 In this video you're going to learn how you can use your design skills to build better relationships with the people you work with and by doing that increase your own well-being and that of the people around you. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Emma Jeffries and this is The Soavus Design Show and this is Episode 120. Hi I'm Mark and welcome to The Service Design Show. On this show we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are the hidden things that make the difference between success and failure, all to help you design services that win the hearts of people and business. The guest in this episode is Dr. Emma Jeffries. She's an organizational designer with a passion for helping others thrive by embracing empathy. She is the author of two books and her current mission is to spread workplace empathy. So as service designers we often pride ourselves for being the customer advocate. We have a lot of empathy for the people who we're designing for but unconsciously by actually doing that we're sometimes creating more barriers internally than we're breaking down because when we don't have enough empathy for the people who we work with we tend to see ourselves as us versus them, us as being the users and the customers advocate and them not being the people who care about the customer needs. So we need to fix that. We need to bring our empathy and our empathy skills to our workplace and in this conversation with Emma we're going to explore how do we actually do that. Even when you're in an organization where it seems that there is very little time to slow down and listen to people because everybody is super goal oriented. So that's what's coming up. If you're new to this channel welcome and if you haven't done so already make sure to subscribe because we bring a new video on how to level up your service design skills by looking at the things you don't learn in service design school. So make sure to click that subscribe button and of course that bell icon to be notified when new videos come out. Now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Dr. Emma Jeffries. Welcome to the show Emma. Hi Mark. Hey, you're at the other end of the globe. Where are you right now? I'm in Portland, Oregon so yeah definitely on a different time zone so your afternoon and up in the morning. You're just waking up and I'm almost ready to go to sleep. Emma. Some people might have read your books, seen their presentation, googled you but for the people who haven't done so yet what do we need to know about Emma? Can you give us a brief introduction? Yeah, well I'm more of a global traveler now at this period in time. I'm a service designer and organizational designer and for me it's been a passion to really capture how design thinking has been changing over this period of time of 10 years in the books that I've co-authored and also I'm so passionate about people and passionate about empathy that I'm really, it's about seeing people as people. Seeing people as people. I think that will be a common theme throughout this conversation but before we get into that I have five questions for you in which we call a rapid fire question round and your task is to just answer them as quickly as possible without overthinking. So there we go. The first question, Emma, is what's always in your fridge? The first thing that comes to mind, almond milk. Which book are you reading right now? There was a book about racism and inequities, I can't remember the book title. I'll add the title to the show notes. Which superpower would you like to have? I love to fly. I've always dreamt about flying so I would love to fly. Many people nowadays. What did you want to become when you were a kid? A foot doctor. A foot doctor. Yes, don't ask me why but I think it was more inherited from my mom wanting to be a foot doctor and she never got to be. And the final question, what is your first memory of service design? It was when Tim Brown came to present at our university because Tim Brown went to our university and it was him, all the other people that were like engine, live work. They were all presenting in 2000, maybe four or five, really early on in the days and that got me so fascinated by actually what are the possibilities with service design and really inspired to pursue that after doing my PhD. Tim Brown hasn't yet been on the show but it would be awesome if we can get him here one day. Emma, we already hinted upon it and I think empathy at work is the thing that you're more passionate about. Some of the things that we discussed before we got onto this call is we have a lot of empathy for customers. We pride ourselves with that but maybe we lack a little bit of empathy towards the people we're working with. I think you have some interesting thoughts and ideas around that and why that's important. Maybe before we get into that I'm really curious, what made you interested and passionate about this topic specifically? How did you arrive here? There's been many steps. What was really interesting was that I went to Brazil when I did my international design walkabout and worked in different places and what I really, really loved was how Brazilians were so open and I could be free to feel myself and just be myself around them. Then through my work in the UK government, I did a lot of research, I did a lot of research and I thought it was amazing to see myself around them. Through my work in the UK government, I developed the program which is about helping empathy within a team. When people were really moving through a team, they started to wake up and become alive. For me that was a bit infectious because people were being seen and they were being heard and they were free more to be themselves and more laughter was encouraged. and for me it was it was an awakening of like well yeah you could you really need to be empathetic with everyone around you and now the program is spreading across the UK government and it's just lovely to hear all the feedback and people reaching out to me going this was really amazing it doesn't just change their work relationship which is where it's aimed at it changes their broader perspective of how they're relating with everyone around them so if we go one step back like what was the situation