[00:00:00] Lori Highby: So Kris, I had a fun question this morning with my team which was what do you hope is obsolete in 20 years?
[00:00:44] Kris Harrington: Oh my goodness.
[00:00:46] Lori Highby: So it's a big one. I'll tell you my answer while you think about yours. Okay. Mine is probably simple because some of the other gals on my team had some really strong things, but I said traffic.
I feel like technology, logistics, you know, just we should be able to be consistent with moving and transportation and really clean that up and not have to sit in traffic in 20 years.
[00:01:11] Kris Harrington: Oh, well, you know, I think, yes, with autonomy and some of the things that I've heard and ride sharing and some other things, there is a way to move people faster and easier.
And so you know, people have written about that for sure. I think some people aren't going to like my answer, but I'm going to say it because I'm living in it right now. And that's weeds. I'm dealing with a lot of weeds right now and if I could get rid of all the weeds, but I know that they are also beneficial. So I feel like that's a very selfish wish. Maybe just everything growing around me could be something that I love and wouldn't have to be pulled. How about that?
[00:01:50] Lori Highby: I love it.
Yeah, there's a bigger conversation around that for sure, but yeah, you just, you want to make your life easier, right?
[00:02:00] Kris Harrington: I just want to walk out and have it be so beautiful and not have to go in there and pull it off, you know, all the things that are so beautiful.
[00:02:06] Lori Highby: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we've got an awesome guest today, really excited for this conversation. And unfortunately our co host Erin Courteney isn't here today, but she would love this topic. Emily Honor Hubbard is the owner of Empathetic Engineering, where she coaches people in manufacturing to reduce stressful misunderstandings with improved communication.
She is a Spanish bilingual mechanical engineer, has published research on the development of empathy in engineers and served in several international manufacturing roles, including Ford Motor Company in Mexico. Now she is grateful to identify opportunities for manufacturing teams and individuals to build new skills so their work becomes more impactful and enjoyable. Emily, welcome to the show.
[00:02:52] Emily Honor Hubbard: Thank you so much, Lori, Kris. Yeah, maybe, maybe I'll like cover the empathy side, then that is missing from the missing host. . .
[00:03:08] Lori Highby: Yeah. This, this is a topic near and dear to Erin's heart. Without a doubt. So, absolutely. But let's dive in.
So what are key empathy constructs that you teach? How do you apply it to the manufacturing industry? 'Cause I just feel like. Empathy and manufacturing aren't normally words that you see in the same sentence, at least historically, right?
[00:03:31] Kris Harrington: Yeah, even the empathy and engineering tied together is just, you know, a very, when you think about engineers. That's typically the first thoughts you are not having necessarily, and maybe that's not correct, but you're not thinking about empathy as you think about an engineer. So I'm so interested in your answer to Lori's question.
[00:03:54] Emily Honor Hubbard: And that's really important what you say, Kris, because a lot of people that don't expect engineers to be especially good at socializing or communicating well, I think actually cause part of the problem that lets engineers just get away with not necessarily participating in cross functional meetings the way that we can. And so I get really excited talking about this because when I was in college, I got to study the impact of experience based learning with people that had different abilities, a lot of times called disabilities, but people using prosthetics or with visual impairment. And when we had engineers design products for these people, there was a whole process over these 10 weeks that allowed them to better step into what is the end user looking for? And then they started to realize, Oh, I'm not designing it for myself.
That's, that's what we do naturally. And so when I go into a company, I kind of take that perspective and show someone like, Kris, if you were to spill your coffee right now, when you're drinking it. The reaction of me and Lori would probably be something like a jump, right? Like, all of a sudden she's got burning hot coffee on her body.
We have this reaction called effective response where we think that is happening to ourselves. And so then we start to recognize, okay, maybe, maybe it's not that hot. Maybe Kris is screaming, but we move into this phase that says, it's not happening to us, it's happening to Kris, and then how do we regulate our emotions to try to help her out?
[00:05:56] Kris Harrington: Mm hmm.
[00:05:57] Emily Honor Hubbard: And I like to point out all these five constructs of empathy, then the last one being Perspective taking because a lot of the times we feel comfortable empathizing with someone when there's a physical pain or challenge that they're going through, we don't always do that well when it's emotional.
