4 Essential Empathy-Building Strategies to Enhance Diversity Training

Defining Empathy 

Simply put, empathy refers to the ability to see things from another’s perspective or “walk in their shoes.” 

It involves being able to identify a person’s feelings and emotions by mentally putting yourself in their position.  

In a diverse workplace, has two main benefits: 

• It can predict how tolerant and accepting employees will be about differences 
• It indicates a general level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, empathy can be of three types: 

1. Cognitive Empathy – cognitive empathy is when you can understand and “know” how someone is feeling and can acknowledge the reason behind their response to a situation.  
2. Social Empathy – social empathy is when you feel how the other person is feeling, i.e., your emotional response mirrors theirs. This is also called affective or emotional empathy. 
3. Empathic Concern – empathic concern refers to the compassion one feels when they see someone else in need. Empathic concern often leads to a desire to help which the person may or may not act on.  

It is clear through this that empathy is multifaceted. Different situations and relationships might evoke different kinds of empathy. Additionally, multiple forms of empathy can be felt at a time.  

Knowing these concepts can greatly enrich the direction you take with empathy-building strategies for your organization. However, the outcomes in the degree and the kinds of empathy your employees might feel by the end will also depend on their individual differences.  

Why are Empathy-Building Strategies Important? 

• Empathy improves business performance. Being an interpersonal soft skill, empathy improves a person’s performance in social situations across the board. An empathic individual gets along better with others, can be a team player, and will be open to ideas. Such traits usually show up across scenarios, making an empathic person a well-rounded colleague to work with. Additionally, an empathic employee will also be skilled at dealing with clients and customers, ensuring they remain satisfied with your business. 
• Employees want to work for empathic businesses. According to the 2020 State of Workplace Empathy report, 70% of employees attribute high empathy to lower turnover rates. Additionally, 76% of employees believe an empathic organization can drive productivity. Despite this, only 58% of employees view their organizations as empathic.  
• Employees are more engaged in an inclusive work environment. A Deloitte study found that employees who perceive their organizations as inclusive were 83% more likely to be engaged. Empathy is an important aspect of an inclusive environment as it builds people’s tolerance, respect, and appreciation for differences.  

4 Empathy-Building Strategies to Use in Diversity Training 

Before you begin designing exercises, you will need to identify the training needs and gaps. So, your first step should be to gather data about the following: 

• Business goals 
• Existing training content 
• Learners’ satisfaction with training delivery and content 
• Learner feedback on how content can be improved, especially feedback from diverse individuals
• Management’s appraisals about employees’ performance and needs 

If you are an organization that is just dipping your toes into diversity training or just wants to take your programs to the next level, it will also be a good idea to hear what experts have to say. Consult experts on the adequacies and inadequacies of your current diversity trainings and incorporate their suggestions.  

Once you have your training needs in place, you can chalk down learning objectives for each program. After the learning objectives are in place, you can start building the courses. Here is where empathy-building strategies will need to be incorporated. 

Here are 4 highly effective empathy-building strategies that will elevate your next round of diversity training: 

Empathy-Building Strategy #1: Model Empathy 

Modeling is a social learning process where an individual demonstrates behaviors. The person demonstrating these behaviors thus acts as a model. Usually, a consequence follows the model’s behavior. 

By simply observing the behaviors and its consequences, learners can internalize them. 

Modeling is a brilliant empathy-building strategy because it is often difficult to verbally convey what empathy is. However, modeling gives it a tangible form. Additionally, since empathy is a social behavior, learners get to see and hear body language, tone, expressions, etc. that could express empathy.  

Humans naturally mirror behaviors they pick up socially and, so, modeling breaks down an otherwise abstract concept into something concrete and actionable. 

In e-learning, modeling empathy is very simple. You can use animated videos, skits with live actors, and even clips of people from your organization, such as managers and executives.  

Empathy Building Strategy #2: Perspective Taking 

Perspective taking is a cognitive exercise wherein an individual tries to think of things from the perspective of someone different. In other words, individuals take on the perspectives of those they do not identify with. 

