Also known as "employability skills," soft skills can determine whether a candidate will be a good fit for your company.‍

Executive chairman of Starbucks Howard Schultz once said, "Hiring people is an art, not a science. And resumes cannot tell you whether someone will fit into a company's culture." This astute observation by the American businessman sums up the importance of assessing a job seeker for their soft skills–not just what's on paper.

WHAT ARE SOFT SKILLS?

Soft skills, also known as "employability skills" are defined by Business Dictionary as "a group of essential abilities that involve the development of a knowledge base, expertise level, and mind-set that is increasingly necessary for success in the modern workplace."

For any new recruit to fit into your corporate culture and be productive, soft skills are prerequisite. While resumes may sound impressive, assessing a job seeker for soft skills plays a key role in promoting effectiveness in a company's hiring process.

But how do you assess something so intangible? Use the following nine factors to create questions that assess for the soft skills you need from future employees.

HOW TO ASSESS A CANDIDATE'S SOFT SKILLS

1. Professionalism. The first impression a jobseeker imparts speaks a lot about themselves. A jobseeker that walks in with a disheveled appearance and salty language, for example, may not take their role seriously enough. What's more, they could make other employees and customers uncomfortable with their behavior.

‍2. Body language. Body language betrays a lot. Observing body language will enable you to learn a bit about a job seeker's interpersonal skills. Also, it can help inform whether the interviewee is lying or answering a question honestly. Jittery jobseekers are generally diffident about themselves and unsure whether they can meet your standards. They doubt their own abilities and may end up as underperformers.

‍3. Problem-solving skills. Regardless of the nature of your business, problem-solving skills are essential for every employee. Candidates who cannot troubleshoot are unable to provide customer care, address issues faced by business associates, or assist colleagues and seniors in the event of any internal problems. Include a couple of questions about how the job seeker would solve a problem. The answer may not be the most thorough, given time constraints of an interview, but it will help you assess this vital skill.

‍4. Awareness about major issues. Your future employee need not be an encyclopedia. Yet, it is vital they know about major issues affecting the world, country, and local economy. Knowledge about these issues and opinions suggest that the job seeker is alert and responsive. It also indicates adaptability to adverse situations, since such candidates will usually possess abilities to respond effectively. Issues and opinions can reflect traits such as positivity, skepticism, and negative thoughts. Admittedly, these thoughts may vary according to the issue. A candidate may be positive about something or negative about another. Yet, such awareness would also help you judge the overall traits since every flip side also has positives.

‍5. Memberships of clubs/organizations. Memberships of clubs and organizations are a clear indicator of a candidate's social and collaborative skills. Such employees generally tend to become great team players. Additionally, it also indicates the candidate spends time on constructive activities such as sports, hobby, or even politics.

‍6. Psychometric tests. An increasing number of employers worldwide now utilize psychometric tests to gauge a candidate's behavior and mental aptitude for a job. They enable you to assess the cognitive capabilities of a job seeker required for any post in an organization. Additionally, psychometric tests help a company to assess an applicant's analytical and pedagogic skills essential for any role. They are particularly useful in finding hidden traits of a job seeker that are often missed during an interview. However, there are debates worldwide over the effectiveness of these tests to assess soft skills and hidden talents as well as negative traits of an individual. Some psychologists and HR experts vouch for their reliability, while others claim the results provide inconclusive results that can mar career prospects of good candidates–so if you choose to use them, do so cautiously.

‍7. Company knowledge. Quizzing a candidate over knowledge about your company as well as past employers, if any, is another effective way to assess their soft skills. Answers indicate an interest in the profession and industry. They will also show whether an interviewee is well prepared and is serious about the job or is eyeing the vacancy merely as another employment option. Sometimes, the answer can also reveal traits such as willingness to adapt to a new work environment and spirit of collaboration to ensure personal success as well as that of your organization.

‍8. Composure under stress. The ability to work under stress is critical for many positions, especially when hiring for more senior roles. One good way to evaluate this skill is by asking a candidate to tell you about a stressful period at work and how they responded. You can also simply evaluate their behavior during the interview. Fumbling to respond or getting frustrated indicate the person may have a hard time working under stress or pressure.

‍9. Ability to work with diverse groups. Companies, just like the country in general, have become increasingly diverse in recent years. Walk into any major employer and you'll find people of all different backgrounds, educations, and beliefs collaborating and thriving together. So if an employee has a hard time working with anybody who thinks or acts differently than them, it can be hard for them to succeed. Ask candidates how they have collaborated with people who have had very different perspectives than them. If their answer suggests that they steamrolled others' ideas or refused to listen to them, they probably won't perform well in a diverse team.

Modern workplaces demand that all employees possess soft skills. Indeed, soft skills can be more difficult to acquire than professional degrees and experience. Without them, any hard skills are far less valuable. So when screening candidates, don't just try to uncover how well they know a particular software program or platform–get to the heart of how they interact with others.

Credit: www.fastcompany.com

the problem: “Not every company has the ability, the funds, the know how, the team and infrastructure to roll programs that create an awesome experience”

There is a relationship link between a company’s employee and customer experience. Leaders in evolved companies are seeing that Companies are focused on keeping their employees happy keep their customers happy. One of my mentors once told me “satisfied customers leave but raving fans sell your product”.

Often, the first opportunity to do so is with some sort of employee orientation for new recruits, experienced hires and at training.Click here to see how How Deloitte’s $300 Million Investment In Employee Experience Is Paying Off. WorkSocial’s corporate training room in NJ was designed to help small companies to create an immersive and memorable experience that quickly convinces employees that they made the right career move. “Our goal was to target companies with 10 to 50 employees,”says Natasha Mohan founder and CEO of WorkSocial. “To my surprise our client roster include all company sizes from 10 to 10,000”

What makes us special is that on one side we have a full portfolio of Clients and an extensive portfolio of trainers. “So a company may reach our to us and learn of our facility. In one instance, an Learning and Development manager (from a Fortune 100 Company), Jamie, was looking for Negotiation Training. “This was already on the schedule and she quickly booked 10 seats. So instead of paying $50,000 they paid $10,000. During our call Jamie learned that we had a Corporate Tax training using ONESOURCE.” In September 2019 Jamie is attending WorkSocial signed up for corporate tax automation training.”

When we opened first in 2015, we thought our clients persona would be of a entrepreneur trying to launch a business. Our first client was Accenture. So it made sense to quickly open a training space. Our mission was to connect the entrepreneurs of the world. We wanted to do this by bringing purpose to people’s work.