And so, yeah, a lot of what I've seen in manufacturing is just that we would get so stressed out because of the pressure to turn out new products and meet deadlines that we didn't get to go through that whole empathic process. And then challenges spiral from there.
[00:06:45] Kris Harrington: Yeah. So when, when you're talking about that empathic process, it's really the engineering process of bringing something new to the product. Is that right?
[00:06:59] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. It's really understanding that there are so many stakeholders when you build a new product, and that includes the end user, but also all of your co workers. And I like people to remember that the engineers voice can be heard sometimes, and we can get afraid to ask because if an engineer responds in a condescending way we won't necessarily want to ask a second time, like, well, what do you mean?
How do I market this correctly? If I don't know what it is, right. So we can practice all of that.
[00:07:39] Kris Harrington: Sure. Yeah, I know my, the favorite engineers that I've worked with are the ones that are continually asking questions about the customers and curious about how they're using something before they go back to redesign or upfit or create something altogether new, right?
So their, their curiosity comes out. And I think that curiosity is where I've certainly seen empathy come into play from that engineering perspective. If I just kind of go back in my personal experiences. Yeah. Can you share a success story where empathy and cultural competency led to a breakthrough in a manufacturing setting?
[00:08:26] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. So I do believe part of what inspired me to do the work I am doing today is a lot of interaction between the US and Mexico, Canada as well. I mean, you'll see a lot of different cultural barriers. I lived in Mexico for three years, and I started to notice when we would have English speaking meetings, not everyone in Mexico would participate until we hung up on the call, and then we would have a bunch of conversation in Spanish, and then the problem would get solved, and the other half of the team doesn't know, so with that type of miscommunication, I realized that sometimes we try to make really quick decisions based on the local team and our local perspective.
Again, going back to any pressure that's put on us to get a product out the door quickly. So, I was really lucky at one company I was able to realize that we were trying to move forward with a 70, 000 rework. You know, a lot of people threw out different ideas and never wanted to solve the problem. But I said, can we just wait for three days?
Because I think there's another opinion that's not getting heard in this discussion. I called everyone from US Mexico and Canada that had something to do with this project and we ended up finding a rework that was less than 1% of that proposed 70, 000.
[00:10:05] Kris Harrington: And it really just required having more perspectives and the right people in the room, it sounds like, and listening to others that, yeah. I've certainly seen that cross cultures where you have multilingual speakers or English as a second language and the default speaker typically, especially and a conference call.
Is the one that has the strongest English speaking abilities and everybody else is kind of listening, but not necessarily participating. And often somewhere English is the second language or when the reverse is true, Spanish would be the second language and we're listening in on a Spanish conversation or spoken in Spanish.
If we don't ask good qualifying questions and clarify clarifying questions, often things are missed because we don't understand everything. Being able to slow the conversation down and asking those clarifying questions can get to, I think the heart of what you're, you're really talking about there.
[00:11:11] Lori Highby: Well, I just like that you took the time to kind of ask all parties involved independently, because there are intimidation factors that come into play. And as you talked, Kris, like people tend to sometimes overpower a conversation, which not necessarily doing it intentionally. They, you know, they have good intentions, but they don't realize that others aren't as outgoing and comfortable.
Even when, especially when there's more people involved in the conversation at once. So yeah, it's important to give everyone a voice at the table, regardless if it's everyone's sitting at the table at the same time or not.
[00:11:50] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. And a lot of times, someone born in the U. S. doesn't necessarily learn a second language.
And so, I mean, part of empathizing is wanting to be able to see where another person's coming from, but if you haven't lived that experience of trying to speak up in a meeting in your non native language, it's, it's hard for our brain until we practice it again, and we can get better.
[00:12:22] Kris Harrington: So true.
[00:12:23] Lori Highby: Your diversity is definitely something that I see more and more of conversation being talked of.
But how does this play a role when it comes to leaning into innovation with engineering teams and how can leaders really kind of take advantage of this and, and harness this potential.
