Empathy is a simple phrase but very few people understand it, how to incorporate it into their work or how to find real empathy with their customers. In this episode, we will look at what empathy entails, the things people mistakenly think is empathy, how to find it in your work and find a balance between empathy and subject matter expertise.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-47-creativity-understanding-and-applying-empathy-in-your-work/
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Empathy is a simple phrase but very few people understand it, how to incorporate it into their work or how to find real empathy with their customers. In this episode, we will look at what empathy entails, the things people mistakenly think is empathy, how to find it in your work and find a balance between empathy and subject matter expertise.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-47-creativity-understanding-and-applying-empathy-in-your-work/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Ladies and gentlemen, crazy ones of all ages. Welcome to the 47th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design and a whole bunch of stuff that matters to creative people. Now, for those of you who subscribe to the show, a quick apology, I know that it's been a little bit of time since I've put another episode out. And I think unfortunately, I've had work and travel and back to back colds and getting ready for a bunch of talks that are coming up in the end of the year that have all conspired against me getting a new episode out. And also just quite frankly, I recorded this one about two weeks ago, went back and listened to it and thought it was pretty much crap. So had decided that I'm not going to put out a show until I think it's actually good and it's something that I really want to share. And so if that means waiting a little bit longer to do that, then that's what's gonna happen. So hopefully you understand hopefully the weight has been worth it and we will roll on Now today I want to spend a little bit of time talking about empathy. Empathy is a phrase that is being used a lot out there lately, it's really being born out of the rise of design thinking and customer centric design and a lot of these sort of trends that are putting this word front and center. Now, it's a simple phrase that I think seems pretty obvious. But the funny part is, I've had a bunch of conversations recently on line on social media, with different people at work. And the thing that I really find out is that, honestly, there aren't that many people that really understand it. They don't understand how to incorporate it into their work, and they don't really even understand how to find real empathy. And I wanted to spend some time talking about this, because I think honestly, this is one of the biggest things that you need to master in order to do anything really creative if you're going to do anything. That is for other people. If you're in the commercial creative space. If you're a fine artist, make art to just make You happy and that's perfectly fine. But if you're doing it and you're getting paid for it, and you're doing it for other people, then empathy is a critical, critical part of what's going on. So I wanted to spend some time to talk about what do I think empathy isn't? Because again, like I said, tons of people I find, really use it badly. To talk about what actually is empathy. How do you find more of it? What are things like compassion and sympathy? How do those play into this conversation? And then why does all this matter, and we hit on that a little bit, but but to kind of just kind of press on that a little bit more to just really take a look at that. So that's what we're gonna talk about on the show today. And so if you haven't, take a second, go subscribe to the podcast. So you're sure that you get all the latest content. And while you're there, take two seconds, five seconds tops and leave a review. I know that there are tons and tons of you out there and it would be great and it brings a ton more people into the show. If you take just a second and leave a review. It makes a difference to me and everybody else. So please, just take a minute go to those two things. Bye. I wanted to walk through some of the ways that I see people misuse the word empathy. And this is in a lot of different ways. And for a lot of different reasons. And the reason why I want to do this is because I think, I don't think people misuse terms maliciously. I think that some people misuse them, because they don't understand them. I think some people misuse them, because they don't understand them. And they want to sound in the know or that they hear a buzz word. And they think that that's something that they want to capitalize on. And they want to sound like they're in the loop. But the problem is that in all of those cases, people don't have the confidence they don't have the peer group, they don't have whatever it is where they feel like they can actually raise their hand and say, Look, I don't actually generally understand this, I only understand the periphery of it. I only understand it on the surface. And that that's a problem. I understand that it's a problem because maybe I'm leading people, maybe I'm a client, maybe there are a lot of these different ways where that misunderstanding can really lead Just some real problems. whenever it comes to the creative side of the equation, one of the biggest things that empathy isn't, is that empathy isn't having the arrogance to think that you are your consumer. Because the thing that I have found is that in the vast majority of cases in the vast majority of my own personal work, and this is something that I have suffered from is that you have this arrogance to think I'm my consumer, I've gone out, I've bought the product, I've used the product, I've driven a car, I've done these different things. And so as a result, I'm the consumer, I understand what's going on. And I think the thing that you'll find as we talk