We have seen that company leadership want to see their professionals become experts to industry and technical skills. We achieved this by investing $3 million into a state of the art learning space. This is the largest investment for employee development by a coworking history. “Wework is proud to introduce software, applications and frat-houses. We are focused on creating office solutions that can eliminate the pressure and noise of office management.”

Today, new employees come to WorkSocial within the first 90 days of their employment, and attend programs hosted by companies like Global Knowledge, Simon Sinek, and NetCom Learning. Last year, nearly 10,000 people participated in SAP, Oracle, Sales and soft-skills training .

Our learning Center creates “a leadership culture… designed towards developing the leaders of tomorrow.” This is particularly appealing to younger generations such as Millennial’s and Generation-Z. The Participants who attend WorkSocial training sessions are taught by other trained trainers who not only have real work experience but also are training professionals.

Based on industry analysis WorkSocial’s investment is bound to payoff. Studies show companies will spend more than $1 Trillion on employee education and enablement.

The WorkSocial facility is located in Jersey City, NJ in an upscale AAA building that is home to companies like JPMC and SS&C.

WorkSocial coworking space Jersey City has 2 classrooms and 2 Conference Rooms. WorkSocial also has room blocks with Hotels like Marriott, Westin, and the Hyatt.

“Our goal is to make everything seamless so they can be focused in the classroom [and not] have to worry about airport transportation, eating, WiFi,” she said. “We are very purposeful in every single one of those decisions in order to make that seamless experience happen.” That includes non-educational aspects of the experience, such as wellness breaks, meditation, bicycle and walking trails, and more.

Some of the other perks:

1. Free snacks and drinks
2. Chef curated meals
3. No hidden charges
4. Quick access to the airport and Manhattan

When a client arrives at Workocial the goal is to immediately take care of everything the second they get there. WorkSocial continually monitors “guest experience.” WorkSocial has some 90+ 5 star reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook and Bing.

To Schedule a training Click Here

Coworking spaces rent to both individuals and groups, offer unique amenities, and attract movers and shakers in droves. In other words, they’re like the Airbnb of office real estate. But where Airbnb offers bedding, a full kitchen, and other homey amenities, a coworking office spaces can provide a sense of community and a place to work, which might just be better than the buzzy home rental platform.

Finding the right space

Just like Airbnb offers a platform to rent out apartments and homes, various spaces within the coworking industry connect users to open desks, offices, and team rooms. The benefit is twofold: Individuals and small teams gain access to space that is both more customized than coffee shops and cheaper than full leases, and coworking businesses get to rent out their unused office space and foster a community of growth and innovation.

For freelancers and digital workers, coworking offers a new approach to working. We all know it can be hard to get work done in our own home or apartment, but finding a space in a coffee shop or library can be stifling; maybe there aren’t enough outlets, there’s one bathroom, or you simply can’t find an open table. Coworking spaces alleviate this. Teams of any size, too, canz benefit from rented suites or meeting rooms that offer WiFi, coffee, and a relaxed environment.

Finding the right space

Croissant is one of the most popular platforms, providing access to 80 different coworking spaces in cities across the U.S. A simple website and mobile app let you find and reserve a seat or office. All memberships last for a full month and give you a certain number of hours you can use between spaces in the Croissant network during that time.

LiquidSpace can connect you to desks,private offices, and meeting rooms on an hourly basis. If you need a space for a bit longer, they also offer desks, private offices, and office suites on a monthly basis. There are also tailored flexible solutions for larger companies who want customization in their workspace.

SharedDesk is yet another option that lets you filter se

arch results based on your work requirements and location. You can book spaces and pay online, so getting started is as easy as checking in and getting right to work. SharedDesk works with dozens of spaces and clearly lists the prices for all of them as you search. You can choose to rent a space hourly, daily, or monthly, just like on the other platforms.

Choosing coworking over tradition

While both a coworking space and a traditional office will have similar amenities, many people find their productivity increases in a coworking space, which fosters more ease than the classic office setting. Emotional health can also increase, since the environment is more relaxed, there are more seating options and there is often a sense of community. In many cases, coworking spaces are more affordable than traditional offices, especially for startups and entrepreneurs. Additional resources, such as talks with industry experts and networking opportunities, are also available

MIT professor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, will discuss how new digital tools are emerging to measure human connections and spatial behavior, and how workspace design can respond accordingly.

Previously, new digital communication technologies caused some theorists to predict “the death of distance” — liberating us from the office space. Today’s technology does allow global and instantaneous communication, but most of us still commute to offices for work every day. Why? Human aggregation, friction, and the interaction of our minds are vital aspects of work, especially in the creative industries.

Understanding how the workforce connects within a flexible working environment is crucial for designing and operating next-generation offices. In a recent webinar, "How Future Workspaces Will Improve Productivity and Creativity," MIT professor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, discussed how new digital tools are emerging to measure human connections and spatial behavior, and how design can respond accordingly.

‍In this webinar, viewers will learn:

1. How digital technologies and ubiquitous computing are transforming aspects of our everyday life, including the way we move, communicate, and work.
2. How co-working — demonstrating the value of sharing a space with a community of like-minded people, facilitating human aggregation — requires the design of new office spaces.
3. How real-time data analytics paired with digitally integrated furniture and buildings may enable the creation of workplaces that respond dynamically.

Why Should Companies Embrace Coworking?

The coworking movement developed to provide community and a collaborative working environment for independent and remote workers. It’s a trend some established companies are learning from.

Advances in technology have made it possible for many white-collar knowledge workers to do their jobs from virtually anywhere. But anywhere still means somewhere, and finding the right place is not always easy.

Some people try working out of a home office but end up feeling too lonely. Others experiment with coffee shops or hotel lobbies but find too many distractions. Now many people are turning toward coworking spaces — shared open office facilities where they hope to find the right balance of community and autonomy.

To understand the reasons for the popularity of this new way of working, our research team visited and interviewed community leaders or founders of two dozen coworking spaces around the United States. One team member also spent six months as a member of a space. We also garnered a broader and more representative perspective on coworking by analyzing the descriptions of a sample of more than 200 coworking spaces in the United States and Europe that were listed in an online directory of coworking facilities. In addition, we interviewed more than 30 people who belong to coworking spaces. These encounters gave us an insiders’ perspective on the experience of coworking and the challenges and opportunities of running coworking spaces.

Besides gaining insights into how people are using these new spaces to work and create new kinds of professional communities, we learned that some large, traditional companies are adopting certain aspects of coworking as part of their overall workplace strategies. Three trends in particular stood out.

Companies see sharing space as a way to tap into new ideas.