In sociology, this distinction between the self’s identity and another’s identity refers to in-group vs. out-group. Those in a person’s in-group have similar cultural, ethnic, or religious identities. On the other hand, those in the outgroup have distinctions. 

For example, for an English-speaking person, those who speak English will be in their in-group. However, someone who speaks Spanish will be in the out-group. Conversely, if the English-speaking person also has a Chinese heritage, they might find themselves identifying more strongly with another person with the same heritage, regardless of their first language. These in-group/out-group distinctions are, thus, fluid and dynamic. 

Perspective taking has been proven time and again to increase empathy between members of different group identities (for instance, in this study by Madera, et. al.; 2011). 

Hence, it is an excellent empathy-building strategy to include in your diversity training programs.  

Some tools you can use to enable perspective taking in and e-learning setting are: 

• Branching scenarios
• Gamified story-based exercises 
• Self-reflection journals with prompts
• Question checkpoints for reflection without journaling 

Empathy Building Strategy #3: Empathy Toolbox 

An empathy toolbox is a set of skills and behaviors that convey empathy. Through this activity, you will equip your employees with the ability to activate and use empathy consciously.  

Some people might not be the best at coming across as empathic or even identifying that they are feeling it. However, a lack of expressiveness can lead to miscommunication. Empathy toolboxes can be especially helpful for such people. However, they are ubiquitous as they’ll teach those who can already express their empathy some newer ways to do so and also newer ways to identify others’ empathy. 

Some skills to include in your empathy toolbox are: 

• Active listening 
• Conscious and unconscious biases and identifying them in the self and others 
• Identifying microaggressions 
• Multicultural awareness and sensitivity 
• Ally behaviors and standing up against discriminatory or prejudiced acts
• The ability to look at situations from multiple lenses 

Readings, videos, recorded lectures, puzzles and scenarios, quizzes, infographics, quick microlearning tid-bits via email and notification, etc. are all great ways to teach and reinforce the empathy toolbox. 

It is also important to mention that you can customize your diversity training empathy toolbox as per your business and learning objectives. 

Empathy-Building Strategy #4: Amplify Diverse Voices 

While structured learning is effective at building empathy, studies have shown that direct involvement and emotional connections with diverse people is one of the most potent ways to develop empathy in people. 

Thus, be sure to include knowledge, experiences, suggestions, and stories from diverse people in your diversity training courses.  

Some of the ways to achieve this are: 

• Intentionally diverse readings and text snippets for learners to read from 
• Visually diverse imagery. This need not be images of real people, symbols, flags, and color palettes can also achieve this. For instance, you could follow a rainbow color palette for a diversity training program about the LGBTQ+ community 
• Add TED talks, speeches, and lectures from the communities you are trying to build empathy for in courses
• Use comics, pop-culture examples, references, etc.  

Infographics

Conclusion 

Empathy-building strategies are necessary in workplace diversity training programs as inclusion cannot be achieved without empathy. E-learning offers the flexibility required to effectively implement the empathy-building strategies given here. By prompting learners to think from the perspective of others and providing them with actionable tools to express empathy, you will take a step closer towards becoming a diverse and inclusive environment for your workforce. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Why is building empathy in the workforce important for businesses? 

Building empathy in the workforce is important for a business because: 

• Empathy improves business performance 
• Employees want to work for empathic businesses 
• Employees are more engaged in an inclusive work environment and empathy is one of the cornerstones of inclusivity 

What are the 3 types of empathy? 

The three types of empathy according to psychologist Daniel Goleman are: 

• Cognitive empathy 
• Social/affective empathy 
• Empathic compassion 

What are some empathy-building strategies? 

4 effective empathy-building strategies are: 

• Modelling empathy 
• Perspective taking 
• Empathy toolbox
• Amplifying diverse voices to share their stories, experiences, and expectations 

References:

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=community_resources