where your managers are available to listen. Just set it out. It's like, okay, I've set these hours in my day or my week where I'm available for, just come talk to me about anything you want. Just the same way you would stop by someone's office physically, you would know when to go in, the door's open.