One of the key benefits cited by people using coworking spaces is the opportunity for serendipitous encounters with people from outside their own team or organization. This is part of the reason the office furniture manufacturer Steelcase participates in a co-working hub in Grand Rapids, Michigan called GRid70 that brings Steelcase’s workers together with employees from other large companies in the area — including Amway, Meijer, and Wolverine Worldwide. Each company has a dedicated space at GRid70, but all share the reception area, open workspaces, conference rooms, and kitchen facilities. “Our belief is that mixing creative teams from different industries will spawn ‘happy accidents’ that inspire innovation, new products, and different ways of thinking,” one Steelcase executive explained.

Emerging technologies enable virtual and distributed teams to communicate – and innovate – more effectively.

Multinational companies increasingly rely upon the work of virtual teams to manage their global intellectual assets and encourage innovation. Spanning functional, geographical and corporate boundaries, virtual team members work together on various projects but are based in different locations nationwide or worldwide. Virtual teams allow companies to leverage their global expertise, take the pulse of diverse markets, promote broader participation in key strategic decision making, increase job flexibility, lower travel costs and pool the knowledge of experts (Majchrzak et al., 2004a). The current economic and socio-political climate has made frequent face-to-face meetings a thing of the past, and because displacing functional and regional experts from the centers of their expertise is often problematic, many executives seek technological solutions to help their virtual teams maintain and sustain essential links. E-mail and conference calls have, until recently, formed the backbone of communications support for virtual groups, but these rudimentary technologies have been found to encourage miscommunication and the loss of crucial contextual information. Can e-mail and audioconferencing adequately support virtual teams, or do they need new technologies that assure a richer communication flow between participants? Research attention has begun to focus on how technologies mediate communication among virtual team members and suggests what technological features might be best suited to different work and cognitive situations.

The Need for Context

Much of the earliest research on support for virtual teams has focused on the use of technologies such as e-mail and audiocon-ferencing, informed by a theory referred to as “media richness” (Daft and Lengel, 1986). Media richness theory argues that some technologies allow more cues to be shared than others; according to this theory, e-mail allows few cues to be shared and is thus very constraining, while audiocon-ferencing allows a few more cues (such as tone, pauses and recognition utterances) but constrains referential integrity (such as when the speaker points to what is being talked about for emphasis, prioritization and focus). In addition to the lack of cues, e-mail exchanges often lead to what has been referred to as information asymmetry, when members engage in a one-to-one e-mail exchange not distributed to the entire team or when someone is intentionally or unintentionally left out of the e-mail list. The use of e-mail also often leads to information overload, resulting in messages being deleted without being read.

Unleashing Innovation With Collaboration Platforms

Digital collaboration platforms provide innovation opportunities for diverse and distributed teams.

In business, difficult problems mean companies need diverse expertise to innovate and problem solve. Take the biomedical engineering company EpiBone. Facing complex problems such as bone reconstruction and implantation, the company relies on knowledge from a diverse disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs. CEO Nina Tandon describes how this diverse collaboration has put the company at the frontier of bone reconstruction: “We take two things from the patient: a tridimensional X-ray, and a sample of fat tissue so that we can extract stem cells out of it. We use these stem cells to fabricate a living bone on the basis of the data coming from the X-ray. After three weeks, we have a bone ready for implantation.”

Businesses guided by a similar imperative to innovate can also leverage diverse expertise, but their teams often face the challenge of geographical distribution. Recent research conducted by Gartner states that over 50% of team communication occurs through collaboration platforms.

Based on projected market values, collaboration software revenues are expected to grow by 40% between 2015 and 2022. Demand for collaboration platforms is already at an all-time high, particularly with the proliferation of SaaS-based subscription models. Established incumbents such as Microsoft (Teams), Cisco (Spark), and Facebook (Workplace) all compete in the team-collaboration platform space. As the race to support team innovation rages on, businesses should focus more on how their distributed teams orchestrate collaboration and the conditions team leaders create. The specific collaboration platforms they choose are less important.

We conducted a study of over 600 team members, team coordinators, and managers who use collaboration platforms. Team members filled out an online survey, rating the effectiveness of the collaboration platform for supporting team interactions, and assessing leadership behaviors of team coordinators. Team coordinators were given a questionnaire about their team’s ability to integrate knowledge, and team supervisors were surveyed on team innovation success.

Our results suggest there are two key factors or challenges that affect how much of a benefit teams get from collaboration platforms. The first factor is how well the collaboration platform supports activities needed to integrate team knowledge, despite geographically different locations. The second is whether team leaders can establish conditions that foster knowledge integration in a digital environment.

Ideal Collaboration Platforms

In organizations, success for teams requires fitting different individual knowledge bases and perspectives to particular problems and opportunities. Attempting to do this through a collaboration platform involves many considerations. Our analysis of survey data, corroborated with experiences shared during informal interactions with participants, shows that ideal collaboration platforms enable knowledge integration and therefore team innovation, by supporting three main aspects of teamwork: preparation, execution, and well-being.

Enable team preparation. Orchestrating the integration of diverse knowledge for innovation means teams need to set the stage for coordinated action. This need is particularly acute for distributed teams, because they cannot observe each other’s behavior beyond what happens on the collaboration platform. They also don’t have the advantage of understanding each other’s availability and needs, enjoyed by teams working in a single location.

Setting the stage entails reaching a common understanding of the team’s mission (What is our charge?), establishing team goals (What innovation outcome are we attempting to achieve?), defining team members’ roles and responsibilities (Who is responsible for what in this innovation process?), and formulating a strategy to achieve the innovative outcome (How do we get there?).

We found teams were better prepared to integrate diverse knowledge when the collaboration platform allowed them to document their mission and goals, roles and responsibilities, and create a process road map. Team members could access and revisit these documents on the go at their convenience. Having access to these documents gave more meaning to the independent actions taken by members who were subject matter experts in different knowledge domains. It also let them see the forest for the trees.

For example, one participant in the study underscored the importance of working with a collaboration platform that allows team members to have an immediate picture of who is responsible for what, and how each member fits with the overall goal. When team members are distributed across different geographical locations, they need to know each member’s role in the overall plan. Otherwise, you risk having team members rowing at 120% but in different directions.

Empower complex execution. Setting the stage is not enough. Complex problems, diverse experts, and a variety of information formats can complicate the process of collaboration. Platforms supporting a great breadth of media forms give teams more options. Knowledge can be exchanged and integrated via text, audio, video, images, virtual 3D environments, and shared whiteboards, among others. Our research shows that collaboration platforms supporting multiple formats gives teams the flexibility they need.

Team members also need to be able to coordinate their activities in terms of sequencing deliverables, evaluating results, and tracking progress. When platform technology does not support these activities, team members may tend to focus on their own local goals and overlook the team’s objectives. Teams need collaboration platforms that let them determine the availability of team members in real time, receive status updates when deliverables have been shared, and track how deliverables contribute to achieving key milestones in the innovation process.