before you traveled to Brazil because you said in Brazil you can be yourself and but that wasn't that the case before? How did you experience that? Well because in British we don't talk about our feelings so in the sense of in that in our Britishness we we don't have that opportunity it's always when you go to a conversation and it's always about literally it's about like how are you and get on with the subject and I worked in Amsterdam and I know it was very direct and that and I got used to that but then when I went to work with the Brazilians it was just so much more that they really started to really understand you and take the time and they wouldn't do business with you unless you actually really understood them as well so I thought for me that was a really an amazing experience to have and now that you know this and sort of have embraced this what do you feel is at stake? What are we potentially missing or withholding ourselves from by not adopting this more? I think as a really as this individual what I see is that we're really withholding kind of first of all ability to for us to be ourselves and what's also at stake is that on a team level we always see empathy is this part that you do very much at the start of the process and it's in the double diamond we're right there but it's something that we need to do all the way through not as one individual but as a team and if that team is able to keep empathy with each other they listen and they continually collaborate more and they able to like bend more for the users so it's about if we don't do this and don't build empathy into what we do as innovation teams we really get to the point of doing less for the user and there's another part on the organizational level is that on the organizational level we are I mean COVID at the moment there's more burnout that's happening but burnout levels already high inside of organizations and when we are stressed our ability to empathize we just goes like this we zoom down and we can't really see we can't see people around us so it gets us into this mindset of we're doing everything but we're not seeing the people around us and the impact that we're making and so there's an opportunity on all these different levels to impact our own well-being and impact someone else's and I think that's worth really worth fighting for this champion and really yeah yeah well-being that sounds something like worth pursuing you mentioned something to me about the shift from being customer having customer empathy or empathy for customers towards having empathy towards humans in general can you elaborate a little bit on that shift but how do you see that yeah so as I mentioned of the history of design thinking in the two books that we've written and one of the roles that we mentioned was about humanizer so I feel like as a designer you really come in and humanize the organization you have an impact on champion that customer experience but I also feel like you have a real ability to champion the human experience and often inside of organizations we do you do cultural development work but you do it right from the top it's about the vision values and we and they're very long term and what we tend to overlook is this human experience every day of how are we impacting each other how are we showing up for each other and that's the part of moving towards champion everyone's human experience because if we are able to do that we do deliver better products and services that come out of us connecting together especially in a time when we are in a a covert time when everyone is really leading that connection and and going through there and you even mentioned something about creating barriers so when we're as the design community putting ourselves forward as the advocate of the customer and it's really easy to blame the others within the organization to not be to not have empathy for the customer to don't that they don't understand them that they don't care about them and that's actually creating a bigger barrier than it's solving right yeah I've seen that in many different places because we are we want to champion the user we've been told but coming in to do this work we all we are that person who is going to change things but and somehow in doing that we really overlook the business stakeholders around us and and I found that they are really the key to really making the product of success or not success for the users and if you don't have that time and space to to physically listen to what their needs are and make them feel heard and yeah you just you will always be in this I suppose a victim mode of why why are you listening yeah I'll be the only ones who care about the customer yeah yeah yeah do you have an example where you've seen this transformation happen successfully or maybe where it failed and I'm also curious like what were the success ingredients there if it worked yes I do so one of where where I've seen this work is I was on a on a team and in this team I was told you need to go and find the user needs you need to go and find what their journeys are people are the pain points of the people and as I was looking at this and the next week you're doing a three-day workshop this is generally sometimes the request you get and all the stakeholders are coming and all of the people from the different places inside the organization and then we're going to reset the direction okay so go so I came into this workshop and I could really just feel like the sense of like they're not gonna listen they're not gonna be heard and the first day we just spent that full day really looking at what their problems were and fully listening to them and we realized that like services we were creating were impacting how they were showing up and if we got to the position of working together through the three days and they listened to the users so they got empathy with the users so this started to see that so we built that into the process but the focus was on building this better relationship after these three days the stakeholders were really over the moon they were like we were here to really say what was going to happen but actually as a team we realized that we really need to work together because we've all got different expertise and they were quite