Directions: Submit your Gear Up Pre-Work reflections on the pre-work google doc.
Our mission is to unlock human potential by training a diverse, inclusive student body to succeed in high-fulfillment technical careers.
- Interpersonal skills (including empathy) have a direct, significant impact on your professional success.
- Empathy is a foundational interpersonal skill. Other skills, such as collaboration, communication, compromise all hinge on your ability to demonstrate empathy.
- Interpersonal skills, including empathy, can be developed and improved.
- Turing's mission (cited above) demands that we support students development of technical and interpersonal skills.
Read two of the following articles/videos (we recommend all of them!) and reflect on these questions: why are we talking about empathy at a software development school? how can you develop the "skill" of empathy? and why should you care?
- "Why is Empathy Important for Design"
- "The Surprising (Nontechnical) Skill You Need to Succeed in Tech", The Muse
- "Why Aren't We More Compassionate?", TED Talk (Daniel Goleman)
- "Can you teach people to have empathy?", BBC (Jun 29, 2015)
- "Three Kinds of Empathy", Daniel Goleman
- "The Importance of Empathy in Our Services-Centric, People-Oriented Economy", Wall Street Journal Blog (Oct 9, 2015)
After reading the articles above, create a gist on Github and reflect (4-6 sentences) on the following prompts.
- What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
To be frank, I have always considered myself to be a highly empathic person, whether dealing with people I know or strangers. This has helped me in personal conflicts with family members and friends, where maybe I was upset about something but stopped to think about where the other person's actions/emotions/thoughts/etc were coming from, and I was able to understand more why we had an issue in the first place. Empathy has also profoundly impacted my professional life as well, though. When I was working for an English school, I regularly ran into frustrations with different communication styles, but would put myself in the students' shoes and ask myself what it would be like for me, at 18 years old, to be dropped into another country with no friends, no family, and an only very basic understanding of the language. This allowed me to have a lot more patience than I may have otherwise. This seems to have paid off, too, because just yesterday I was texted by a former student who I have not seen in many years asking for help with finding housing in California. While I was busy with my pre-work and would have preferred to simply focus on that, I reminded myself that if I were her, I would be desperate for help. This tendency towards empathic thinking also helped in my job as a paralegal, where the more challenging clients with more nuanced needs in terms of emotional support were regularly assigned to me, since the attorneys and clients felt I provided the right level of caring and understanding to support the clients through the legal process.
- How does empathy help you build better software?
Empathy first of all allows you to build useful software by forcing to to examine what a user wants and what a user needs. However, it's not possible to meet or even be aware of these needs without empathy and being able to examine a product from the position of the user, thus putting yourself in the user's shoes. While a feature you build out might be interesting or cool, if it either doesn't help or hinders the user's experience, then whatever you built is essentially useless. Being aware of these issues comes through empathy.
- Why is empathy important for working on a team?
I think having empathy related to teamwork is two-fold. As a general team member, I think it's important to use empathy to understand what your fellow teammate might be struggling with and why, thus avoiding frustrations, and it also allows you to recognize another person's strengths. From a leadership or management perspective, empathy allows you to communicate effectively and bring in different viewpoints to improve inclusivity. I also think empathy helps tremendously when delivering and receiving constructive criticism. Putting yourself in the position of the person who will receive your critique I think helps the critic frame their perspective better, and as a recipient it allows you to understand that what's being said is not coming from a place of malice.
- Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
In my old position, we hired on some new people and our training process needed some improvement. One of the new people we hired tended to ask me questions throughout the day, rather than the department manager. It got to the point with me where internally I was a bit frustrated because I continually had to stop what I was doing to address her questions, putting me behind in my own work. However, once I stopped to consider that this new employee was in a difficult position not knowing what to do, not being comfortable asking the manager, and preferring to ask me, I was able to look past my frustration and focus just on helping her. Happily, she is doing quite well now and has also become a close friend.
- When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios?
In the past, I've had the most difficulty being empathetic in regards to management frustrations. I need to try and remember that everyone is human, liable to make mistakes, and constantly learning. Just because I disagree with someone's management style or how they handle something doesn't mean that their approach is without merit.