more about this is that, really, you have to work to not get blinded by that bias to not get blinded by your ego of thinking that, Oh, well, I really understand these people because so many cases what that's going to lead to is it's going to lead to you designing for yourself. And I think this is where social media and a bunch of these other things that I've talked about in the past come into play. Because all of a sudden you're designing for pretty you're designing for Pinterest, you're designing for dribble, you're designing to get social media admiration, which is fine. But to be honest, I find that deeply unimpressive. Because for me, the real challenge is to design something that is beautiful. There's something that is eloquent, but that it does solve a consumer need, that it is something that people want that it does have an impact. And it does that inside of the constraints of budgets and clients and technology and all these other things that will make that problem so much more difficult to solve. If you can do that. Now, that's something that I find to be impressive, but if you just do it devoid of that devoid of empathy, devoid of an understanding of your audience, and you're basically just talking to yourself, then that's kind of a big problem. Now, the other thing that I see in this tends to be a little bit more on the client side on the people that you're working with, is that empathy isn't saying that I really understand my consumer. I understand their mindset, because I've looked at metrics or demographics, or I've sat in on the other side of a one way mirror at a focus group. And because of that, I now understand their mindset. Because that's really the problem is that metrics are really a result of behavior. This is what happens whenever people use a website, or they use an app, they have done something that may help you understand an unmet need, it may help you understand where something isn't working. But that does not create true empathy. Like I said, that just creates the awareness of someplace where there's a problem. The same thing with demographics. Now demographics are personas are different things like that. These are basically look alikes, these are ghosts, these are ideal states, broad strokes of what this consumer is going to be. This isn't actually empathy. This is more of just a targets to help shape the mindset. But here again, it isn't really going to get you to the place where you're going to really be able to be empathetic to somebody to understand what they're going through to walk a mile. their shoes and to really see what it is they're going through. And, you know, I think that it also is the fact and we hit on this a little bit, I'm going to hit on it a little bit more later, that it isn't compassion, and it isn't sympathy. Now compassion is something where I feel and I understand why you having a problem is a problem, right? Like I, I have an emotional reaction to that, that I am then compassionate, I feel I want to do something I want to help. Sympathy is the fact that I then feel bad or good or like I'm somehow sympathetic so that I'm trying to mirror that emotion. Neither of these are empathy. And that's the thing that I think are again, some of these terms get a little bit tripped up and confused, and we need to go back and we'll do that in just a minute to clarify that. But all of this is just because too many people get all this confused, right? Because you want to create work that really is something that connects with people, you want to create it so that it resonates with them. And the biggest problem with this and probably if we're going to be really really honest, the place where I think most creative struggle is that empathy requires for you to put your ego in check. And to step outside of yourself with an open mind to not go in with biases to not go in with the idea of what you want the outcome to be. This is the same behavior that we will vilify our clients for whenever they come in, and they don't give us the freedom whenever they don't respect what it is that we're doing. But so often again, and I'm a big fan of like, put the shoe on the other foot if these roles were reversed. And that's the problem is that in so many cases, we don't go in with an open mind to deal with our consumers. We don't go in to really understand these people and to do it with an open mind. And if you don't do that, then you create a lot of work that quite candidly, people don't care about. This is why you see advertising campaigns that don't go anywhere websites, if people can't use apps that nobody cares about. This is the root of so much of the problems with commercial creativity is because if you are devoid of empathy, if you're just simply designing for you or you're designing for your client The work is not going to connect with people. This is where a time and time again, I will look at things that I'm doing in my own work and say, does anybody really give a shit about this? Is this connecting with people? Is this tapping into a core human truth? Is it tapping in to a real sense of empathy? Or quite frankly, are we just talking to ourselves because too often too many companies, I don't care what the size is, what the scale is, how big or how small the brand is. People talk to themselves, and they say the things that they think people want to hear. But that's the problem is if you don't genuinely go out and do that, if you don't genuinely want and understand what are they really going through, then those things aren't going to connect. And in most cases, what it becomes, is advertising in the negative connotation of that word, in the fact that it is just a bunch of just babble. That's not going to connect with people. So let's actually spend some time about talking what empathy is we spent more than enough time talking about what it isn't. So let's talk about about what it is. Now customer centric design, design thinking, take the buzzword of the moment, the buzz word of your choice. But the key part of all of this