Shared digital workspaces, combined with digital archives of the group’s work, should also allow team members to back each other up if the need arises. When problems emerge, teams may not be able to wait for unavailable members, especially when working across different locations and time zones. In one team we analyzed, a member noted the importance of being able to support team coordination by providing constant updates on who is doing what using the platform. They indicated that this real-time awareness of each member’s progress presented opportunities to course correct, whether to reassign tasks or reassess priorities and deadlines. This transparency allowed team members to respond immediately to unanticipated problems, and other team members could be made aware of actions taken to solve the issue.

Facilitate well-being. Collaboration is a human endeavor, and digital environments can be fraught with potential minefields that can derail a team’s innovation efforts. Innovation itself is difficult because there are no predefined solutions. This can lead to tensions and frustrations when teams face major headwinds. Teams composed of members with diverse expertise inherently bring different perspectives and understandings of problems and possible solutions — which can easily lead to conflict. Finally, work in digital spaces can be isolating, leading members to feel disconnected from social interactions.

Failure to empower team members to openly share their points of view can build resentment and leave members feeling like their ideas are not valued. Our study showed that team members are more likely to engage with each other to resolve impasses and misunderstandings when they feel the collaboration platform supports expressive communication forms. As an example, one member noted that emails are usually a source of conflict because of the misunderstandings that may emerge through written text when face-to-face interaction is lacking.

Collaboration platforms that afford members a unified workspace to discuss, share opinions, and work jointly can be seen as the digital “watercooler.” Team members need visibility into all ongoing discussions and interactions so they don’t feel left out.

Leading People, Not Platforms

Giving distributed teams of experts a digital collaboration platform doesn’t always mean success. It’s common for leadership to focus on enforcing use of the tool, given the investment an organization might make in acquiring a collaboration platform. However, our study suggests that leaders cannot stop at simply implementing a collaboration platform. They must play a central role in enabling innovation, by providing a vision of the future and nurturing a climate of fairness, where team members can express their views and treat each other with respect.

Leaders need to ignite inspiration in their team, by setting the vision for what the innovation will achieve and inspiring them to make the most of their diverse expertise. Our study shows that inspirational messages from leadership reinforces team members’ willingness to try new problem-solving approaches. Such messages also encourage them to innovate through continuous recombination of their expertise.

When leaders promote an atmosphere of fairness, team members feel empowered to provide and request feedback, even if they are physically isolated and have little visibility into interactions that might occur off-platform. Leaders should ensure transparency about how decisions are made within the team and encourage team members to have accountability for their interactions — such transparency will guarantee nobody feels left out in the innovation process.

As with many user-facing technology decisions, managers and team leaders need to consider both the complexities of the work being done and the people doing that work. In making these decisions, leaders need to shift their emphasis to people utilizing these collaboration platforms.

The key to achieving innovation success through collaboration platforms — make it about the people — not the technology.

Taking a code-centered approach to work will benefit organizations in three ways.

Today, most companies equate doing analysis with writing formulas in spreadsheets. But the business landscape has shifted seismically since the invention of the spreadsheet. Today, organizations must think in terms of millions of individual customers, not just a handful of segments, and solve problems with reusable solutions to avoid reengineering the process from the ground up. And they want to benefit from the latest advances in machine learning and AI, not simply throw regressions at whatever analytical problem they face. In short, companies need to retrain for writing code, not formulas, as the future of work will entail thinking not just analytically but also algorithmically.

This change of perspective is significant. Most companies might see code as something confined to obscure corners of the IT department or as the exclusive province of a select group of data scientists. But organizations that manage to make code the natural language for diffusing analysis across their business can often grow and innovate faster than their peers.

Taking a code-centered approach will benefit organizations in three ways:

First, thinking in code allows companies to cleanly separate data from analysis of the data, which allows teams to improve each one independently of the other. When data and analysis are cleanly separated, different teams can focus on independently improving each aspect, leading to faster progress.

Second, code is much easier to share and reuse — the entire open-source software movement rests on this idea. Software developers have spent years building tools to make their work easy to trace, modify, and share. By adopting key principles of software development, such as version control, enterprise teams can be more efficient and collaborative as updates to files are tracked throughout their lifetime and changes can be reversed easily.

Finally, code is better for both simple and complex analysis. Breakthroughs in machine learning and AI techniques are implemented as code, and by cloning the code researchers are using, individuals can gain access to state-of-the-art techniques in analysis, quickly and for free.

So what must managers do to move their existing workforce along the spectrum from formula to code? In our experience, there are three practical steps leading companies in this area take.

Tear down the ‘Tower of Babel.’ Communication is a prerequisite to collaboration. Language barriers create some of the strongest barriers to effectively sharing ideas. This is not just true for text exchanges and spoken conversations — it’s equally true for code. But having to mentally recast ideas in several programming languages requires additional expertise, as it can be cognitively demanding.

What’s the solution?

Companies should aim to select at most two, but ideally one, analytical programming language as a company-wide standard — something everyone can “speak.” To be clear: No single choice is perfect for every situation, and reasonable people can disagree on the choice of standard, so teams should prepare for familiar change-management challenges. Companies can assuage naysayers and stay current by agreeing to revisit standards every couple of years.

A good first step for companies is to learn from what experts are doing. Seek out those highly regarded by peers and managers in your company’s core quantitative areas — for instance, in finance, marketing, or at the center of any product group whose product relies on analytics. One global financial services company took just this approach and learned that its top data scientists had settled on Python as a language, and that even junior data scientists were sharing Python code through Jupyter notebooks, a tool widely adopted in the scientific community for conducting and documenting reproducible research with code.

People who have spent years trying to hone their applied quantitative skills will inevitably be opinionated when it comes to the choice of tools and methods and would likely be delighted if their unofficial standards became official. These individuals will act as torchbearers and teachers in the organization, so raising their profiles and amplifying their impact is both sound business practice and a useful talent management strategy.

Create shared-code repositories. Once people transcribe ideas in a common language, companies should take a cue from open-source communities and establish their own shared-code repositories and knowledge bases. This makes it possible for people to share their coding work quickly and easily and to avoid constantly reinventing the wheel.

As with any central system, companies need to be thoughtful about security and permissions, and they should vary access credentials according to their own standards for confidentiality or intellectual property protection. But creating a rich space where ideas can benefit from a wide array of contributions is a powerful engine of progress, and companies can benefit enormously.

