Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been invited to speak at a couple of conferences – in Hamburg, for the APG, and at ‘Closeness’ in London.
In both cases, I was asked to talk about the importance about empathy – something I’ve been banging on about for centuries.
And in both cases, I felt the best way to do it was to talk through the lens my Mum had taught me … which is the title of this post.
For an industry that is supposed to understand people, I’m surprised how few seem to really understand what that means.
Rather than understand hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions and contradictions … it seems we prefer to focus on the bits that are relevant to our business needs, without seemingly realizing the important role context plays in shaping how we live.
If you don’t get context, you don’t get people … and you don’t get context without investing time.
Not focus groups.
Not ethnographic studies.
But an on-going commitment to going down the rabbit hole of people’s lives to understand how they live and the nuances that separate each and every one of us.
You can’t do this if you want to ‘fast forward’ to the bits you have pre-determined will be useful to you.
You can’t do this if you want convenient answers to ‘sell your campaign’.
You can’t do this if you want answers rather than understanding.
This last point is especially important.
Frankly, understanding is becoming a lost art.
Understanding is built on emotional connection, not intellectual.
Where you leave your prejudices, barriers, filters, expectations and hopes at the door and focus. Asking questions to understand more about what someone is saying than to get the answers you want to your specific challenge.
It’s hard.
It takes real practice.
Because while you may appreciate every person has a story … it can only truly be revealed if you let them do it in their own way, in their own time, in their own words. Which means you might end up hearing things that makes no sense to you, even though it makes perfect sense to them … and while that might not initially seem valuable, you’ll soon realise it’s immense.
But all this takes time.
And takes a real commitment.
However it lets you go back with knowledge that enables you to make work that feels like it was born from inside the culture rather than from a bunch of observers.
Work that is filled with the nuances that makes the audience take notice.
Care.
React to.
Feel respect towards because it shows respect to them.
Or said another way …
Work that is resonant to culture rather than just relevant.
And it all starts by being interested in what others are interested in.
Not for commercial gain, but because you are interested in who people are.
It’s why my Mum is still teaching me how to live, 4 years after she has gone.
And now she is teaching others too.
Thank you Mum.