Sharon Steed: Empathy in Communication and AI

Welcome to the Empathy Edge Podcast. The show that proves why cashflow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I'm your host, Maria Ross. I'm a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathic advocate. And here, you'll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors, and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work, to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn't just good for society, it's great for business. Many leaders come to empathy in their style and communication based on their own challenges. Today's guest shares how her vulnerable sharing her story led her down the path of teaching and training on empathy and how you can boldly leverage vulnerability as an asset in your communication, leading to stronger connections and better results. I've been wanting to get today's guest on the podcast for a while. Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author, and empathy expert, specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of Communologue, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort, fosters growth. She's worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders and global organizations, delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon's also a LinkedIn learning instructor like me, with courses on communicating with empathy and driving inclusion with empathy. She hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called empathy in automation and her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion. Today Sharon shares her powerful story and talks about how to be vulnerable and communicate with empathy in productive ways, ways that influence and ignite your team, customers, and other stakeholders. We also have an interesting discussion about the intersection of empathy in AI and how to keep humanity in a tech driven world. A great conversation I am so excited to present to you today. Take a listen. Welcome Sharon Steed to the Empathy Edge podcast. This has been such a long time in the planning to have a conversation with you about your wonderful work, empathy and communication, empathy in the age of AI, all of this great stuff. So welcome to the show. Yeah, I am so happy to be here and have this conversation today. I know. I know. And I don't even know how we originally got connected. I think it was through a conference or something that we were both on years ago. Maybe a virtual conference. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. I know. It's like, that sounds right. How we're connecting with people and meeting with people is so different than it was like a decade ago. So, so tell us a little bit about your story before we kick off into this topic of vulnerability and empathy in communication and empathy in the age of AI. Before we go there, what got you into the empathy world? So I have a little bit of an unusual background. I'm a person who's dutters and I had sort of come to this point in my life when I was so afraid of just like talking to people like that I was beginning to like avoid conversations entirely, right? And so I had gone through like all of my youth and all of schooling and college and I was able to sort of just skate by on like avoiding some conversations and like only like including myself and things where I felt more comfortable and confident speaking. But then, you know, you graduate from college and then you get out into the workforce and all of a sudden, you know, I have to be able to, you know, confidently speak about all of the things that I'm capable of and the things that I want to do and to accomplish. Well, I was so intimidated like by this whole idea of just like having to talk to people that I was sort of avoiding a lot of situations where I was going to have to talk to people, right? And so I remember like attempting to go to like events to, you know, connect with people to that work and I would just be so terrified that like I would be like in the corner and like I'm not going to be able to say my name and like stuff. And so yeah, I was talking to a speech therapist like that I was sitting at the time and she suggested that I try public speaking. So I said, yeah, okay, cool. I was like, did you really say, yeah, okay, I was like, you are completely bananas. There's no way I can do this. I've avoided having to do this my entire life and you want me to get in front of a room full of people and talk like you're what? No, absolutely not. But then, you know, it sort of like came around to this whole like idea of like, okay, like if I am afraid of something, I think the only way that I'm going to be able to really like conquer this fear is if I just pace it in the most, you know, over the top way possible. Right. So I thought, like I'm just going to give one or two talks and I'll be cured and I'll never be afraid to just get into that. Obviously it's not what happened. Right. However, what did happen was a lot of people began to really come up to me and say, hey, you know, I really appreciate you talking about vulnerability and empathy. And I thought that was really interesting because like I don't even think I said a word empathy in my talks, but I think it just came through. And so after hearing that several times, I decided to just explore this concept and really research this topic and sort of create content around insecurity and vulnerability. And like how those things can help us be better connectors and how they can help us to be a little bit more understanding, a little bit more empathetic at work specifically. Wow. And I'm curious if like specifically diving into empathy and the answer can be no, I'm just curious, is it because you felt sometimes that people weren't being empathetic with you or even just seeing people not be empathetic with anyone who's different or anyone who might have an issue? Like was that part of it of diving deeper into empathy or was that did that just come through from the responses that you were getting to what you were talking about? So I think it was twofold, right? Yes. Like it came from what a lot of people were like coming up to me and staying. But also I am an incredibly sensitive person. Like I feel things very deeply and I feel like I've always sort of viewed situations and like viewed other people and like how they are going to feel in a specific situation. And I've