 Hello, good afternoon or good morning wherever you're attending today and thank you for attending this talk with us and you're going to spend both Ryan and I are going to walk you through selfless engineer and we'll introduce ourselves, walk through what we're going to cover in this talk and then quickly go into a framework of how we can put some of these into core actions. So, my name is Vasudha Prabhulah. You can call me V. I know it's a tongue twister. I'm senior vice president of service delivery at Headspring. Ryan, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? My name is Ryan Thomas. I'm the director of engineering at Headspring. I'm probably primarily responsible for working with our engineers and our clients to ensure successful project delivery. Yeah, we have we have some fun time at Headspring delivering long engagement software development consulting engagement and we specialize in legacy modernization and transformation. Helping our clients and as part of for next 30 minutes, Ryan and I will walk you through why empathy is important for software developers because he and I spend a lot of time with developers. We both are engineering background and we both are developers. So run and I'll walk you through why empathy is important for software developers and also a framework to incorporate empathy in your communication and how it all comes together. So, why are we talking? Why are we talking about software developers in this manner? I'll walk you through very quickly in software developers have great problem solving skills, right? They have the ability to split complex problems. They are able to think thoroughly, abstract things as necessary. And if you are an engineer, you know what I'm talking about and also very creative in their solution and delivering to customers. I was reading this book a few weeks ago, and it led me to think, you know, and there was this code for four employees of 2020 need, you know, all these crazy skill sets, which was not the case when our parents were growing up right. They need 2020 employees need complex problem solving, critical thinking, coordinating with others and a lot of creativity, which are very, very natural to most software developers. And where we often see the gap in engineers both managing and being one is would say lack of emotional intelligence. Now, they have other skills, why not build upon emotional intelligence. In terms of emotional intelligence and let's spend a minute here on empathy, right. The reason empathy is doesn't come so naturally to a lot of us, because it the word empathy in itself is something that can bring different emotions from different people. Some, for some, it is either a form of mysticism, or for some, it is just seen as a bad word, or something that cannot just coexist with engineering. I think we are just so tuned to that thinking that we never think that empathy can coexist. So why do we care about empathy. So why do we care about with empathy and why should you care about empathy. If you're a software engineer, you're writing code and more often than not, you're writing it for somebody else, you're in the development field, you are constantly talking to the customers. And if, if you have empathy, you can understand the needs of your customers at work. You will be, you will more likely treat people, you care the way you would like to be treated. And you can also very easily convince others your point of view, which is a hard piece a lot of time. And how do you motivate them and how do you convince your point of view. And also, if you want to take a level further, and we'll see by the end of this talk, if you want to take it any further, you can also start predicting other people's actions and reactions to each one of these. So this talk essentially is about how do we come up with this building blocks of empathy and how do we demystify the word empathy. Like I said, empathy isn't seen very, very positively. So let's talk a little bit about communication and why empathy and communication is difficult. I'll speak for myself, right, even though it's a part of everyday life, it is hard, and it is hard because we have cultural differences. Now we have physical barriers. Now it is very different right now. My media wasn't working whereas Ryan is working. I'm like, I can see people's reactions and you can see my reaction. So it's hard, you know, you have to depend upon the words that you use to communicate. And there's also this inherent fear and reluctance that we have that we will not be respected, and we will probably feel unheard if we say something that may not gel with somebody else's opinion. So all of this, even though communication is such a key part of our everyday life, all of this come together and make it very, very hard for us to communicate freely, especially when we are working with clients, writing code. And given the technology that we have, you know, we have to put in additional effort to actually be empathetic and deliberate in our communication. Here's the thing. Empathy is not something magical. It's not mystic. Empathy is as simple as your ability to understand someone else's position. Empathy is not about you conveying what you're feeling. Empathy is your ability to understand someone else's position. And the minute you can put yourself and other person's point of view in their shoes, then you can very easily bring up a lot of empathy in your communication. Because we are engineers and we love solving problems, what we have done is we have come up with a five-step framework to actually take it into bite-slice shunt and solve this issue of empathy and how do we actually make it incorporate into our day-to-day habits. With that, I'll pass it over to Ryan. Thanks, V. So the five steps to becoming a better communicator, it's not really that complex. It's really a matter of starting with understanding yourself and then beginning continuing to understand them, building comfort into conversations, developing your active listening skills, and then finally