is that to really do this, right, it's about looking from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Now, what that means is that the inside out means that I actually want to understand I want to actually have empathy, I want to connect with my consumers. So that my mindset, my way of looking at things, my understanding of the problems that we're trying to solve is based on their needs based on their problems. It's not the outside in because the outside in is what the client and you know, unaware of what that state really is, will say their needs are outside in is just simply designing something because I think the message sounds cool or it looks pretty or I think it's well written or well designed or whatever it is, but it's not actually solving a problem. And it really is this perspective because in its simplest and purest form, empathy enables us to not only experience and understand somebody else's circumstances, but it lets you walk a mile in their shoes and experience what they are feeling. And I think that's what's gets missed here. That's the word that most people really don't tune in on. That's the part that most people don't understand is it's not just going through and saying, oh, how do people act? It's understanding how do they feel? How does something make them feel because when we talk about all the things that commercial design wants to do, create a brand connection sell us something, create brand loyalty, to connect with them to tap into a core human truth we are talking about feelings, which are not always rational, which are not always clear, which cannot always be easily quantified, because this is the part where passion and from stration and a lot of these things that can really move consumers come into play. And if you can tap into that, if you can find that in see it, it becomes such an incredibly powerful tool to make your work more than just creative to make it something that can change can, you know can change entire industries, it can change, markets can change consumers, it can change companies, because that's the thing is really because of all of this. And it's so important because the more we know about something, the more of an expert we become, whether it's about creativity, whether it's about your chosen field, or the particular place that your company plan plays in the thing that it does, the more that we know about that, the more biased we become. Because there's just a natural part of it where as I start to understand more as I start to look at more things, then honestly I start to my mind starts to close. I'm not as open minded as I was before I start to make assumptions, I start to think that oh, I understand the way these people are I understand what it is. And it's finding ways in constructing things of how do you fight that bias? How again, do you find the arrogance of saying, Oh, well, I understand this person, I am this person to do that, because it's almost an invisible bias that I think most people don't want to admit to. Because the other problem is our entire industry has a construct that does not encourage any acknowledgement does not encourage any ability to say that there is a bias, and to say that we don't necessarily always know things. Because the reality is, what do we reward, reward subject matter expertise, we reward a lot of those other things that doesn't allow us to be able to say that there's a bias there and that we have to constantly go back and check in with our consumers. I've talked about this before. This is why I am such a big believer in strategy and in research and in going back and talking to customers because the work for all of us is The truth? does it connect with people? Yes or no? Does it move the needle? Yes or No, there's a lot of very black and white questions at the end of a very gray process. because creativity is gray creativity. This is the problem is that we are dealing in a medium that is incredibly debatable that is doing it for other people whose mind shifts. And they change based on a whole host of different things, what is going on in society, in the economy and a bunch of things that we cannot control. So what we want to do to be able to fight all of this is to use empathy, because empathy is going out and actually talking to and observing your audience. Because there's some very key things that I need to know. And there's some very key things that I need to constantly keep tabs on. I need to keep tabs on things like how are they actually using whatever the product is, or whatever the services are, how are they actually connecting with things? What are their challenges, what are the things that they're trying to overcome? What are the problems that they have in Their lives, where are their areas of opportunity? How are they creating workarounds to these things? If they're not getting it from that particular product? If they're not getting it from that company or that service? What are they doing? Because people will find a way. And the reason why I want to do all of that is because that helps me find insights that I can use to create differentiated work. And that's the other problem with all this is that if you're not putting in this time, if you're not talking to consumers, if you're not going out and looking at this stuff, you're going to come to the exact same insights as everybody else who is going in and just taking a top level, cursory look at these things. This is why so many different companies who will work separately, will come up with these very homogenous very look alike solutions, because they don't have that sense of empathy and they don't have the leadership that's going to push to make that a priority. This is something that again, in all of us, is Wired In. And I've talked about this in the past whenever I've talked about design thinking is that I've taught design thinking all over the world, to hundreds of different people and the thing that you will find Find that whenever you go through, I'll go to a big design conference, I'll have 