With shared-code repositories, multiple groups within an organization can use the same code files to solve similar problems. For instance, the marketing team in a bank might want to know about customers who are thinking about mortgage refinancing so they can target certain products against these customers; and the finance team might also want data on possible refinancing as it projects budgets and billings. The problem formulation is the same in both cases — how many people, and which ones, are likely to refinance? — so why not use the same code to get to the answer?

A good way to get going quickly is to pick a project, create a code repository around it, and invite contributions from a wide audience. Code-sharing platforms like GitHub and Bitbucket make this easy. It’s useful to start with broadly applicable and noncontroversial projects — such as time-series forecasting, generating customer segmentations, and calculating price elasticities, to name a few.

Some companies have gone beyond internal shared repositories and publicly shared their efforts. Leading technology companies like Google and Microsoft have been doing this for some time. But now, companies in other industries are also beginning to see the advantages in adopting this strategy. One telecom carrier, for example, has made its shared-code repositories part of the open-source community, which allows the company to avail itself of help from others even outside the company and potentially set the standard platform for the telecom industry.

Make code part of business as usual. Companies that want to generate the most value possible from advanced analytics face one final, and daunting, challenge: They must make code-based modeling the rule, not the exception. It must become business as usual, as unremarkable and reflexive as attaching a spreadsheet to an email. What makes this challenge formidable is that it requires not just a change in perspective but also a change in habits. But there are pragmatic strategies for accelerating this shift.

First, companies that truly view analytics as a strategic priority will go to great lengths to communicate clear and specific expectations at all levels. Senior executives broadcast company-wide messages emphasizing their belief in and renewed focus on analytical excellence; they explicitly connect it to their strategies in town hall-style meetings; and often, they signal their intentions to shareholders and the market as a whole by highlighting their efforts in everything from annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings to investor calls.

A second strategy for making this change happen quickly and smoothly is to protect and provide time for employees to get training. This strategy works because developing true technical skills requires focus, feedback, elapsed time, and repetition. Today, there is a vast array of options available to companies and individuals alike, ranging from boot camps to massive open online courses (MOOCs) to customized, onsite instruction. In our experience, any of these options can succeed as long as trainees can have sustained blocks of time to learn without constantly toggling back to their day jobs. The learning costs of context switching is enormous. With focus, becoming a competent coder is not an insurmountable task, and managers shouldn’t assume their employees are not up to it.

A third and powerful tactic is setting up a viable support structure. People need to know whom to ask for help; the angst of learning can be considerably lowered when that help is timely and relevant. Progress stalls when the same handful of individual super-users are questioned repeatedly. They quickly become overwhelmed. But people who are just one step ahead on the journey can become mentors for others just starting out. Managers who communicate new expectations to their teams need to be prepared to be the first port of call for unblocking their teams — and few things provide a stronger incentive to learn something than knowing that you’ll have to teach it to others.

But there’s no need to fear. There are many guideposts in this new world. Popular answers, whether found through a search engine, a training resource, or a peer teacher, are almost always elegant and reusable. And sometimes, those answers will contain links to extensive open-source code repositories with solutions to any manner of related problems. The same is generally not true for spreadsheets, whose intermingling of data and analysis makes it difficult to abstract away just the reusable and improvable solution to your problem — especially when that solution requires more than just one step.

Workspaces That Helps People to Maximize Their Potential

In Silicon Valley the tight correlation between personal interactions, performance, and innovation is an article of faith, and innovators are building cathedrals reflecting this. Google’s new campus is designed to maximize chance encounters.Facebook will soon put several thousand of its employees into a single mile-long room. Yahoo notoriously revoked mobile work privileges because, as the chief of human resources explained, “some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions.” And Samsung recently unveiled plans for a new U.S. headquarters, designed in stark contrast to its traditionally hierarchical culture. Vast outdoor areas sandwiched between floors will lure workers into public spaces, where Samsung’s executives hope that engineers and salespeople will actually mingle. “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor,” says Scott Birnbaum, a vice president of Samsung Semiconductor. The new building “is really designed to spark not just collaboration but that innovation you see when people collide."

Cutting Edge Workplace Design

Samsung’s U.S. headquarters, in San Jose, features a central atrium.

Outdoor and large public spaces are sandwiched between floors.

Photography courtesy of Samsung

Public areas can become semi public meeting places.

Silo-busting requires spaces that drawpeople out of their offices.

Photography courtesy of Telenor

Coworking spaces are a response to the oppressiveness of the cubicle and the loneliness of the telecommuter. Young digital workers believe that these spaces improve their performance.

Photography courtesy of Wework

Workspace in the Downtown Container Park, part of the Las Vegas Downtown Project.

The park mixes spaces for work, living, and play, encouraging serendipitous meetups.

Faith is nice, but do executives have proof that this works? Social space like Samsung’s could be just another in a long line of fads and broken promises in workspace design: The “action office” becomes the cubicle. Cubicles are torn down for open plans, which leave introverts pining for private space. Quads. Hotel space. Couches. Rotating desk assignments. Standing desks. Treadmill desks. No desks. With apologies to Mark Twain, there’s no such thing as a new office design. We just take old ideas, put them into a kind of kaleidoscope, and turn.How do we know whether any of these approaches is effective? The key metric companies use to measure space—cost per square foot—is focused on efficiency. Few companies measure whether a space’s design helps or hurts performance, but they should. They have the means. The same sensors, activity trackers, smartphones, and social networks that they eagerly foist on customers to reveal their habits and behavior can be turned inward, on employees in their work environments, to learn whether it’s true that getting engineers and salespeople talking actually works.Emerging EvidenceWe’ve already begun to collect this kind of performance data using a variety of tools, from simple network analytics to sociometric badges that capture interaction, communication, and location information. After deploying thousands of badges in workplaces ranging from pharmaceuticals, finance, and software companies to hospitals, we’ve begun to unlock the secrets of good office design in terms of

Faith is nice, but do executives have proof that this works? Social space like Samsung’s could be just another in a long line of fads and broken promises in workspace design: The “action office” becomes the cubicle. Cubicles are torn down for open plans, which leave introverts pining for private space. Quads. Hotel space. Couches. Rotating desk assignments. Standing desks. Treadmill desks. No desks. With apologies to Mark Twain, there’s no such thing as a new office design. We just take old ideas, put them into a kind of kaleidoscope, and turn.

How do we know whether any of these approaches is effective? The key metric companies use to measure space—cost per square foot—is focused on efficiency. Few companies measure whether a space’s design helps or hurts performance, but they should. They have the means. The same sensors, activity trackers, smartphones, and social networks that they eagerly foist on customers to reveal their habits and behavior can be turned inward, on employees in their work environments, to learn whether it’s true that getting engineers and salespeople talking actually works.