always related it back to like how it would make me feel. And I think a part of that is like being a person who's dutters. I always wanted to talk to people, but I didn't want to be like the center of the conversation. And so I was always asking follow up questions as a way to like sort of continue to like be in the conversation like but to avoid talking. And so I spent a really long time just being like really curious about other people and just like constantly like trying to find questions that I could like pose to them. And I think that as a result of just like always asking questions, I was able to better see you know how like people think how they like come to the feelings like that they have. And that combined with just being like a very sensitive person. Yeah. Just really you know just wanted itself. Yeah. You uh me eventually talking about being empathetic. Yeah. Yeah. And we both know curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And so just and I love that because you know that concept of like when I do this to where if I don't want to talk or I'm feeling like my tank is low, I'll tend to ask more questions or if I'm uncomfortable in a situation because then it gets the other person talking and the focus is off me. And then like that was the best conversation I've ever had because they're talking about themselves the whole time. That's the trick. That's the trick. Right. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about communicating with empathy. So that is what you train on. That's what you speak on is helping people understand how to communicate and get their point across. And you know like with my work as you know with leaders is helping helping them still hold people accountable, still have performance expectations, but communicate with empathy so that they can actually accomplish more and they can actually optimize their people for peak performance. So I would love to hear what your definition of communicating with empathy is. And what do you see as the reasons why some people are unable to communicate with empathy? - Well, so like off the bat, I feel like every time we are opening our mouths to have a conversation with someone, we are actually engaging in an act of incredible empathy. And we probably don't even know, right? Like if we are in a conversation and there's, you know, like us and another person, like just the act of, (mimicking) listening to them is supposed to be an incredibly empathetic act, right? And so, you know, when we are listening to people, our goal there is to really just understand where they are coming from and to just hit another perspective. Right? Like that's the entire point of listening. And like those two things are really foundational communication and empathy principles. And so, you know, I describe communicating with empathy as putting understanding and perspective at the center of every single conversation. And, you know, we spend a lot of our lives communicating, right? Having conversations, like talking to people. And as a person who spent, you know, her entire life being so concerned about, you know, how I'm communicating, you know, I was really able to sort of focus on, you know, how do we continue to really impress upon teams and companies that when we speak, we should always be coming from a place of, you know, yes, I want to get my point across. However, you know, I want to really understand where you are coming from as well. Because it's going to help us, you know, one, create better products and two, just be a lot better at collaborating as well. Mm-hmm. And so, what are you, when you're working with teams or people, what are some of the biggest barriers they have to communicating with empathy? I think that the biggest thing that I've seen and I constantly hear this is that people are just very intimidated by this concept of communication. I don't know if you've seen this as well. It's interesting. Where everybody swears that they are terrible at communicating. And I'm like, well, no, every single time you, like, enter a room, you are communicating, right? Yeah, whether you've opened your mouth or not. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that like, I think that a part of the reason like my talks are so effective is because like, people, you know, see that like I do have a physical, you know, challenge with communicating. However, I am and still articulate and people can, you know, really connect with, you know, like my content and like the things that I'm trying to get across. And so, you know, like I am attempting to show people like that even if you think you are terrible at communication, you know, you're not because if you are able to like go into a conversation, you know, you speak the other person speaks and you can come to some sort of positive conclusion where you can both then co off and, you know, like do the things that you have to do as a result of that conversation, then you are a good communicator. And so the biggest, you know, thing that I have to sort of convince people of is that you are not bad at communicating, right? And then the other challenge is just explaining what empathy, you know, should be in terms of behaviors, right? Like empathy is this really cool concept. However, a lot of people don't really like completely understand how can we go into a conversation and focus on being empathetic. And so those are the two things that I really sort of hone in on when I'm giving a talk, right? And so when you're working with, it's funny because you're talking about these leaders who don't think they're good communicators. And yet there's lots of leaders who think they're great communicators and they're not empathetic at all, right? And it's almost that I always talk about ego kills empathy because your self-awareness is not there. And you're not aware of what you're bringing to the table, you're not aware of what you're bringing into the interaction and how it might be impacting somebody else. And it's only when you're willing to see how something impacts someone else that you start to change your communication, right? For some people, whether it's modulating your speed or your tone, whether it's these people need a little bit more direction and guidance, and these people need a little bit more. Just give me the bottom line, tell me what to do, right? That's actually communicating with empathy