100 people in a room, I'm going to break them up into a bunch of different teams, I'm going to give them a brief and we're going to spend the day doing a workshop to teach them design thinking. At the end of the day, the thing that I'll find time and time and time, again, is that at least at least 50% of those teams will come up with basically the same idea. Because the problem is, is that without empathy without checking in with our consumers, we are then going to give in to the bias and we're going to give into another base just create a psychology of the fact that whenever we are posed with a problem, it creates a tension. The tension is that we now have something to solve that then creates anxiety, it creates a warrant for us to be able to come up with a solution. This is what drives all of us. But the problem with that is that the first thing that breaks that tension, the first thing that you think is a good idea will break the tension, but then it also creates a sense of complacency. And that's a huge problem. Because that's the thing is that whenever you go through and teach design thinking these people will Reach for the obvious answer. And the first thing that breaks that tension, then they settle on that. They don't push, they don't try to find better ideas or Wilder ideas or bigger ideas or different things. And so I think that's why, for me, empathy plays such a critical part in all this work, because every single day, I assume that there is somebody else who has my job title with a team who looks a lot like mine, that is at one of my competitors, who is solving a very similar problem than to what I do. Now, if I give into the bias, if I give into this simple alleviation of that tension, I'm taking the first and easiest idea that comes along. This is the problem, why we don't create creative differentiation. And this is why everybody lands on that same idea. Because when we're using generic insights, when we're not creating empathy, whatever we take the first idea that really cracks and gives way to that tension. Well, then this is why we all launch stuff that looks the same. This is why only the company's only the teams that are able to really look into this to really understand what's going on. Those are the ones that are really successful. And I think that's the part is if you think about all The companies that we all fetishize the apples, the Googles, the Nikes, the Ubers, the Airbnb, like any of these, right, what they all have done a really good job of consistently is to come in, and to be able to solve problems that we didn't always even necessarily know that we had. But that was the thing is that they only found these ideas through a sense of empathy through going out, and really putting in the time to find out what's going on. And to really find where those opportunities are and those insights. And in some cases, like Uber and Airbnb, they founded entire companies on that. Nobody knew that they needed a ride sharing service, nobody knew that they wanted to go stay in somebody else's house. As a matter of fact, if you would have said that out loud. 10 years ago, people would have looked at you like you're out of your head. But again, they took the time to go and identify and really look at where those problems are. And like I said before, I think this is so important, then you have to seek these things out. Because customer experiences, especially the emotional ones are the most impactful to the places You can make the biggest impact. That's why Uber and Airbnb and other ones are entire companies is because the impact and the need was so great. Now, let's also take a moment here to be clear about something I am not rejecting, nor am I diminishing, what the importance of knowledge and expertise brings to the table. Because the reality is that we have to have that you have to have subject matter expertise, because it's not only a critical part of methodologies like design thinking or customer centered design, but it's essential to really being able to find a lot of those insights. Because that's the thing is that I need to be able to go out and find those things, but then I need to have a measuring stick and an understanding of how do I then put those together in a differentiated way? So I'm not saying that empathy should come at the cost of everything else, it should not come at the cost of really that expertise, right. The subject matter expertise. What I am saying is that there has to be a balance. And the problem is right now we are way too heavy on the subject matter expertise side and way too light on the empathy side. So for me it is finding a balance between the two of those. And that's really the thing is that what I want to advocate here is that strength and insights comes from the application of empathy. And the application of that creates the balance. Because what I want people to do is to find realizations, and to find perceptions in the experience of their customers, not in the accumulated experience that can find you and creates that bias. So I think those are the things and that's really the balance here. So like I said, I don't want to dismiss and think that everybody just simply abandon subject matter expertise and competitive analysis and a lot of those in personas, a lot of those other things. They're a vital part of this process. But the problem is, is that if they become blinding, and if they become overburdened, then you lose the balance and then you lose that actual connection to the people that you're trying to design for. Now, when we talk about how do you actually go out and find empathy, right? Like it's a little bit like finding Oz, or any of these sort of emotional sort of subjects that we talked about when we've talked about happiness or frustration or a bunch of these other things, how do you find empathy, right? Because it is a really difficult thing. And so there are three things that I would tell you to do that I have been the most effective for me, there are a lot of other ways of doing it. If