[00:12:42] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, I love talking about neurodiversity and I've just started doing this for companies as well as an interactive way to understand. Neurodiversity for me is this idea that we all have strengths and things that we struggle with. But then with a neurodiverse diagnosis, there's usually a greater difference between those two parts of our personality. And so that can then obviously be very advantageous if someone has a strength for solving certain types of problems. But then they might have a lot of trouble asking for help and bringing people in to solve something when it's outside of their comfort zone.
So it's actually up to 20 percent of people in the world demonstrate neurodiverse characteristics, and this includes ADD, ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder, dyslexia, but it doesn't just stop there. So what I think is especially important Also being in, sTEM, knowing that the 20 percent is likely more represented in STEM.
We have the ability to say, okay, whether or not someone's comfortable because everyone has their own level of progress, if they do get a diagnosis, we can still be nice to any person, regardless of whether or not they have a diagnosis. and consider themselves neurodiverse. And so one of my favorite activities with a team is to do something called empathy columns.
And anyone can do this. You can do it in your head right now. I'm a big fan of writing it down. But you think of a time recently, like in the last week, where you had a disagreement at work. And then in the first column, you write down what happened from your perspective. How you felt, what was frustrating about the disagreement, everything.
Don't hold anything back. And then after you understand your perspective well, you write in a second column what the other person might have experienced. As if they were writing that same thing for themselves, but you're the person writing it. And so, you know, if my perspective was I got yelled at, but then I'm writing over here in this column.
Well, I had to yell at them because I already asked three times. Mm-hmm . And I felt like they weren't listening to me. I found that to be really impactful and, and it's one of my favorite activities.
[00:15:35] Lori Highby: It's putting, putting yourself in the other person's shoes, which I, I really like that activity.
I've never heard of it, but it's one, it gives the individual, the opportunity to reflect back on their emotions and how they responded because sometimes you just right there realize, Oh, I probably could have handled that better or something along those lines. Right. But then putting yourself in the other person's shoes and looking through, their lens to figure out, you know, maybe it was a me situation or, or there's an opportunity for us to have another conversation about this again. That's a great exercise.
[00:16:07] Kris Harrington: It's a really good exercise. We talk about it, but the physical writing of it, I think really create change in your mind about a situation.
[00:16:17] Emily Honor Hubbard: Oh, I totally agree. And you can bring any of that information to your one on one, right?
[00:16:23] Kris Harrington: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Kris Harrington: I like that. So I'm curious if you, if you look out and you look into the manufacturing world and the trends, I'm curious, is there anything that's trending in manufacturing that you think will require a stronger focus on empathy and communication like you've been talking about?
[00:16:46] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, so I'm especially excited about this transition to nearshoring.
And nearshoring is causing a lot of companies in the U. S. to bring manufacturing to Mexico, and maybe it was overseas, but we've seen a lot of shifts in the last few years that offer reasons why it's beneficial to have manufacturing much closer to maybe the final assembly that happens in the U. S. And so considering that we have a lot of physical movement of plants, it'll be important to understand, I believe, North American culture and its unique dynamics.
However, we're also at a time where technology is increasingly changing. I mean, every day it's an exponential trend in what AI and blockchain are capable of. I see this shift where we're going to become very comfortable reprogramming computers, but it'll still take a lot of time to reprogram ourselves, our own thinking.
And so, yeah, just maintaining patience with that, I think will be interesting to see as we move forward.
[00:18:10] Kris Harrington: Yeah. I can see the connection on the AI, you know, side or even just the speed of all technology and how we respond to that. And I really liked the way you said how we have to catch up and, you know, having patients for that.
That's something that's very interesting. You can already see how people are in so many different stages as they respond to the speed of technology. Some not even trying to understand, have no interest until maybe they have to, and others right at the forefront and some in the middle trying things, but not fully understanding.
So yeah, we're, we're at all of these different places with it. So it's interesting.
[00:18:55] Lori Highby: Fascinating. All right. I think this is a great time to switch to the second half of our show, which we refer to as I Just Learned That. So Kris, why don't you finish that sentence? What did you just learn?
[00:19:09] Kris Harrington: Yeah, well, you'll, you'll know that I just recently returned from Paris, France, and I was at the Olympics for 2024.