when you adjust and adapt to the person that you're talking to. It's not, I always say it's not just crying on the floor with your employees. Empathy shows up in these ways that we actually do without thinking sometimes. If we're interested in effective communication, I should say, right? But what about the people who are communicating and saying, "Well, and there's research that bears us out, there's a lot of executives who go, "Well, empathy has no place in the workplace," which boggles my mind because empathy has a place whenever humans are interacting with other humans. But how do you work with clients like that who are saying, you know, this isn't the time or place for empathy? You know what? I always have to begin with how is this going to make you money? Right? The ROI of empathy. Yes, exactly. And so a thing that I explain to people is that if you are beginning a company or if you are creating a product, you are doing that because there is some sort of cap in the current consumer marketplace that requires your product to be created, your product or your service. And so when you are creating this product or you are creating this service, you are thinking about, "Okay, like what does my ideal customer, why would they use this product? How are they going to use this product? How can I get this product in front of them?" Like so it can improve your life, right? So you are going to do like a lot of testing, right? You are going to talk to your customers. You are going to like loosen this into their stories. And you are going to have conversations around the reasons why they are going to use this product. How it's going to benefit their life and these situations where specifically they are going to insert that product into their day-to-day experience. All of those things I have described are 100% empathy, right? And so imagine what sort of transpire if you have that same approach on your teams internally, right? If you have a coworker or if you have a direct report, having a hard time, right? Like they feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas or their opinions or they are just struggling to really keep up with their teammates. Well, what is their experience on this team in a day-to-day basis? How are they approaching their work? Like what steps are they taking? And why are those steps not effective in either productivity or communication or good collaboration? So anytime a company comes to me and says, hey, I don't see why this is important. Well, you used empathy to create this company in the first place. And you are going to have to have empathy in order to keep your employees in your company and continue to create good, effective products. And so-- - Yeah, I mean, it really is a, you know, you have to hold up a mirror and say, "Hey, why are you here?" Okay, all those reasons why you are here are the same reasons why you need to focus on your internal operations as well as your external operations. - Right, yeah. I mean, I talk a lot with my clients about the business case of empathy and giving them the data and giving them the research that shows how it boosts innovation and engagement and performance and collaboration and then the external benefits of being an edge in the market, you know, the bar is so low when it comes to customer service that when you treat people with empathy and you're only able to treat your customers with empathy if your employees are being treated with empathy. Otherwise, they're operating in fear and anxiety and stress and that's never gonna be a good experience that they're gonna share with your external customers. So, I love that. It's about the business case. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Maria here. You've been showing up for these conversations every week. Now, imagine if your whole team, your event attendees or your clients could access this thinking too, not just you, the empathy dilemma my award-winning book gives leaders a practical roadmap to lead with clarity, confidence and compassion while driving real innovation and performance. Here's why you should grab it for your whole team or your next event. One, it's actionable, not theoretical. Two, it shows you how empathy and accountability can and must coexist. And three, it gives leaders a shared framework for the hard conversations that move teams forward. And I'm sweetening the deal. Volume discounts, custom branding options and I'll join your team virtually or in person to bring the learning home. Just go to bit.ly/empathydilemma for bonuses and ordering details. That's bit.ly/empathydilemma. See you there. (upbeat music) - So can you give us a little taste of some of the tips and some of the strategies that you share with your clients around how to communicate with empathy, especially if they're struggling to tap into their own empathy. If they struggle with connection, if they struggle with, you know, and it could be a struggle based on neurodiversity, right, it could be a struggle based on just their own upbringing or where they come from. How do you, what are some tips that you give them on how to better communicate with empathy? - Yeah, for sure. You know, I always begin with sort of the foundational things, right? - And like the foundation of everything that, you know, we are going to be doing as people, it begins sort of in, internally, right? It starts at home, gotta get your house in order, right? - Absolutely. So in order to do that, you, you know, first are going to have to be incredibly patient, right? And I think that we sort of view conversations especially as, okay, I'm coming into this conversation, I'm going to talk and then I'm going to wait for my turn to talk again. And then I'm going to talk again, right? - Right. - And that is the, that's not helping anybody, right? Like the entire point of communication and having a conversation is to, you know, get perspective on, you know, another person's experiences or just another person's opinion, right? And so like, I like to say, you know, you can, make your world larger by making another person's world better, right? And so you create, you know, a good experience for another person, like by just, who's listening to, you know, their stories and their vulnerabilities and the things that, you know, like they have experienced. - Mm-hmm. - And it's impossible to do that if we don't first focus on, again, being