Emerging Evidence

We’ve already begun to collect this kind of performance data using a variety of tools, from simple network analytics to sociometric badges that capture interaction, communication, and location information. After deploying thousands of badges in workplaces ranging from pharmaceuticals, finance, and software companies to hospitals, we’ve begun to unlock the secrets of good office design in terms of

Chance encounters and interactions between knowledge workers improve performance.

We’ve also learned that spaces can even be designed to produce specific performance outcomes—productivity in one space, say, and increased innovation in another, or both in the same space but at different times. By combining the emerging data with organizational metrics such as total sales or number of new-product launches, we can demonstrate a workspace’s effect on the bottom line and then engineer the space to improve it. This will lead to profound changes in how we build our future workspaces. Here are a few:

Recognize office space as not just an amortized asset but a strategic tool for growth.

The consulting and design firm Strategy Plus estimates that office utilization peaks at 42% on any given day. By that logic, the best way to manage cost per square foot is to remove “wasted” square feet. But the data we’re generating reveal that investments in reengineering space for interactions over efficiency can increase sales or new-product launches.

Design offices to reflect how 21st-century digital work actually happens.

The buildings we go to every day haven’t changed as much as have the tools we use to get work done. Merging digital communication patterns with physical space can increase the probability of interactions that lead to innovation and productivity.

Re-engineer offices to weave a building, a collection of buildings, or a variety of workspaces into the urban fabric.

The office of the future will most likely include highly networked, shared, multipurpose spaces that redefine boundaries between companies and improve everyone’s performance.

Getting there won’t be easy. It will require collecting much more data to inform new design and management principles while engaging urban planners and municipal governments. It will also transform HR, IT, and facilities management from support functions to facilitators. But if companies can change their spaces to reflect how people work, performance improvement will follow. Don’t take that on faith. There are data to prove it.

Strategic Coffee Machines

Jon Fredrik Baksaas, the CEO of the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor, credits the design of the company’s Oslo headquarters with helping it shift from a state-run monopoly to a competitive multinational carrier with 150 million subscribers. That design, he says, improved communication, accelerated decision making, and even created what he calls “an attacking mindset.” It was ahead of its time in 2003, when it incorporated “hot desking” (no assigned seats) and spaces that could easily be reconfigured for different tasks and evolving teams.

Telenor’s CEO thinks of its headquarters not as real estate but as a communication tool.

The design features that make the space effective resulted from a profound shift in mind-set: Baksaas thinks of the offices not as real estate but as a communication tool. Thus strategy, features, and value become more important than cost and efficiency. You’d choose the e-mail provider with the best collaboration and file-transfer features; you can think of space investments the same way.

The improved communication Telenor achieved in its new space can be explained by Alex “Sandy” Pentland’s April 2012 HBR article, “The New Science of Building Great Teams.” Pentland deployed badges (the same kind now used by Ben Waber’s firm) that track how people talk to one another, who talks with whom, how people move around the office, and where they spend time. (Devices were worn on an opt-in basis, and individual data were anonymous and unavailable to employers.) Pentland identified three key elements of successful communication: exploration (interacting with people in many other social groups), engagement (interacting with people within your social group, in reasonably equal doses), and energy (interacting with more people overall).

Spaces designed to promote these activities increase the likelihood of collisions—and the data repeatedly demonstrate that more collisions create positive outcomes. We don’t measure the content of interactions, but that doesn’t matter. When collisions occur, regardless of their content, improvement typically follows.

Spaces can be designed to favor exploration or engagement or energy to achieve certain outcomes. For example, if a call center wants improved productivity, the space should favor engagement— getting the team to interact more. Higher engagement is typically accomplished not with open social space but with tight, walled-off workstations and adjacent spaces for small-group collaboration and interaction. The team’s break area becomes a crucial collision space. At one call center, the company expanded the break room and gave reps more time to hang out there with colleagues. Paradoxically, productivity shot up after the change. Away from their phones, the reps could circulate knowledge within the group.

FURTHER READING

Then again, for a company that—like Telenor—is trying to innovate or change, increasing engagement can be detrimental, because it takes time away from crucial exploration with other groups and outsiders. Telenor’s open, public, and flexible space values exploration much more than engagement—it begs employees to meet in the open, where they may bump into unexpected people, and allows them to claim spaces and shape them for brainstorming sessions.

Once a company has identified the pattern it’s trying to achieve and how the pattern affects outcomes, it can begin to calculate the value of workspaces, not just their costs. For example, we deployed sociometric badges with about 50 executives at a pharmaceuticals company who were responsible for nearly $1 billion in annual sales. They wanted to increase sales but didn’t know what behaviors would help. Even if sales went up, they couldn’t necessarily say why.

The data collected over some weeks showed that when a salesperson increased interactions with coworkers on other teams—that is, increased exploration—by 10%, his or her sales also grew by 10%. An elegant correlation.

So the executives asked, How can we change our space to get the sales staff running into colleagues from other departments? In this case, the answer lay with coffee. At the time, the company had roughly one coffee machine for every six employees, and the same people used the same machines every day. The sales force commiserated with itself. Marketing people talked to marketing people.

The company invested several hundred thousand dollars to rip out the coffee stations and build fewer, bigger ones—just one for every 120 employees. It also created a large cafeteria for all employees in place of a much smaller one that few employees had used. In the quarter after the coffee-and-cafeteria switch, sales rose by 20%, or $200 million, quickly justifying the capital investment in the redesign.

Managers might be tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space. For example, what worked at the pharma company didn’t work at a large furniture manufacturer that transformed its headquarters from classic cubicles to an open-plan office in which approximately 60% of the workforce had unassigned seating. To test the plan, we deployed badges with 65 sales and marketing team members on a single floor before and after the reconfiguration.

The call center’s goal was to get the members of one team talking to improve productivity. Telenor and the pharma company needed space that encouraged people to collide with other groups. The furniture company’s success required something in between: tight integration across the sales cycle, which meant some exploration and then high engagement among specific groups that needed to communicate more.

The company had hypothesized that fewer desks and a smaller footprint would move people closer together, increasing the likelihood of interaction. Unassigned seating would make interaction between people in different groups more likely. Such interaction did increase, by 17%—but energy levels (the number of individuals’ encounters during the day) dropped by an average of 14%. This suggests that the space simply reshuffled stationary workers rather than creating movement. Someone from marketing might bump into new people because their temporary desks happened to be close by, but none of them were leaving their workstations once they got there. As a result, team communication dropped by 45%. The company saved money on space by reducing the number of fixed workstations, but both revenue and productivity plummeted.

A Beginner’s Guide to Space Design

If you want to reconfigure your office space to improve performance, this simple grid will help you get started. It uses two important factors in office design— relative openness and seating flexibility— to suggest what configuration will lead to one of four distinct outcomes.