emotional because and then over time of working with that project about four months with them more and more teams started to come on board so it was a bit like a big ecosystem and in this ecosystem we were then more collaborative with the with the leaders with the different ones and it became a really good exemplar project for how things could possibly be done and there was no more us and them we were we were calling someone who goes he goes up into he goes into Scotland and he's got really deficiency in sight but he would go kayaking and we would know them as people and like we need to see people as people and that for me was this like revelation when I was actually practicing and haven't had my Brazilian experience so yeah and then there's this movement around me to a way which I've recognized in that process there are two or there are many questions that I have around this but let's start with the first one you you said that you felt upfront that people weren't going to be listening they weren't going to be hurt how did you notice that what kind of feeling what gave it away up front I could just feel it in my body it's a bit like that hostile situation where you sit and you're like okay what's going to happen here no one really wants to be in this room but they have to be to be able to work out what we're going to do forward and I'm really kind of connected to how I feel inside and it just felt like okay we really need to pay attention to the people that are here and really feel heard and again we want to get to that sense of feeling heard so how do you break through that because I think we've all been part of such a session either facilitating it or sitting in that room and thinking what am I doing here and not having that recognized but but what happens then like how do you how do you move forward what is the first step you can take to actually solve this our steps that we took were very much about well okay just listen to where the users are at like as user as a user research on that team what I was actually doing was I had just brought the full the full transcription I didn't edit it I just brought the full video listen to them and that helped them kind of start to realize to change but then for us fully listening to the stakeholders we were like no way here to listen we're really curious we want to know your pain where you're feeling this pain and we mapped that out with them and interestingly when we mapped out this journey we realized that their users pain was actually the internal pain of the company and you could just see it as we map it out over the course of the delivery of the service so taking them along in the process rather than presenting final outcomes insights they have to it helps when they are involved and live through the the data right that that's that's that's one is there anything else you did because I think I know that good researchers do this but still there it doesn't automatically imply that the stakeholders will be involved or feel hurt like I'm curious what are other things in the process that made it different from your in between quotes traditional design approach and we just took the time to get to know them like humans as I mentioned we went around each one and we kind of created a human bond first instead of rushing into the process of like we've got three days this is what we're doing and there's no breaks and and taking the just the time just to have that conversation and getting to know each individual one as an individual and I think often when we get into this mindset of we as an individual have to deliver which I call a me mindset we have to deliver this is our goal we're not going to open up to someone else but the thing is what I find with curiosity I kind of frame empathy is that curiosity of having a curiosity for someone else and keep on asking where are they at what are they doing but also having a curiosity for where are you at and if you have any boundaries in yourself that are stopping you from listening become aware of them too so it's more of a internal and curiosity as well it sounds awesome like taking the time to learn the people who are in the room get to understand them but I also hear you say usually we don't have or take the time which I also recognize everybody is really goal oriented wants to get their job done how did you manage to flip that around in this situation is it just a matter of deciding is it just a matter of priorities is it that simple or and we we just took them on a journey with us I suppose and before they were always over there and in our mind they were over there so we had to really feel that no they're with us on this journey they have value to offer and we have value to offer so I think it's more of an internal it's not things physically you you do do but it's more of a mental shift so it's more of a mindset shift and here on my notes I also have a question about how does it feel for the other group because sometimes you're seen as the expert who needs to come up with the whatever insights ideas prototypes and you're the expert and the rest is the audience or the judge are so how does it feel for them when you so openly invite them to participate in this process and create a we situation I think it first of all it feels a bit scary to start off with because they've never been asked I think that's a we've heard that before I've never been asked to participate so for them to be asked in a situation when people are always told what to do from a priority structure being asked is the first step and that feels scary because they come into an unknown environment and we also then have to create safety and psychological safety for them to be to be themselves and and then slowly move into that space together and can you give an example of how you created safe space I think the first one was seeing people as people beyond their grade but also keep on this is part of that the we mindset is keep on prioritising the people before the process we know we've got to get somewhere but we have to keep on prioritising them but also realising that we have to know how we're impacting each other and we have to have an open and transparent conversation about how are we really impacting each other and keep that going and recognise like