you go out, go to Google and just type in, you know, design thinking empathy or to type in, you know, empathy in creativity or things like that. There are a lot of good articles, I'll post a couple of the ones that I found in the show notes that I think do a good job of defining some other things. But I just want to talk about what I think have been the three most effective for me. Now the first one is immersion. And this is to literally go out and walk a mile in somebody's shoes. If you're going to Try to sell somebody a car, go out and try to buy a car, if you're going to try to sell them alone, try to go out and get a loan to try to tangibly do these things. So you can have a real understanding and a personal experience to this, because that's to me that the tricky part of empathy is that if it is too disconnected, if it becomes too theoretical, you can't find the insights in it. But if it's too entirely personal, you make too many assumptions, then the bias sort of comes in. So how do I sort of walk this line? I've talked before, this is why I did something. And the funny part is I think most people find this crazy, but at the end of the day, then they want the same results that I got, but they aren't willing to put the work in. This was why I lived any any hotel for 364 days whenever I joined Starwood because for me, I understood a hotel in a two or three day block, I did not understand it. In a bigger sense, I didn't understand the inner workings. I didn't understand the mindset of what was our most valuable consumer, which are the people that we're staying 123 even though the math doesn't work out, four or 500 nights a year. And you get to those last numbers if you book multiple hotels per night, multiple rooms per night. So it's not like some crazy new math. But the thing that that led me do was to find some really fascinating genuine insights, and to really immerse myself in that world. Whenever I worked on automotive accounts, I would stop people in gas stations, I would go build all wheel drive systems, I would go to the car factory, I would go to the dealership and pretend like I didn't know anything about this car and to see how they would sell me. It was to really immerse myself in that world so that I could start to look for those things that we talked about before I could start to see how do people use the product? What were the challenges that I found whenever I went through it? How was I creating workarounds? How was I doing some of those things? So immersion really, I think is good because it creates empathy for the audience of one. It lets you be immersed and to find empathy through your experiences, which I think in many cases are the most tangible and the most powerful, because you suddenly are frustrated. You are happy. You are going through Do these things. And the only key part of it is that as you experience those sort of different things to take the time to take the minute to understand and say, why, why was I happy? Why was I sad? Why was I frustrated? Why did I create this work around? What was that thing that triggered that, because those will then lead back and drive back to insights. But that's really the thing is that there is no substitute for really doing that. And I think that a lot of cases that creates the strongest sense of doing that, of actually creating that sort of real connection with what the problem is. Now, the next one is a little bit of the inverse of that, which is doing observation. And this is where I just want to watch what people do because here again, I don't have the arrogance to say, Well, my experience, my emotion, my way of seeing things, all of those things, well, that that is the definitive solution. That is the definitive way of doing this stuff. Because there again, that's not true either. That is again an audience of one and while an audience one can be powerful and also can be a bias. But so this is what I want to do is I actually want to go out and watch people And for me, this isn't interviewing, interviewing is separate. And that's something we're gonna get to in a minute. I want to just really watch them. Because the key thing that I found is that what people say and what they do, oftentimes are very different. Whenever I find opportunities when I see how they use things, whenever I see challenges and workarounds, most of the time I'm seeing those through observation. I'm not getting them to actually through interviewing, because the problem is, whenever you interview people, it is not normally a normal conversation, they're going to perform a little they're going to act like they're on a commercial, they're going to dress it up or try to be a little more profound, or they're not going to be they're genuine themselves, no matter how good the moderator is, no matter how good the research is, there's always going to be a bit of a bias in there. But I think that the observation of things and again, if we want to talk about designing an app, tons and tons of times you'll say do you know does this particular screen make sense to you? Absolutely. can totally tell it love it, love everything about it want to be it for Halloween, but you say great, can you then do this particular action, and you watch them struggle for the next several minutes as they try to figure out how to do that. So here again, the words and the actions aren't in alignment. And so this is why we need to go through and actually do that observation because what it is they said versus what it is they did didn't line up. And here again, that's an incredibly critical difference. And then the last one then is interviewing. And this is where I would recommend, if at all possible, make friends with your, with your local neighborhood strategist, your local neighborhood researcher, somebody who is really good at doing this, because doing an interview well is an absolute art. It is an art to not lead the witness, it is an art to be able to genuinely find those things that are going on and not to lead the witness. Because this