This Episode: How Empathy Can Help Organisations Thrive – with Chris Yates and Linda Jingfang Cai

In this HR Uprising Podcast episode, Lucinda is joined by Chris Yates and Linda Jingfang Cai, the co-authors of the incredible ’Share: How Organisations Can Thrive In An Age Of Networked Knowledge, Power and Relationships.’ Take a listen to this discussion to understand the importance of empathy, and how it can help us to successfully diagnose and enhance the culture within our businesses.

Key Takeaways

  • Certainly there has been a recent tensions between the human-centric approach and the rise of technology in the workplace. 
  • Human beings are naturally wired to be empathic creatures. And yet the need for higher levels of productivity has caused the implementation of processes designed to strip away that element of ourselves.
  • Furthermore, by reclassifying our workforce as co-citizens, we can slowly recalibrate the hierarchy that seems to set senior level management apart from the people who drive our success.
  • Indeed, your approach to change should never be through a single channel. Implementing change is a multi-faceted project and will require many different ways of thinking. 

Valuable Resources

Best Moments

  • ‘We’ve seen amazing stories about how people connect on a human level’
  • ’There is empathy everywhere. People bond naturally’
  • ‘Instead of thinking about employee satisfaction, what if we thought about it as citizenship?’
  • ‘It’s about discovering, defining, developing and deploying’

About The Guests

Chris Yates is the General Manager of Learning & Development at Microsoft and is the co-author of Share:  How Organizations Can Thrive in an Age of Networked Knowledge, Power and Relationships (Bloomsbury, 2020). Previously he was the Chief Learning Officer and Head of People and Organizational Development for Caterpillar Inc. and has served in senior roles at HSBC and American Express. He specializes in organizational design, leadership development and the management of large-scale change initiatives. Along with Pooja Sachdev, he was the co-author of Rewire.

Linda Jingfang Cai is the Global Head of Learning and Talent Development at Aon, and is the co-author of Share:  How Organizations Can Thrive in an Age of Networked Knowledge, Power and Relationships (Bloomsbury, 2020). She has decades of experience in HR strategy, organizational development and change management through a range of roles in the UK (HSBC and Diageo), US (State Farm) and Asia (Hay Group and McKinsey). Born in Shanghai and a Chinese native, Jingfang completed an MBA at London Business School and is now based in Chicago.

About The Host

Lucinda Carney is a Business Psychologist with 15 years in Senior Corporate L&D roles and a further 10 as CEO of Actus Software where she worked closely with HR colleagues helping them to solve the same challenges across a huge range of industries. Indeed it was this breadth of experience that inspired Lucinda to set up the HR Uprising community to facilitate greater collaboration across HR professionals in different sectors, helping them to ‘rise up’ together.

“When we look up we rise up”

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