The type of interaction that’s most valuable changes according to goals; what doesn’t change is that interaction in itself is far more valuable than we realize. Sometimes circulating, exploring, engaging, and increasing the number of people’s collisions is more important than individual productivity or creativity. Imagine, for example, that a worker finds a better way to do her job but never tells anyone else doing the same job what she discovered. She has improved her performance but no one else’s. If she takes time out of her day to tell others about what she’s learned, her productivity drops—but she has increased theirs. We’ve shown that in some cases even a 5% drop in personal productivity can have a positive outcome on group performance.

Think of the implications: First, most employee performance reviews are based on individual productivity and don’t take into consideration how group productivity can grow through more interaction. Second, untold amounts of money are invested in tools to increase individual productivity, but the money might be better used to design a workplace that promotes collisions that will make the organization—not individuals—more successful.

Lobbies as Offices

One factor complicates all this: Office buildings are no longer the sole locations for knowledge work. In fact, research from the consulting group Emergent Research suggests that two-thirds of it now happens outside the office. Consequently, no matter how precisely we design office space to create collisions, the design is incomplete if it doesn’t take into account digital work and collaboration that are independent of space and time and for which immediacy is more important.

In some ways the digital workspace enhances in-person collisions with file-sharing and communication tools such as chat, e-mail, and archiving.

It can gather more ideas from more places: Research indicates that interactions and engagement decrease as the physical distance between work groups gets bigger, whereas online engagement increases with the number of users. However, data show that digital communication can’t replace face-to-face interaction and may actually be enhanced by it (see the sidebar “The Allen Curve Holds”). Studies with sociometric badges confirm that remote teams don’t perform as well as those in physical proximity.

The Allen Curve Holds

In his seminal 1977 book, Managing the Flow of Technology, Thomas J. Allen was the first to measure the strong negative correlation between physical distance and frequency of communication. The “Allen curve” estimates that we are four times as likely to communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away from us as with someone 60 feet away, and that we almost never communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate buildings.

But the office is no longer just a physical place; we can enter it by logging on, attend meetings from anywhere, and collaborate on documents without ever seeing one another. It would seem that distance-shrinking technologies break the Allen curve, and that communication no longer correlates to distance.

Wrong. The Allen curve holds. In fact, as distance-shrinking technology accelerates, proximity is apparently becoming more important. Studies by Ben Waber show that both face-to-face and digital communications follow the Allen curve. In one study, engineers who shared a physical office were 20% more likely to stay in touch digitally than those who worked elsewhere. When they needed to collaborate closely, co-located coworkers e-mailed four times as frequently as colleagues in different locations, which led to 32% faster project completion times.

Furthermore, the upgrade cycles of buildings and technology don’t mesh. Telenor’s state-of-the-art campus, which smartly integrated digital features such as a wireless file-sharing system—was built four years before the iPhone was introduced and before Wi-Fi became ubiquitous. Just a few years later, Telenor’s then-novel proprietary wireless network would have been designed radically differently—if its features weren’t obviated by cloud storage and other developments. All of which is to say that understanding how digital and physical spaces work together is crucial to improving workspace but also an incredibly complicated design challenge.

Workers themselves have been the first to take on this challenge. Just as IT has been consumerized over the past decade, digital-savvy employees are beginning to demand that their spaces adapt to how they work, rather than vice versa. This shift began in earnest in 2005, in San Francisco, London, and Berlin. Technologists, programmers, and creative professionals wanted to work outside confining office environments but also to avoid the isolation of home offices. They chose to work side by side, in what are known as coworking office space.

Early examples were organic, built by users rather than by design professionals. They were accessible to anyone and sometimes free. People who chose to work in those spaces intentionally sought members from different organizations, thus reproducing the community, social interaction, learning, and energy typical of their online work, while adding the benefit of physical proximity to others. Unwittingly, they were engineering spaces to create the exploration that we know enhances creativity. And it worked. Studying 45 coworking spaces around the world, one of us, Jennifer Magnolfi, discovered that people had chosen them because they believed that their performance would improve more rapidly in such spaces than in an office building or at home. A 2011 Deskmag survey of more than 1,500 coworkers in 52 countries supported her findings:

1. 75% reported an increase in productivity since joining their space
2. 80% reported an increase in the size of their business network
3. 92% reported an increase in the size of their social circle
4. 86% reported a decrease in their sense of isolation
5. 83% reported that they trusted others in their coworking space

By 2014, 72% of those who used coworking spaces were forecasting an increase in their income.

The growth of coworking and surveys of coworkers demonstrate that given the choice, people will choose workspaces that support their digital style while giving them access to new knowledge, exposing them to different kinds of expertise, and accelerating their learning. Coworking’s success has helped some teams “graduate” out of their coworking spaces. Although the model clearly provides the exploration that independent workers and very small groups need, when teams reach a critical size, usually around 10 members, they need to up their engagement with one another. Private office space and conference rooms become necessary parts of their workday.

This has led to the scaling of coworking space. What started as small spaces for a few independent workers grew into start-up accelerators—groups of start-ups sharing some of the private collaboration space available to them. Eventually large corporations mimicked the idea by creating shared space where their employees could work with partners, researchers, and customers. The first floor of Amazon’s new campus in Seattle is mostly coworking space. Ace Hotel actively markets the lobby of its New York flagship as a workspace. AT&T has created Foundry, a network of research centers in which its engineers work side by side with handpicked start-ups, corporate partners, and third-party developers to bring new products to market faster. Even bankers are doing it: ING Direct built seven cafés (now called Capital One 360 Cafés) where its workers could set up shop and interact with customers who could also use the space for work. Perhaps less surprisingly, and true to form, Airbnb has made one of the conference rooms at its new headquarters bookable (through Airbnb, of course) by anyone in San Francisco, free.

What’s Happening in Vegas

Coworking is succeeding because it successfully integrates good workspace design that enhances exploration with the digital work habits of individuals and small teams. In some cases it’s possible to scale the benefits of coworking—such as high collision rates and accelerated learning—to build an entire neighborhood.

The Downtown Project, in Las Vegas, is an early example of the concept. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, is investing $350 million in the area around the company’s new headquarters, which is the former city hall. Hsieh’s goal is to grow the local start-up and entrepreneurial community in a way that will organically attract talent to the area, benefiting both Zappos employees and the neighborhood.

Jennifer Magnolfi participated in the development and analysis of coworking space inside Zappos headquarters and led a local coworking experiment that launched in early 2012 and eventually grew to include nearly 200 stakeholders, among them Zappos employees, area residents, start-ups, independent workers, and others. The spaces were improvised from a network of existing ones: a coffee shop, the courtyard of a Thai restaurant, an old church hall, the lobby of a casino, and an empty corporate apartment.