practicing, practice, practice, practice. So how do we understand ourselves? Who we are at work versus who we are at home are typically very different. We've adapted ourselves consciously or even subconsciously over time to suit our environments. Our home self is our most comfortable versions of ourselves, the versions that we don't have to put any effort into. Whereas the work self is our own perceived better version. That's something that we've created to cover up holes or flaws that we think we may have. So think of it as something like, oh, I don't curse as much at work, or it can be something like detrimental, like nervously rambling when asked a simple question. So Socrates nailed it early on, Know Thyself. Reflecting on and identifying your behaviors and how you show up, especially against your work and professional type, is critical to understanding how others perceive you. What are your strengths, your weaknesses, your hidden strengths and blind spots? What are your cognitive skills, your emotional tone and style? What about technical and job related skills and interpersonal skills? The self knowledge has to be as it relates to you. What are my best? What are my worst? What are my highest and my lowest? But you must also compare this to self evaluation. You must also compare the self evaluation to others in your life and your work. How do you compare to others you have to work with? Those you have to compete with for jobs and promotions. Sometimes your self view does not totally jive with how others see you. Sometimes it's lower. Sometimes it's higher. But your self awareness should always include information about how you are seen by others around you. Using only your self view is not likely to help you be successful. So ask yourself, do I ramble on without getting to the point? Do I raise my voice easy or easily get upset? Do I talk more than listen or do I interrupt? What about physically how you come across? Do I roll my eyes during conversations? Or do I dart my eyes around the room looking at everything except for who I'm communicating with? Do I slouch? Do I bury my hands in my pockets? What about the language that I use? Do I use habitual phrases that help or even hinder my message? Is my language helping others to be attentive or just simply tune me out? Does it encourage conversations and build bridges? Am I making others feel heard and respected or simply ignored and unappreciated? When there is a communication obstacle and you're having trouble connecting, don't immediately think that it's the recipient's fault. It's very possible that your own communication style is keeping you back. So there are tools available that you can utilize to help you start this self-awareness journey. Disc, color theory, Myers-Briggs, all these will give you a starting point to understanding your own personality. What's important to know is that these tools are not there to dictate who you are, but to guide you in understanding who you are. I'm sure some of you have used one or more of these tools in the past, taken the quiz and seen the results and told yourself, well, that's nothing like me. Or even, wow, this is crazy how accurate this is. The questions in these quizzes have years of research behind them. When you take the quiz, you're basically having a conversation with that quiz and it's telling you how you showed up in that conversation. Your mood, attitude, energy, recent events even, everything affects the outcome. So if you disagree with the results, why? What's different about today? What did the quiz see about your responses that you might have missed? Maybe you had an interaction that made you really angry, so your responses were a bit more dominant than usual. Use this information and start understanding how others may perceive you. And use this information from the other types and the results of the quiz to get a head start on understanding others. So what do you do with all this information? You use it to control the rough edges of yourself. Understanding yourself allows you to be aware of yourself. When we become aware, we can enact change. The simplest example is trying to overcome the o's and the ums and the other verbal tics that we have when speaking, but it can also be used to expand how we control our overall emotional and physical response and how it affects our presence in conversations. You choose who you want to be and how others see you. So I want to take a minute and talk about energy. In every interaction, there's a balance of energy between the participants. I'm not referring to anything spiritual or otherworldly, but really what I'm talking about is the amount of effort each person has to put into an interaction. Introverts, for example, have to put a lot more energy or effort into the conversations, whereas extroverts don't have to put as much. Conversations between extroverts and introverts are roughly balanced. The extrovert can just talk at the introvert and when it's over, both parties leave somewhat satisfied. The extrovert for getting to talk and the introvert for not having to talk at all. However, if you put two introverts together or two extroverts together or some other mix in a large group, you can create a struggle to maintain balance in the conversation. When you take part in communication, ask yourself, do I need to put more energy or more work into this conversation? Or am I putting too much energy into it, dominating the conversation and preventing others from getting through? So understanding them is just as important as understanding yourself. Before any interaction with someone else, you should take at least a second to think about them. Think about the last time you spoke or interacted with them. What was important to them? What are they working on? Who are their friends? Is there anything going on in their life that could be stressful or exciting? What do they believe in? What are they passionate about? Start from a positive place. Many workplace interactions can become competitive. I did this better. I did this first. Resist the urge to one-up