patient. And so how do we be patient, right? And so, you know, I have to break these things down in a way, like where it's, you know, how do we turn these like really great concepts into like, yeah, into like things that you can, you know, physically do, right? And so like being patient just kind of comes down to stopping, right? Like we live in a world where we are constantly being sort of combarded with a ton of content all the time, right? There is social media, there are hex messages, there's a 24 hour news cycle, there are tons of things that we are like constantly consuming. And so it can be very difficult to just like stop and to give this person in front of you your entire attention, right? And so yeah, I mean, like we just focus on like, okay, like, you know, you are going to have to pause. And I know that it's really hard, but pause and just focus on this person in front of you. Another thing that I like to talk about in patients is the physical act of listening. You know, we are in these conversations. A lot of the times if we are listening, to another person, you know, we are sort of trying to, you know, (mimicking) hear what they like have to say. So we can sort of pass a little bit of judgment on it. And it isn't on purpose, but just, you know, when we, you know, are talking to people and like their words go into our brains, it sort of like goes through a filter of like our own opinion. And so when we are listening, people we should be focused on, you know, how do I keep my assumptions and my biases and my opinions as low as possible? And so like that hood mean like, hey, could you repeat what you said so like I can get clarity or it could mean like, hey, so I heard you say, you know, like A, B and C. Yeah, yeah. Can I get that right? Reflective listening is so key. And I love what you're saying. I'm like, just to jump in here. I love what you're saying because it's this idea. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to another episode that I did with Dr. Chris Johnson, where she talked about the power of the pause. I don't know if you're familiar with her work, but her work is great. And she talks about both like physically and mentally, the things you can do to kind of make yourself take the pause. Like it's deep breathing. It's like clarifying what you, you know, taking a second to reflect back what you heard before you launch into whatever you think you're gonna launch into. And it's just that concept of listening to understand and build your own knowledge versus listening to talk to what you were describing earlier. And I know I struggle with it too, right? And I'm interviewing people all the time and I'm talking all the time, but it's amazing when you just get rid of the stuff in your own head and you're able to say like, right now, I am going to be present with this person. And my intention is to hear what they have to say so I can learn something from it. Just even like out loud setting that intention for yourself. Maybe before you go into a meeting or before you go into even a contentious conversation. Like let me take some time to figure out what that other person's perspective and context is before I go in guns blazing with, you know, here's why I'm right and you're wrong. And we can just tell ourselves that. I know someone who always tells me there's power in saying it out loud. Like it's almost as a mantra. If you say it out loud and you hear yourself saying, like I'm gonna go into this conversation to understand not just to talk about my opinion. Just saying that out loud is really powerful 'cause your ears hear it. And then you're able to sort of like use that as a grounding for yourself of this is, you know, or I need to stay present in this conversation. And it's okay to say it out loud. So, yeah. So talk, you know what? I think that like, you know, it's so easy to just like go into conversations with this whole like, you know, one, I wanna get my point across and like I want to make sure that this other person like really gets everything that I'm trying to say, right? And well, but I mean like that's sort of how we, the view, effective communication is how we speak how we present. And I think that a part of the reason why a lot of people resonate with this sort of hawks that I give is because I sort of like, turn that on its head, right? Like I talk about how like, I spent a lot of time, you know, being so concerned about how I sound and how I feel and how uncomfortable I was. But I really didn't get to like properly and sincerely connect with a lot of people that I was having conversations with. And so, yeah, you know, it is so important to sort of go into these conversations from a, you know, you and me perspective and not a perspective. I love that. Okay, let's switch gears a little bit because I know this has been a hot topic I've been out talking about. You've been out talking about and that is empathy and AI. And I know you have a LinkedIn course. Not only do you have a LinkedIn course about, you know, communicating with empathy, but one about empathy in the age of AI. And I've waxed poetic on that, but I would love to hear your perspective on the role of empathy in the age of AI. And do we need it? Do we not? Yeah. It's more important. Is it less important? Talk to us about your perspectives on that. Well, one, it is more important. So like, let's get back out of the book. That was a leading question. Yeah. It's more important to have empathy in this very highly highly technical age. And I have had a kind of conversations about this with people from a lot of different industries. And the overwhelming sort of healing is that like, you know, these technologies, these programs, these softwares are only going to get better. Right. And so, you know, a lot of the things that, you know, we, you know, have had to do in in the past, you know, we aren't going to have to do those things anymore. And yes, you know, AI is going to take a lot of things away. However, it's also going to give us a lot more space and a lot more capacity to really connect with other people. And so when I'm having these conversations, I'm always sort of blown away by how, you know, almost every single person is like, no, no, we need to focus on, you know, being human centered in this, you know, tech obsessed world. And, you know, AI is going to give us an incredible opportunity to just focus