our power and what we have to do in that and it's no it's not always on the service design shoulders for that to happen even though we think it should be but sometimes we just need to let go of our grasp and have patience as well so what what kind of grasp do we need to let go of I think it was one of the things that when I was reflecting on what you had sent over is that normally I would be going into the into different people and I've done this in different companies but I would notice after a while that I'm really holding my hand up like this and what I needed to really do is just let go a bit of my grasp because if I'm really like I'm in this me mindset of a really unhealthy of me this is the user and this is what we're doing we've got a champion this no one else is listening I'm not allowing myself space to hear the other person and hear people around me and that's where more creativity comes as well by having everyone on board and everyone sharing so that's the grasp I was talking about I physically could feel it in my body and have to let it let it go and just notice where it was and but that sounds scary as well because I imagine that a lot of people and including myself sort of derive self-worth out of having fear that having the feeling that you can contribute something that you know something that you can lead a group can guide a group when when you let go of that how do how do people respond how do you how did you respond how did you feel it felt more empowering you've got more choice to show up however you need to for that situation if it needs to be that you need to spend more time listening you've got that option whereas before I would be in a mindset of it let's just get it done I'm really passionate let's go but if no one's with you on this journey to try and make it better experience for themselves and also the user it is scary I mean when I thought of that first I was like okay that's that does it is scary and I can totally hear what you're saying but for me that's when it seemed to really shift like the shifting of the grasping like given up that control yeah and there is no point in actually moving forward when with a process when the energy level isn't right in the room anyway like you can move forward with the with the process but you will you will never get to the outcomes that you really want yeah I definitely agree so I've seen I've seen a big shift in how I practice is more from them I would always see myself as this change agent and in our book we said seven rules of change for design but I've more seen these rules now as an awareness agent of what's possible you can take people to become more aware aware of how you're acting looking at that full human experience inside a room and take paying attention to everyone and how you're bringing them along with you but there's some element of you saying well if they don't go there with you it's not your responsibility and it's not tied to your identity but there's also another part for me of valuing another person's human experience and their strength so trying to get to a again it's a bit about the wee minds that trying to get to it even can be hard because there's a lot of devices and everyone trying to get to a playing field that everyone has something to contribute and if you feel like you're an expert I think sometimes that does get in the way of having connections and I like how you said the shifts from the feeling like you're the change change agent to creating awareness I guess that also shifts the responsibility from making sure that change actually is realized towards from you solely as the practitioner to the group because you as a individual contribute awareness and somebody else contributes something else and we are all responsible for making change happen yeah and in that group shift we only have a certain amount of empathy per day there's a great Harvard business review one that's about the limits of empathy so as a team like I can't be given all my empathy out all the time because you would just become low-resourced and then burnout would happen so you need as a team to have that team to be not just empathy at the start as I mentioned but empathy throughout the whole process and that has to be a team effort and that's what I had saw in the team I was working with everyone started to kind of show up more for each other yeah yeah and I was curious what does that mean in practice is yeah without filling that in but let's say we're doing a three-day workshop how does that empathy throughout by everybody look like yeah so in my so after I had these experiences of building empathy and I kind of took back time to reflect and obviously the first step is listening um which is all about how are we hearing and the next part is like becoming aware of each other's biases which is the how are we seeing and where are our biases really coming into into play and where are our judgments because we were never born with judgments as children we were like really curious about the whole world and these judgments have somehow been landed on us about there's a winner there's a loser there's an us and there's a limb and and we have to be successful so all of these things really come into play and we have to then start to really unpick them and I suppose and then the next part is going into that place of having difficult conversations and having empathy but you really can't move past that first two of because that builds psychological safety and sometimes as in workshops I ask people right at the start what are your assumptions like write them all down we all share them what are our assumptions and at the end it'll be like what are our assumptions and how have they shifted and also they've always always shifted because we've learned something along the way and we learn how our bias is really color how we are showing up and it's building that building that in and like small small actions along the way to yeah like small actions like so it's small actions for us so that bias part would be like where are you feeling at us and them and asking people just to be like maybe there's an us and them at this part and I can I can feel that when I feel it us and them in my body because I kind of have my shoulders go up which means I'm getting into