Early results show that the small, shared nature of the neighborhood fostered mobility that created collisions on a greater scale. Exploration and energy were very high. After six months, data revealed a 42% increase in face-to-face encounters, a 78% increase in participant-generated proposals to solve specific problems, and an 84% increase in the number of new leaders—participants who initiated work and collaboration and developed project scope and objectives. Ten new civic and local community projects were launched—including the Sunday Reset Project, a monthly event to promote healthful living.

Zappos and the Downtown Project have continued experimenting with the area and are using a new metric: “collisionable hours,” or the number of probable interactions per hour per acre. Hsieh’s goal is to reach 100,000 collisionable hours per acre in the neighborhood—about 2.3 per square foot per year.

Zappos uses a new metric—“collisionable
hours”—to measure a space’s effectiveness.

The Downtown Project is still a controlled experiment. It doesn’t capture the complexity of getting companies and civic entities to cooperate, routinely and continually, while also adapting to inevitable technological change. Nor does it address the complexity of getting a multinational to integrate coworking space when it’s already managing a global office portfolio. (See the sidebar “What About the Global Company?”) But it points to a new model for the corporate campus of the future that weaves together public and private spaces, employees and partners, living and working.

Hsieh and others believe that companies designed on this model will be more productive and innovative—as businesses and as communities—and in the long term will gain a strategic advantage over companies that cut off their employees from the exploration that improves performance.

What About the Global Company?

What happens when proximity isn’t feasible? When our colleagues are not only in different buildings but in different countries?

One consumer packaged goods company we know of is trying to address these questions. It has a global real estate portfolio of more than 200 million square feet supporting 300,000 employees in 26 countries. Managing for collisions at this scale requires a two-pronged approach. First, like Telenor, the company must treat the buildings as communication tools, using more open environments and denser workspaces to promote interactions.

Second, it must link those optimized buildings in a virtual space that makes communication between them as easy and effective as possible. To achieve that, it has created a “community manager” role for workspace operations, bridging facilities management, technology, and corporate communications. The role is modeled on those found in online communities such as Yelp and Airbnb for office space and in coworking spaces.

More than a century ago, Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his stopwatch and principles of scientific management to the office, instilling efficiency as the highest calling in what was then a factory for processing paperwork. Today we have the means to measure the performance of modern idea factories. Even these early insights suggest a future in which we must aggressively change the definition of what workspace is, from where work is done to how it’s done, and then design spaces—physical and digital—around that. The office of the past was a literal box of cubicles and desks, meeting rooms and common spaces. In the office of the future, we’ll be thinking and working outside it.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review.

At the Black Swan Group, we use tactical empathy to deal with the Bad, the Mad, and the Sad (and sometimes even the Glad!) that we encounter every day at our jobs, in our social interactions, and even in our family gatherings.

How? With a simple three-step process:

1. Tone of voice
2. No denials or disagreements
3. Make them feel heard

I borrowed the phrase “the Bad, the Mad, and the Sad” from Tom Strentz (with his permission) for my TEDx talk. Tom is the godfather of the FBI’s hostage negotiation program, and he’s still very active in the profession as a mentor.

Tom is truly one of the good guys. The title of one of his great books is Hostage/Crisis Negotiations: Lessons Learned from the Bad, the Mad, and the Sad. You should check it out.

Now, here’s more on the three-step process to get you started if you are tactical-empathy curious.

How to Get Started with Tactical-Empathy

1. Tone of voice
In all cases, the late-night FM DJ voice (soothing), combined with upward (inquiring) or downward (understanding) inflections, is the critical touch.

In this video, Derek Gaunt not only discusses this, but he also embodies it with his own tonality. Derek is a complete natural at the late-night FM DJ voice, which is why he was such a great hostage negotiator and is currently one of our best negotiation coaches.

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2. No denials or disagreements
The key to any sort of empathy, no matter who is defining it, is no denials or disagreements. This doesn’t mean ignoring the stuff you don’t like, either. You need to make them feel heard.

3. Make them feel heard

There’s a fine line here, and it’s where the real power of tactical empathy comes from (and empathy, more broadly, for that matter). You don’t agree, but you don’t disagree, either.

Here’s an example: If you know they feel like you’re ignoring what they want, instead of denying it, call it out with a label. Don’t say, I don’t want you to think we’re ignoring what you want. Say, I’m sure it seems like we’re ignoring what you want.

That’s just an observation. You’re not agreeing, and you’re not disagreeing. And that’s tactical empathy, You’re making the tactical choice to defuse a negative by labeling it.

No one feels heard when you ignore what you’re inclined to disagree with, but these topics are precisely what you need to make them feel heard on. Anyone can make someone feel heard on the stuff you mutually agree on. That approach takes no talent or courage.

The talent and courage come into play when you make someone feel heard on the issues that are exactly where the disagreement or the anger might be.

Remember, tactical empathy isn’t an agreement. You aren’t putting your integrity on the line by calling things as they are. This frees you to use tactical empathy as a way to influence anyone in the world!

What We’re Avoiding

With this approach, we’re also avoiding the two worst practices.
1. “I understand”
Don’t say this. Ever.

Instead, take the time to articulate all that you understand. Don’t take a shortcut here.

2. “Yes, but …” or “I understand, but …”
No one wants you to put your “but” in their face. (That should be enough to get the point across.)

There are many occasions where people say “I understand” as a well-intentioned gesture. Intention, while a good starting point, is insufficient alone. You wipe it out with the word “but,” which means you just squashed your own good intention.

Just take the extra time to articulate what you understand. And then go silent so it sinks in and has the effect that empathy was conceived for.

Where tactical empathy evolved from was never meant to be synonymous with compassion. Yet it is a very compassionate thing to do. (It’s also effective as heck in preparing the conversation so you can make your point.)

Try this out in your low-stakes conversations to get a feel for it. Try it with your Starbucks barista: You guys really help the world get started every day! I’m sure I seem like just another customer who takes you for granted.

Say to the hotel front desk clerk, I’m getting ready to make your day horrible. Wait for them to ask what you want, then say, I need a late checkout. Or say, I’m another one of those demanding, selfish customers who wants something for nothing.

Again, wait for them to prompt you for your “ask.” At this point, would it be ridiculous to inquire about free room upgrades?

Think of your own versions of these scenarios to catch people off guard and end up brightening up their day. You’ll both feel better and wind up with some free stuff!

You’ll also get your low-stakes practice in so you can use it when you’ve really got skin in the game. Make it rain!

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