them or compete instead be the first to celebrate their success. Ask them about themselves and get details and let them talk. Shut up for a minute and just let them talk. People love to talk for themselves. They can be general topics or if you know specific things, ask them about specific things and just let them talk. Show genuine interest in them in the world and what they could be interested in. And then look for similarities between you and them. And then use that to find genuine compliments and show us sincere interest. And then finally remember them. Take notes if you have to. And then finally remember that everyone has their own self doubts and fears. By understanding yourself, you're aware of how these affect your interactions. So you can work on putting them aside and instead focus completely on the other participants in the interaction. So how do you build comfort into conversations? First of all, you want to take care of yourself. The first experience of any conversation is the sights and the smells. So prevent the attention of the interaction from being your hygiene. Bathe, brush your teeth, chew some gum and wear clean clothes. Open up your body language. Stand up straight. Open your posture and practice this always. It's helpful even as a general health tip. And then emulate their body language during the conversation as well. You want to get out of your head and move your own focus to them. Stop thinking about how nervous you are. Your body language reflects this whether you like it or not. And in turn they're going to mirror this back to you and become uncomfortable themselves. So if you want people to be warm to you, you need to be warm to them first. How do you do this? Well, what do you admire about them? What do you genuinely like about them? For a first-time interaction, it can be as simple as how they look, how they're dressed. Maybe they have a really cool laptop bag that you appreciate. Maybe they have a pleasant personality. Are they laid back? Are they quirky? Think about these things and focus on your appreciation of them. Your body language will reflect this subconsciously. And in turn, they'll subconsciously reflect that warmth back to you. And now you have a recursion of warmth in the conversation. You do want to avoid the lull. So research has shown that it takes as little as four seconds of awkward silence for anxiety to shoot way up in a conversation. So you kind of want to have a few topics ready to go. Current events, sports, entertainment, podcasts, whatever. But you do want to avoid the controversial topics. And then ask about themselves. Again, people love to talk about themselves. So give them that opportunity, every chance you can. And then finally, maintain eye contact and smile. So active listening is often confused with passive listening. Active listening is actually taking part in the conversation and working on the rapport between you and your partner. It's basically made up of three parts. Paraphrasing, inquiry, and acknowledgement. Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, has some great tips on improving your listening skills and building relationships in general. Stephen stresses the importance of being non-judgmental and making assumptions when listening to others. There's four basic stages of active listening. Mimic, where you repeat what the other person says, rephrase where you repeat their comments in your own words and show that you've understood. Reflect, put their feelings into words for them. And then finally, rephrase and reflect to keep the conversation going. It's basically just repeating the second and third step. Think of it as playing catch. You take in what your partner gives you, you add a little bit to it, you throw it back, allowing them to elaborate further. And then finally, you want to practice. This, like anything else, requires lots and lots of practice. With practice comes natural application where your body, or where you automatically find yourself smiling, maintaining eye contact, asking engaging questions, listening, et cetera. Every interaction is an opportunity to practice. With current events, I admit there's not quite as much opportunity to practice as before since we're not interacting as much with each other, but don't let this stop you. It's an opportunity with grocery clerks, delivery drivers. And if we ever get back to into an office, you can start conversations in the elevator with people from other floors. Challenge yourself to learn as much about them as possible before the ride ends. Can you remember it? Can you remember all of it by the next time you run into them? I personally love door-to-door solicitors. They're perfect opportunity to practice communication. You know exactly what their motivation is from the beginning. They're eager to talk to you for as long as you'll let them. You can control their excitement and mood easily based on your responses and body language. And it's like communication on easy mode. Just remember to politely decline their offer, otherwise you'll end up with like three sets of solar cells on top of your roof. As a bonus, can you turn them down yet still leave them feeling satisfied? So use it everywhere. Use it when you craft that email. Use it when you leave comments on a pull request. How can you apply these skills to different mediums and formats? Get creative. How about when you write code? You don't write code for yourself. What you're writing today will be read by countless others for years to come, including your future self, who probably will forget all about what today's self is thinking about. Are you looking at your code from the perspective of others, or are you taking advantage of your current headspace to cut corners and leave mysteries for the future? V, how about you sum it up for us, please? Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. And, you know, a lot of people come with very different aspects of how to communicate. And between Ryan and myself, when I talk, I think so. And Ryan has to be quiet for a long time before he will say certain aspects of it, right? Like he will not just think on the fly like me. So over time, we both have learned how each other work and from each other works here and we adapt. So now I use a phrase that, hey, Ryan, stay with me, I'm still thinking. So this is not my final thing. So I give him a cue because I know that I think on the fly. And I'll cue my conversation saying that Ryan just follow me. And I'm not coming to solutions. I'm just still going. And Ryan gives me that space. And when Ryan suddenly goes quiet in a conversation, he tells me, I need a minute. That's fine. All of these are fine. The core of the entire thing is we all come in different shapes and sizes and also sizes and also communication modes, right? So right now, most of us are remote, right? We are working from our homes. We have our dogs barking and we have all of these going on. But the advantage that we have is we can record ourselves. We can play it back so we know how we come across. That gives us an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. It also gives us an opportunity of others, you know, how are they paying attention? It also gives an opportunity to understand what's their motivation. And most importantly, while going into, I'll highly, highly recommend this, is recalibrate before you get into a conversation. Recalibrate, so you know what the topic of the conversation is and you know how you're going to operate. And if this was somebody you know that you have been working with, make sure that you have that in mind, that you have to give the other person space or they will be talking a lot. So that recalibration will set you up for success. And finally is practice. Practice active listening, you know, engaging. And it's okay to be silly. It is okay to make mistakes. And you know, it's okay to be silly and record yourselves and get in more practice with that. We want to thank you both Ryan and I. I want to thank you for spending these 30 minutes with us and we are open for any questions you may have. So the question is it's hard to think about all these tips while focusing on the content of your conversation. So what is the right way to practice? Brian, do you want to take it or do you want me to take it? I can speak a little bit to it. So going back to practicing with, going back to practicing with low impact conversations, this goes to some of the examples I put out to like talking with delivery drivers or grocery store clerks, literally taking every opportunity you can to begin a conversation and then try to practice these skills. When there's not a lot on the line, it makes it easier to kind of ingrain these into your, how do you communicate? Even conversations in the hallway, conversations with family members or you know, if you have people in the house of the US spouse or children, actively put these practices into use because there's not a lot of writing on it, right, at this moment. And so what you're doing is you're building a natural, a natural response or a natural way to put these things into practice without having to think about them when the conversation turns critical. Does that help? I don't know if we can see his response. Yeah, for me, it helps that recalibration, like that's where I start and then go into it that you're going to be silly and continue practicing with that attitude. There's another question here. Some neurodivergent folks find it very difficult to maintain high contact and also engage their brains in the conversation. Any tips for how to make the perception of listening match the reality of listening? So eye contact is important, but it's not super critical. If you simply cannot maintain eye contact, that's fine. You can still practice the other aspects of active listening. There's also tricks that you can use, like a lot of people, they can't look directly in the eyes, so they'll maybe stare at a point in the forehead or stare at the nose, things like that. If you can get that close, then it gives the illusion that you're looking at them in the eye, that works just as fine. But ultimately, if you can't maintain eye contact, that's fine. Your responses and the way you show up in a conversation will come across in other ways, such as body language and the way you talk and ask questions and engage in the conversation. The next question, and I'll tie it back to the eye contact too in this. How to approach when you have previously badly approached and cross some negative impact? How to recover? You know, humility is the biggest thing. You actually put those in words. For example, you can go back to the conversation that did not go very well and you can say, hey, please focus on the intent of what I'm going to say, not on the words that I'm using, so that changes the dynamic and you can ask them to focus on the intent and that in this case, you can say, hey, we both wanted X, Y, Z, we both want success. So making them focus on the intent and not on the words will help you get far, which also helps with admitting, be it eye contact or any of them, you can say, hey, don't go about my facial expression. You can be that I may not look into that, it doesn't mean I'm ignoring, or in my case, I can get very excited, right? You can also set those expectations up front when you begin a conversation. Another example that I can think of that happens a lot is when you get introduced to somebody and you forget their name and then have to go back and talk to them later. That's an example of a bad type of bad approach, right? So what I do is I immediately admit that I forgot, I smile, I apologize, I self-humiliate, it's just sometimes my memory is just it fails me and so can you please just tell me your name again? Things like that, like being humble, admitting your flaws or things like that, those are very helpful to kind of keep things going. I think we're about to run out of time but I appreciate the questions, guys. We'll try to answer any other questions that come up after this but it was nice presenting to you today. Have a good day. Thank you.