is the place where I see research and I see strategy I see interviewing, and a lot of these things go wildly wrong, because in so many cases, what you can do is you can already have an outcome pre decided you can say this is what we think we want consumers to do. This is where we think we're going to do something really cool. And the problem is then when we go to the interview, we go to the testing, we do things like that. We actually Questions, we set up scenarios we do things that are going to then lead to that outcome that we want? Well, here again, the problem with that is that we have now validated the fact that we're talking to ourselves, and that we have used research biased research, to confirm what it is the outcome that we wanted. And because of this, you're not going to find innovation, you're not going to find differentiation, you're not going to find a lot of these sorts of things. And all you are going to find is a conversation after it launches with your bosses, superiors, C level executives and anybody else in between, about why did we spend all this money why did we do all this research? Why did we have these things that told us that this is what consumers wanted, and we launched it, and nobody gave a shit about it. And that that's the problem is that if you go back and actually take a look at that, you will find that here again, you lead the witness, you actually got the outcome that you wanted, as opposed to going in no bias, open mind and saying what is actually going on here. And it's an incredibly hard thing to do. It's an incredibly hard approach to take, because what it means is it can lead to failure or it can lead to you looking like you had an insight that didn't work into a lot of those other things. But the thing that I will tell you the thing that I will hope and the thing that I would really hope that this industry gets to the place around is the fact that the recognition of that much smaller problem, failure admission that things weren't right, the ability to create to correct it, but ultimately, to launch something that is vastly more impactful. That should be the thing that's rewarded, we should reward failing fast, we should reward going out and doing these sort of things where we're actually trying to genuinely make a difference, not just genuinely make our bosses happy, launch something that again, we can spin the numbers into a board deck and a press release, about how great this thing is, and then quietly shuttered A few months later, because we all know that it was a complete abject failure, because it demoralizes your team, it demoralizes your company, it doesn't keep your customers around. And there's a lot of those other things where I like I said, you need empathy for an internal audience as well. You need to genuinely understand what your consumers Make sure you're delivering those things and not just surround yourself with a bunch of Yes, people, numbers, people, people who spin the numbers, the metrics, the decks and everything else in between, to tell you how great things are actually going whenever Rome is actually burning. We all know that this happens you you just thought of somebody either in a past job, or probably in your current one, where you know, this is happening. And these are the places where we need to fight against this. And this is where, when you talk before about compassion, this is where I think the compassion starts to play in, right, because we talked before about how empathy isn't compassion. But compassion does play a key role here, partially so that you can emotionally connect with consumers and connect with what they're feeling. You have to be compassionate to that you have to see that it's a problem and understand the depth and brevity of it. You have to be compassionate to be able to do that. Empathy on its own can be very cold analytical. When we're again talking about feelings. Feelings are an emotion and so you have to position that a little bit differently, but it also plays a really key role. Compassion plays a role key role in bringing the work to life. Because the part where I think compassion is the biggest part of this is you have to be compassionate, not compassionate just for the consumers. But I think the bigger place that you need to do it is whenever you get those observations and you get those insights, and you start to apply to your work, that you have the compassion to for your consumers, that it drives your leadership, that it gives you the backbone that it gives you the drive and the ability to not be blinded by your clients to not be blinded by creative brief to not just simply be a sheep, who is just going to go on and march on and just simply take the orders what people told you to go solve, because this is the problem as we talked about in the past. If you want to truly be innovative, you are not going to know where you gonna end up whenever you start. And there have been plenty of times in my career, whenever we set off to do something that even I thought was right. But as we went through this as we started to go out and to do the emergency observations, the inner As we started to become more compassionate to it, the compassion that I needed was to be the person that was going to stand up and saying we're doing the wrong thing. This is not what our consumers want. I know that this is what everybody believes. But here is the case. Here is the reason here is the research here is the person here is the interview, the things that are going to say that we're going in the wrong direction. Because if I genuinely care about my consumers, I have to care about them more than I care about a client or creative brief, and that's the thing is that this is insanely hard, because it means you have to have some very hard conversations, it means that you have to stand up against the tide and say, Look, I think we need to do something different. There are a lot of companies that will not let this happen that do not want to hear it. There are a lot of bosses and far too