Turing - Empathy Reflection
What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
Empathy is the only way to really make a connection with others. Without the ability to empathize with others, to feel what they are feeling and experience what they are experiencing, even to the limited extent that I am able, I would never get beyond my own little bubble and my self. Empathy has helped me relate to others when I've traveled or lived overseas; to contemplate how my colleagues are feeling and to craft my efforts to those circumstances; and to navigate complex personal dynamics to find a loving solution to problems. I try to develop my ability to empathize with others and I find just acting in a way that demonstrates understanding of others changes the environment I'm in.
How does empathy help you build better software? The whole purpose of software is to take a model of a human reality and make it something we can interact with and use. The best models come close to accurately representing those human realities. Furthermore, most of these models are designed to solve a problem, to meet a given human need. In that way, our software is only as good as our model, regardless of how technically proficient we are. The best way to build accurate models of human behavior and thus good software is to be able to empathize with others, to really understand their situation and thus be able to provide a solution that meets their needs.
Why is empathy important for working on a team? A team of people is not a machine. It does not simply take an input and produce an output, rationally, logically, and without emotion. In order for a team to function well, everyone needs to be coordinating their actions and their thoughts, which requires the ability for people to connect and feel what their teammates are feeling. As an individual, it's good for me to be paying attention to what my teammates are feeling and how they are experiencing our work together. Sometimes people's perceptions of a situation aren't accurate to the reality. The only way to know that is to understand what they are experiencing and that requires empathy. When one person is over-stressed or shouldering too much of the burden, being able to pick up on that before it becomes a major issue and derails the functioning of the team is very important.
Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful. When I was an undergraduate, I worked closely with a number of school administrators to improve the facilities on campus. Rather than railing against the administration, I empathized with the complexity and challenge of their jobs. I realized that there were many competing interests at the university, all seeking to grow and find more space for their programming. In short, there were politics going on. In order to achieve my objective of getting more space for students, I did research and wrote a report that would help members of the administration who were advocating for that objective make their case. I designed the language of the report to reflect that greater political dynamic and asked for a greater voice for students in the conversation about facility development.
When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios? It's most difficult to be empathetic when I'm under stress and I am personally suffering with the workload. In the same vein, in a high performance environment, sometimes feeling a sense that the deliverable needs to be perfect can make us feel that pressure and suffering are necessary to achieve a high standard. A sense of "there are no excuses get it done" can be helpful to move the ball forward but can also create a situation where there is disregard for people's feelings or sensitivity to the actual reality we face. I would like to improve at stepping back and seeing 1) how to relieve my own stress 2) how to relieve others 3) how to find a way to achieve a high standard without undue suffering.