Peace, Love, and Understanding: Empathy as a Personal and Professional Tool DrupalCon Portland 2022
Channel: Drupal Association
Date: 2022-05-01

Speaker: Valerie Genzano 

The world today, now more than ever, can be cold, distant, and harsh. With the massive changes we've endured and experienced over the past few years, sometimes it's hard to get to a level of understanding with people you work with, work for, or lead. This presentation will explore the idea of empathy as a workplace tool - how can you use empathy to have a better experience at your job, with your clients, with your boss/coworkers, and with yourself? There is extensive literature as well as some incredible studies on how empathy is essential to life and growth - how do we maintain that kind of closeness with people when we've lived for so long behind a screen? And, on another hand, how do we make sure we allow ourselves the same kind of empathy we can allow for others? This presentation will include research, examples from my personal life, and some interactive discussion and an activity in empathy.