And it was such a fascinating, wonderful, amazing time. The energy was so positive. I highly recommend anybody who ever has an interest in attending a major sporting event like the Olympics, just do it. Because you know, to have the world come together in one location is really, really, really special. I don't even think I could have imagined how special it was going to be for me. I knew I was going to enjoy it. But how much I enjoyed it and the energy it gave me is just even difficult for me to describe. But I had an opportunity to visit the Louvre while I was there. And I know we talked in previous episodes about what I would do while I was there.
One thing that I learned is that you cannot experience the Louvre in a single day. You cannot you know, I, I think I looked it up afterwards, because we were, we did dedicate one day to visiting the Louvre, which is a museum, a very famous museum in Paris, France, formerly the Louvre Palace, it was built in the 12th century.
And I think it became a museum in I wanted to say 1790 something, so you think about the historical nature of that and all that you get to see. But there was something written, I think it's on the Louvre page that indicated that if you were going to spend 30 seconds with every piece of artwork in the Louvre, it would take you 100 days, and that excludes sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom.
So you would just be looking at art. So just incredible incredible experience.
[00:21:00] Lori Highby: That's insane.
[00:21:01] Kris Harrington: Yeah, it really.
[00:21:03] Lori Highby: I can't even imagine how big it is.
[00:21:05] Kris Harrington: It's massive. I mean, there are floors we didn't even get to. It's massive, but highly recommend people make it to France. So Lori, what have you just learned?
[00:21:17] Lori Highby: Oh, there's so many random things. I'm going to go the businessy route with this one, even though I I attended a sales conference virtually yesterday, and I've had this like, dug it in my head that sales has changed. I think everyone has observed and experienced that, especially in the B2B space. But what's changed, and so my assumptions were like validated and I have some stats that I think are really interesting. And even though I've known this, it's just good to get, like they said, that validation, but 74 percent of B2B decision makers choose to buy from a company that's able to create a vision. So that's like storytelling. You need to like showcase and illustrate visually what that outcome is going to be, instead of just talking about, you know, here's, here's the bells and whistles, but like set them in the future. If you work with us, this is what you're going to feel like. The other thing, and I know that this is something that we've discussed in the past, but I thought this was really fascinating. 75 percent of B2B buyers prefer a rep free experience. It's all about them doing their own research before having any sort of, you know, sale being made. They don't want to talk to a sales rep. They want to do their own research their own way. And then when they're to that level of I'm ready to move forward, then, then they're going to take that that step. So they don't want to have someone talking through the decision making process with them.
[00:23:02] Kris Harrington: So, you know, that first stat that you said I think ties really into our guest here with Emily, storytelling side, right? That empathy and communication side of things, you know, because that's what creating a vision and storytelling is. Really means you have to understand your customer and you have to be able to create a vision for them.
And I think that is an empathetic act to do that well. So 100 percent that ties in very well. The second stat, the 75 percent B2B buyers don't want to have a rep in the process. I mean, we have talked about this. There have been other studies that, and I think, I think organizations. just can't believe this when they think about the traditional ways in which they've sold.
So we're really on the cusp of that changing, right? And how do you make sure that information is available and AI is changing the way information is available. So, you know, it's such a good point, Lori, thank you for sharing that.
[00:24:02] Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to just one more thing on that. And then just to illustrate, like it is changing because of what happened in our world, you know, with the pandemic and everything. Pre pandemic sales was you go out, you drop doughnuts off somewhere, you know, you're building this relationship, you're nurturing the conversation. And then we were trained as consumers to just start being online to do research and make buying decisions because we couldn't be face to face.
So we like reprogrammed our brains to like, this is how we make a buying decision now. And, and I, the B2B sales individuals and entities have not caught up to the way that consumers are making buying decisions now. Fascinating.
I knew it here. I observed it, but hearing, seeing the data and hearing someone validate that was just like, this is what I needed to hear.
[00:25:00] Kris Harrington: Manufacturers need to hear that. So it's great to share. Emily, what did you just learn?
[00:25:08] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. Why does at the end of the day, and I know you had a guest with mindfulness manufacturing. I think there's so much more that we're going to start talking about with this great shift we had in the last few years.
