[MUSIC]
[APPLAUSE] >> It's 1988,
my mom is staring at a roomful of people
who will decide the future of my two older sisters.
My parents had been told that their daughters would not be allowed to enroll
in the local neighborhood elementary school.
Instead they would be shipped to a segregated classroom for
children with disabilities, two cities away.
My mom is furious.
She argues that if the children of our neighbors and
friends attend local public school that her daughters should too.
The school board members speak at length, using lots of words about logistics,
and capacity and cost.
Two words they never use are my sisters names.
Sarah and Allison.
There were a lot of meetings like this over the years of my childhood.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> Sara and Allison both have severe
developmental disabilities, and my parents advocated tirelessly on their behalf.
Working with institutions ranging from schools to health providers and
state agencies.
And I remember that there was a clear difference
between the organizations that treated our family like whole,
real, complex human beings, and those that didn't.
Most of us can remember a time when we felt dehumanized
by an experience within a system.
Maybe you're thinking of your last interaction with a customer service
hotline, or the DMV, yeah.
Perhaps you're remembering a tough navigation of the health care system.
Or an employer who made you feel like a faceless number.
I am fascinated by the question of what it means to treat people like real people.
What it looks like to offer the dignity, respect and
compassion that we all crave in our interactions.
And I'm especially interested in how we, as leaders,
can create organizations, that do just that.
They treat people like real people.
I believe it comes down to designing our systems specifically and
intentionally for empathy.
So why is it important for us to learn how to build empathy into our organizations?
Well, I hope that all of you have experienced the impact of human
kindness within a system.
For me I think about the Nurse last year who long
after midnight on one of the worst nights of my life, brought coffee and
snacks to the bedside where I sat with the sick family member.
It turns out that experiences of compassion like this one
have extremely real consequences for our health.
Research right here at Stanford has shown that patients who receive human kindness
and empathy during their treatment experience faster healing of wounds,
reduced pain, anxiety and blood pressure, and shorter hospital stays.
But treating people like real people isn't just important in the health sector.
Humans are evolutionarily wired
with what you see Berkley researchers have coined the compassion instinct.
We are driven to empathize with the feelings of others, and to give and
seek aid.
Both engaging in and receiving acts of compassion results in physiological and
psychological benefits, and quite simply make for happier people.
So if we are evolutionarily wired to be compassionate toward one another,
why is it that so
many of us feel dehumanized by the systems and organizations in our lives.
Well, when I asked people what made them feel human the most common responses were,
I feel like a real person when people care about my background and history.
When they listen to and know and acknowledge my story.
People will tell you I am not my disability,
I am not my leukemia, I am not my SAT score,
I am not my depression, I am not my immigration status,
I am not my gender, I am not this singular interaction.
With you.
After all, we all contain multitudes.
I believe that our organizations fail when they are not designed and
led to acknowledge these multitudes.
Empathy is what allows us in our one on one interactions to treat each other like
real people, to understand that there is a full story behind everyone we meet.
So what we need for our organizations is a way to systematize human empathy.
To do this, I suggest starting with three simple rules.
Listen, contextualize, and cultivate.
To systematize empathy, an organization has to start by identifying It's ears.
What mechanisms does the organization use to listen to its stakeholders?
Organizational listening can't just be about a feedback box in the corner.
We have to give stakeholders a valid place at the table as respected partners.
An example in practice right here in the Bay Area.
Juvenile justice systems are working with the organization, Fresh Lifelines for
Youth, to develop mechanisms to listen to youth voices.
These partnerships are helping to reduce recidivism,
and educating the the justice system on how to better serve its community.
The second rule of building empathetic organizations is
operating with a holistic appreciation for context.
When I was working with healthcare organizations in East Africa,
some of the most effective models I saw
were those that addressed issues intersecting with patient's health.
>From nutrition and sanitation to education and employment.
These organizations approach their patients as whole,
multifaceted people and their medical outcomes were the better for it.
Finally, to cultivate empathy.
Organizations must unlock their most powerful asset, their own employees.
Research shows that stress, burn out, and
toxic company culture can squash our compassion instinct, but
findings suggest that companies that form a culture of compassion not only
boost employee happiness and health, they also improve their bottom lines.
Plus, compassion is proven to be contagious.
So, if we want our clients and customers to be treated well,
we have to start by treating our teammates like real whole people too.
Back in 1988, my mom told that school board that if they didn't let her
daughters into school, she would sit with them on the front lawn of
Magnolia Elementary every single day until they did.
Well, great job, Mom.
My parents ultimately won their fight.
Sarah and Alison entered Magnolia Elementary School and
eventually Alison became our counties first
fully main stream student with disabilities to graduate from high school.
My mom is very clear about one important fact from our families journey.
It was not until there was organizational reform in districts in schools.
Then my sisters were truly treated like real people.
So it’s time for all of us to own the fact that
individual acts of kindness are not enough.
It is time for us to take organizational empathy out of the realm of the random,
out of the realm of above and beyond, and into the realm of the expected.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]