many of them that are managers and not leaders who don't want to take the hit. They don't want to spend the political capital to do the right thing. I think it is cowardice. I think that it is one of the biggest problems with this. And that if it's an agency, they will, I think, in some cases put out bad work deliberately, because then it gives them more work that they have to go back and fix it. If it's an internal client, it is somebody who is willing, who is honestly willing to take comfort and to take the ability to not rock the boat over doing what is right. And that is the real heart of all of this is that empathy has to create this perspective, it has to create these conversations. And I think this is why it's out of balance. This is why we don't have more of it, because it leads to too many challenging conversations. It leads to too many changes of directions. And either there are companies structures, agency structures that don't want and don't take into account those shifts to be able to happen. And that that's a massive, massive problem. Because this is the thing is that the basic truth, like I said before is the more we know, the more biased we become, and the more of us that don't realize this, the more of us who aren't willing to stand up against this, and who just blissfully embrace that bias, because it's just easier to go with the tide than to stand up to that. But you have to create solutions that people really need, not just talking to yourself or designing for yourself, because that's what empathy leads you to, is it leads you to new solutions that will profit your consumer, it'll profit your audience, it will profit your client. But this is where you need to look in the mirror and say, What is the role that I play in this? What is the role that I'm doing to make sure that I'm going back and not just simply having my work be precious to have it be unquestioned to have it be something that I think is really good, because my ultimate goal is to have something that I think looks cool in my portfolio, versus something that I think is actually going to make a difference. And that is the biggest challenge for a lot of us. That's the biggest failing that I see with too many people is at the end of the day, they want to be self serving. They want to embrace the bias. They just want to go through and do that. But this is why empathy He is such a critical part of this. This is why putting in this work is such a critical part of this. Because, yes, it can be a harder road. But the work that sits at the other side of it, the outcomes that sit at the other side of it, the impact that you will see the way that it will transform your group, your career and everything else in between. Because here is the reality is that this world has too few people that are willing to do this, too few people that embrace empathy, too few people that really stand up and are willing to have that hard conversation. And as a result, if you are one of those people that are able to do it, you suddenly are a unicorn, you're an incredibly high demand. And again, you're not gonna be in high demand for every company because there are a lot of companies that don't want people to tell them what they don't want to hear. They just want the Yes Men who will smile and nod. But for those that are gonna make a difference for those who want to talk about creativity in a way that it can change things because that is the number one thing in doing this podcast is the number of emails that I get from people who will tell me that I talk about creativity the way that they wish that it was If you feel that way, that is up to you to make the change to make the change in yourself in your team in your company, and if they will not embrace it, then to find somebody who will, this is our life's work. This is our passion, and we work too damn hard. And we put too much of our soul into this to just be Yes Men and to be sheep. So that's my challenge to you. Go out, find the balance, fight the bias, embrace empathy, and use it to drive your work to really make a difference, to rise above the pretty and the easy, but to make it something that is all of those things, that has impact and genuine ability to change things as well. Because if we do that, that's when we all start taking advantage of the opportunity that we have the place that creatives right now have the opportunity to embrace and to a position in businesses that we have not seen since the Industrial Revolution. And that's the thing is that the Yes Men and the lack of empathy is going to cause us to blow that and it is an absolute crime. So if you found any of this useful if you found any The rant that I just went on helpful at all. Like I said before, do me a quick favor, go subscribe to the show leave a review two super simple things you're gonna get a lot out of it. You can find out more about this podcast you can see the related articles that I talked about you can check out the show notes which is everything that I've talked about written out for you to make it much easier to be able to take notes just head over to podcast dot Stephen Gates calm Stephen still is STP h n. Gates like Bill Gates. If you have any questions, if there's something you want to know about, if you think there's something you wanna hear more about, or less about, head over to Facebook, type in The Crazy One podcast and give the page like, I'm posting stuff as often as I can. I'm answering questions doing a whole bunch of stuff there. So if you wanna be a part of that community head over and be a part of that. As always, the boys down illegal want me to remind you that the views here my own, they don't represent any of my current or former employers. These are just all my own personal opinions. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time. But thank you for your time. I know that time is truly the only real luxury that any of us have, and why Incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. So until we talk again and as always, stay crazy