Good morning,
Tech entrepreneurs often tell Maëlle Gavet that empathy is a weakness in business--that kindness gets in the way of making tough decisions, or that bruised egos and hurt feelings are a necessary cost to changing the world.
Gavet, a 42-year-old tech executive, speaker, and author, couldn't disagree more. "If you define corporate empathy as the ability of a company and its leadership to understand what's happening in the world around them--and how their decisions impact people inside and outside the company--I think you actually have a better company," she said during a roundtable discussion and Q&A at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Wednesday.
And she should know: A former Priceline executive and CEO of Ozon, Russia's version of Amazon, Gavet wrote a book on corporate empathy, Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech's Empathy Problem and How to Fix It, published last Tuesday. Plenty of tech companies, she said, work hard to take care of their employees--and plenty have empathetic people working for them. None of that is enough, she argued: "It has to include your customers, and it has to include your local community and your community at large."
Read the full story to learn Gavet’s three top recommendations for any business to improve in this area--and why she thinks corporate empathy can actually boost your company’s bottom line. |
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