a I used to have a black belt in karate and used to get like into this like fight and actually there's no fight the fight is only with yourself and that stops you then listening to that other person so it's more little small actions in your in your head so yeah there's there's other ones as well to to consider and do you nowadays explain this upfront to people that we have to be asking these questions because otherwise you'll have this tension or do you just go into this session and apply this so we do it in a more formal way with the program itself so we get people to over a period of 10 10 weeks it's slow change so it's a very slow change so you can put it into a workshop as small questions to ask people and but if you really just put it into a more focused and everyone can build empathy together and it gets people to get in the habit of what are they listening to and who are they not listening to as well which is always a very interesting question because of that that bias and it really is a habit of building these habits into a team and you can as a workshop you can do it small but you need it over a longer period of time yeah the longer period of time I guess reflection plays a big role in that huge usual so for me what kind of questions yeah what kind of questions are have you found to be the most powerful opening valuable in in that reflection it's so if I go back to that here one what are you seeing and what are you not seeing the other one is when it could be when do you feel kind of left out if you're looking at the sea when do you feel included so that's all about belonging and the next part when you go to that think stage it's all about really how are you how are you seeing challenge so how are you seeing challenge you see it as I don't know I don't want to be involved with that or you're seeing it actually challenge is open on up different viewpoints so there's always a choice of how you potentially see things and when you come to like feel feel the questions you can be asking about how is my my emotions and how am I feeling affected in the team and I've had people come back after that one saying really it's about how am I how if I am stressed which 70% of our own stress is caused by ourselves 30% is externally which goes to like empathy turning off if I'm stressed I pass that on to my team and then there's enough psychological safety to say I have a need and you have a need yeah I'm also curious what the influence is of the organizational culture because I can imagine that you've seen environments in which this is sort of more accepted or people are more open to this than in other environments can you share a little bit about that the environments that are what you would think were more open to this would be the ones that have the support of culture already and they really value diversity and inclusion what I've seen similar is people who have environments that are more challenging they're also open to this as a way which is really surprising but they are because they see the need that they really want to prioritize people but they just don't know how it's so how I see it is that our organizations are really models of our society and we've been taught for so long that there is a winner and there's a loser and it's all about status and that comes back into how organizations are actually designed and there's just a huge from the individuals I speak to is a huge year and from actually I just want to be seen as a person I don't want to leave myself at the door when so I've had a variety of different people come into these cultures who have different needs it could be well-being they could be wanting to create a better culture and environment but it's it's really nice to see the breadth and breadth of that I'm curious it sounds like this is something you can get better at you can learn a key skill that I've heard you talk about is listening and practicing that what are some of the other skills that you found that you could for instance practice on a daily basis that would help you to get closer to this situation and one of the questions I ask myself is what am I avoiding and and that comes back down to who am I not being compassionate with who am I not who am I seeing is different to me and because when I put them barriers up it's it really stops me being empathetic and you really need to have empathy when you are in these challenging situations because that's when you actually build relationships better and have these moments of trust that are built yeah it sounds like it's easier to have empathy for people who are similar to you but it's so easy yeah yeah and especially uh you said uh resistance uh yeah that's that's where empathy is the most um valuable required beneficial that's probably the word I'm looking for how long ago have you started with your journey and if you look back on it what do you consider sort of the biggest learning from that I think the Brazilians who I worked with with their Brazilian design thinkers they were brilliant in terms of actually you can feel just being yourself with people so that was the kind of the start and point then it came through to um as I mentioned the grasping and letting go of the the grasp and I think embracing now I'm embracing this awareness agent of how do you just increase awareness you don't have to move towards action because the team is moving towards action together and it's asking like simple questions of what are you aware of have you seen that question and and opening up the choices and open up the possibilities and for me I feel like going through and developing loads of different empathy skills because I've done non-violent communication Grishtel's work um and there's so many other practices servant leadership that you just feel yeah you can be part of the team but also you can be serving the team and that's really a a really a lovely place to be in and I've learned to also I think one's been critical to really um make sure I'm fully resourced before doing this work because it as I mentioned you've got a limit to empathy per day and you really need to take care of yourself first and that get into a healthy me mindset so you're not stressed and when you move into that more of a we mindset it's it's really how can I be best