on how can we, you know, build stronger, re-lil, relationships. How can we get more perspective? How can you know, hear more stories? You know, I think that, you know, there is a, for sure, a place of poor empathy, age of AI has everything that, you know, we are doing, you know, is going to continue to be, you know, done and used and created and scaled by people. So as long as we, as people are involved in all of these processes, we're going to have to really focus on being empathetic. Yeah. I love to know what you think about this. Well, yeah, I mean, I love this because my feeling is when AI takes over the tasks that many leaders have relied on to keep themselves relevant and busy, all we're left with is leaders that are really good at their human connection skills. That's where they're going to add the most value. And those leaders that have hidden behind the doing and not the leading and not the people part of the leading will have nowhere to hide. Yeah. Because we're taking away the thing that keeps them, you know, behind their desk and not interacting with their people. And so I, in my view, and maybe, you know, I know it's a little biased because of the work I do. But that emotional intelligence and that empathy as a skill for a leader is going to be even more important. Because that's the thing it can't replicate. And if you've been hiding behind the doing as a leader and not the being as a leader and the connecting as a leader, you're going to need to upskill like now. Oh, yeah, for sure. And then I think that also, you know, this is going to force companies to really, you know, like put their people first. I was talking to one of my tech friends who is a software developer. And he was saying, like, you know, I don't want AI to like have me be 10x productive. I want AI to give me like a four day work week. I want AI to like do a lot of the works. So like, I can like home at 5 p.m. Right. And take my kids to stocker. Right. So, you know, as we get, like just like incredibly, you know, like tech obsessed and yeah, automating things away, you know, I think that a lot of companies are going to have to figure out like, okay, like what is the balance of, you know, I want you to be as productive as possible. However, you know, are a person and like all of the top talent is like, look, I know what AI can do. So you're going to have to give me a little bit more here. Yeah. I can just go to another company. Like that's going to respect like that. Yeah. You know, I know exactly what AI is capable of. I know what I'm capable of. And I have to give us a little bit more. Right. Right. Right. Well, and they, you know, they're finding that the sweet spot blend of really maximizing AI is AI combined with human intervention. And you're still going to need domain experts. You're still going to need people to populate the learning models. You're still going to need. And even when we're talking, you know, I speak to a lot of founders on the show of empathic AI or people that are in the field of empathic AI. And you can't outsource something. You can't program something that you yourself don't understand. Yeah. And you yourself haven't mastered. So, you know, it's about, and I'll put a link to Michelle's house interview. She's the founder of juji, which is a empathic AI solution. And she said, you know, it's about having those people that can actually populate the technology and populate the learning models. And then there's always still going to be a need for human element. It can't effectively, we're not going to get all the efficiencies and all the benefits of it by just sort of outsourcing everything we're not good at to it because it won't know what to do with that. It's sort of like outsourcing a process that you haven't optimized yourself. And now you've just put something that you're not good at on somebody else. Yeah. It's the same thing. So, so we need that ability to build our own capacity for empathy and our own capacity for connection in order to continue to refine and tailor AI to be the partner, the thought partner, the process partner that we need. But it doesn't give us an excuse to sort of check out 100%. Yeah. As long as people are at the center of like creating these products, which we probably are going to be for a while, at least I would hope, you know, we're always going to have to, you know, have some capacity for that understanding and that perspective taking in order to continue to create these products because consumers are people and they are using your products as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, this has been such a great conversation Sharon. Thank you so much for your insights and for being with us today. I want to remind people that you've got your two LinkedIn courses communicating with empathy and the one about empathy in the age of AI. So people can go check that out. We'll put links to those in the show notes. We'll have all your links in the show notes. But for people that are on the go, where's the best place they can find out more about your work? You can definitely just go head over to my LinkedIn. It's test my name. I feel like I'm probably the first one that's going to come to come in search. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I have a newsletter on there that I update one to two times a month, depending on how things are going. Yeah. On a vulnerability in the workplace. And then I also do a LinkedIn live on empathy in automation where we talk about empathy in this very like tech focus worlds. And I usually do that three times a month. So, yeah. All of that information is on there. So wonderful. Yeah. I would love to connect with all of the people and meet you. So, I love it. And as I always do with my PSAs is if you connect with Sharon on LinkedIn, make sure you put a note that says you heard her on the podcast. So, she doesn't think you're trying to sell her something. Sharon, thank you so much for your time and for the work that you're doing in the world. We so appreciate you. Oh, thank you. I had an incredible and I love our conversation. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through Empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes, and free resources. Book me for a keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram @redslicemaria. Never forget Empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.