Sharon Steed
Leading with Empathy
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
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Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author and person who stutters. Drawing on her own experience as a stutterer, Sharon brings a uniquely personal lens to the practice of empathetic leadership. She shows that vulnerability isn't a weakness to overcome but a skill that builds trust, loyalty, and stronger teams.
Sharon has spoken on stages in 20 countries spanning five continents. She’s helped organizations like Google, Microsoft, Booking.com, Northwestern Mutual and dozens of others improve performance, retain top talent and be better communicators by teaching them how to be actively empathetic.
She is the author of "Leading with Empathy For Dummies" as well as several courses on LinkedIn Learning. Her most popular course, "Communicating with Empathy" has been translated into a dozen languages and has surpassed one million views. She has given a TEDx talk on empowering insecurities, and she’s the author of the O’Reilly Media, Inc. eBook "Empathy at Work."
Area of Expertise
Topics
Developing sustainable empathy systems
Empathy is a core component of teamwork. In order to create inclusive cultures that can sustain diversity, you must make a sincere effort to understand those around you and know how to effectively communicate with them in order to be achieve great things. That perspective garnered from taking the time to understand others highly correlates with success. But what if you don’t know where you’re succeeding when engaging empathy and where you need a bit of help? If you’re not sure the exact ways to communicate with empathy and feel more connected to those on your team? Or when you’ve nailed how to truly garner perspective, you’re not sure how to make those behaviors endure for the long haul?
This talk breaks down the process to make the changes necessary to better engage empathy. We’ll determine how to identify the gaps you or your team may have when creating inclusive experiences for your team; discuss how to lay a foundation for implementation for those changes; and build an accountability model so we can sustain those changes.
Engaging Empathy
Everything around us moves so quickly; we are inundated with content, news, ideas and opinions with a ferocious consistency. As we go through our days filled with meetings, emails, conference calls and the tasks of our role, it gets more and more challenging to truly connect with those around us, especially our coworkers. That connection is what drives optimal collaboration, productive communication, and an overall sense of positivity on teams. So how do we achieve that? How do we connect with others in an environment that seems to only drive division? And how do we truly engage with one another in a way that fosters a culture of innovation, openness and inclusion? With vulnerability and, especially, with empathy.
Empathy and vulnerability aren’t necessarily two words associated with professional success, but they are invaluable to achieving the long-term goals managers and leaders set for their teams and companies as a whole. This talk dives into each of those topics. We’ll define what real-word empathy is and why it’s imperative in offices; explain why vulnerability is the gateway to opportunity; and finally, we’ll discuss how to truly connect with those around us by engaging empathy at work.
Creating Cultures of Empathy
The most successful endeavors all follow the same general trajectory: a decent idea executed flawlessly by a cohesive team of hard workers. No matter the project, everything can be achieved following this general guideline. But the exact thing that can create global companies, solve impossible problems, and bring ideas to life is also the same reason why so many companies fail. That thing is us. People. But when we’re at our best, there isn’t anything we can’t do. So how do we optimize collaboration? How do we work better together even if we don’t see eye to eye with everyone on our teams? And how do we create a culture of empathy when all we can see about everyone around us is our differences?
Sharon Steed explores empathy in an unusual way: from the perspective of a stutterer. Sharon explains what empathy is (and what it isn’t) and gives you the tools you need to create a culture of empathy on your team.
DevOpsDays Zurich 2022 Sessionize Event
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