of service to the people around me and how am I impacting that other person and what is my own um self-awareness that I need to build to be able to see difference and also to see um similarities in people because both matter when you see it's too easy to move past similarities or differences because you don't want to see them because someone's different than you and how do you want how do you seek out them different people to see to build that group that you would work with and but how do you see everyone's human needs as a common common thread of what we're doing I'm now sort of thinking like based on that it's easy to have empathy for people who are similar like you if we consider that some of the people who are watching and listening right now might be in an environment where they feel that this is less appreciated what would you say to them how can they take the first step to create this movement and move forward in a challenging environment yeah well I've heard of examples recently um in different large organizations and they used the empathy map and they made sure they had that in front of them and they went into a challenging environment and made sure they looked at here see if they'll think and act in that environment and afterwards they felt the conversation had shifted because that person feel hurt so it's a very simple one and everyone's got that map to hand if you're in this environment yeah yeah so just using our own tools on ourselves and taking I think that the the trick here is is to take the time and do the effort of going through that exercise and writing it down and not just thinking that you know but making it explicit right yeah yeah and saying that I really want to listen I'm not here to talk to you I really just want to take that time and I'm here and have that human presence for that other person as well because it's too easy to be distracted with your phone and you're just not paying attention so okay so we had a quick microphone switch but we're back and I'm really curious about where you see this heading in the next three years in the design community how will this influence us so I always see that anyone who's in the design field who's doing service design or any design thinking work what I see is that you have an opportunity to move from just focusing really solely on the customer but to focusing on the whole human experience inside of the organization and I feel that given that there's a humanizing role that we identified in our book which is we come to humanize the actual organization I see this going to be and and what I see is that this is going to be something that happens in the next three years that we're probably going to humanize a lot more of the HR departments and that's already happening in IBM and they've got a vision to 3.5 and they've got design thinking in there so that's really worth checking out and I can give you a link to that yeah but yeah I really see them supporting the human experience inside the organization and this is also we're sort of heading towards the end of the conversation but what I find interesting and sort of I don't know why just now appeared in my mind but where it's really hard to be to have empathy for customers when you don't have empathy within the organization so it makes a lot of sense to start within first and then also project it towards your customers so yeah yeah I definitely have seen that because as a myself for any service I've experienced if I feel like I'm just a number in I'm calling up an insurance company I'm just a number they don't care and I often feel this is echoed inside organizations when I've heard so many people just say I am just a number and I'm like you are not a number you are if you when we actually feel that we're a human being inside the organization and we feel that someone is there to support us we actually start to understand our power our privilege and how we're shown up for others we've covered a lot of things in a short amount of time how would you summarize this what is sort of the final recap of this conversation for you for me it goes back to avatar and avatar is really about when the the navi use their introduction they kind of say I see you and that is that is about you not just seeing that person as they are you're seeing that whole person and taking that time to really understand that that whole person and I think this will make huge shifts inside of the organizations and how service design practice sometimes we need to slow down a bit to go faster later on that's that's what I'm getting out of out of your message if people are curious and I hope they are and want to learn more do you have any recommended resources and is there a way they potentially could get in touch with you to continue this conversation yeah um so my website is drmhfrees.com and I would say there's loads of different resources about empathy um just start to really look into the ones that really connect with you um I can give you a long list to put on the show notes but um and because each one has different nuances to how how you do you could start with language or you could start with how you feel they're all different elements of how you could build your own empathy and increase it yeah we'll make sure to add some resources that get people started with this thank you for raising and this topic I think it's it's really important because like I said if you don't start internally if we are not even listening to the people who are very close around us at work nowadays remotely at work then it's really challenging to start listening to our customers as well so Emma thank you for the work you're doing thank you for sharing this on on the show and with the service design show audience thank you for me and I hope it was helpful for people in the service design industry I really hope you got something useful out of this conversation with Emma and if you did make sure to subscribe to the channel because we bring a new conversation like this every two weeks so click that subscribe button make sure you don't miss any new episode if you know somebody who might be interested in hearing this conversation as well grab the link and share that with them thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you in the next video