For me, what I learned recently was that the highest brainwave states that have been observed in a lab are when we are practicing forgiveness. And I found that to be really cool because a lot of times we kind of get stuck or stubborn based on the same thing, a disagreement we had or a misunderstanding.
And if you realize that the act of forgiving someone, no matter how much they hurt you, actually allows you to reprogram your own brain. Then, I mean, it's worth at least trying, I'd say, right?
[00:26:10] Lori Highby: That is fascinating.
[00:26:11] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, we're we're part computers. They don't want us to know that.
[00:26:18] Kris Harrington: Our brain, right? Yeah.
[00:26:19] Lori Highby: Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Wow. That is that's really interesting. I kind of want to dig into that deeper me to further further understand that. Alright, so great conversation. If any of our guests were interested in connecting with you, Emily, what's the best way that they can reach you?
[00:26:35] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, so I would say my website. Empathicengineering. org, and I point out empathic and empathetic do mean the same thing. The company though is Empathic, E M P A T H I C. And I love, love, love talking to people on the phone, so that's the best way. As soon as you get on the website or find me on LinkedIn, let's talk on the phone. I love asking questions and learning.
[00:27:06] Lori Highby: Fantastic. We will include all that information in our show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
[00:27:14] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, thank you so much and I'm excited. I'll get to talk to Erin soon.
[00:27:19] Lori Highby: Yes, you will, you will. All right, this is three broads wrapping up. We want you to go out there and make something awesome.
[00:00:44] Kris Harrington: Oh my goodness.
[00:00:46] Lori Highby: So it's a big one. I'll tell you my answer while you think about yours. Okay. Mine is probably simple because some of the other gals on my team had some really strong things, but I said traffic.
I feel like technology, logistics, you know, just we should be able to be consistent with moving and transportation and really clean that up and not have to sit in traffic in 20 years.
[00:01:11] Kris Harrington: Oh, well, you know, I think, yes, with autonomy and some of the things that I've heard and ride sharing and some other things, there is a way to move people faster and easier.
And so you know, people have written about that for sure. I think some people aren't going to like my answer, but I'm going to say it because I'm living in it right now. And that's weeds. I'm dealing with a lot of weeds right now and if I could get rid of all the weeds, but I know that they are also beneficial. So I feel like that's a very selfish wish. Maybe just everything growing around me could be something that I love and wouldn't have to be pulled. How about that?
[00:01:50] Lori Highby: I love it.
Yeah, there's a bigger conversation around that for sure, but yeah, you just, you want to make your life easier, right?
[00:02:00] Kris Harrington: I just want to walk out and have it be so beautiful and not have to go in there and pull it off, you know, all the things that are so beautiful.
[00:02:06] Lori Highby: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we've got an awesome guest today, really excited for this conversation. And unfortunately our co host Erin Courteney isn't here today, but she would love this topic. Emily Honor Hubbard is the owner of Empathetic Engineering, where she coaches people in manufacturing to reduce stressful misunderstandings with improved communication.
She is a Spanish bilingual mechanical engineer, has published research on the development of empathy in engineers and served in several international manufacturing roles, including Ford Motor Company in Mexico. Now she is grateful to identify opportunities for manufacturing teams and individuals to build new skills so their work becomes more impactful and enjoyable. Emily, welcome to the show.
[00:02:52] Emily Honor Hubbard: Thank you so much, Lori, Kris. Yeah, maybe, maybe I'll like cover the empathy side, then that is missing from the missing host. . .
[00:03:08] Lori Highby: Yeah. This, this is a topic near and dear to Erin's heart. Without a doubt. So, absolutely. But let's dive in.
So what are key empathy constructs that you teach? How do you apply it to the manufacturing industry? 'Cause I just feel like. Empathy and manufacturing aren't normally words that you see in the same sentence, at least historically, right?
[00:03:31] Kris Harrington: Yeah, even the empathy and engineering tied together is just, you know, a very, when you think about engineers. That's typically the first thoughts you are not having necessarily, and maybe that's not correct, but you're not thinking about empathy as you think about an engineer. So I'm so interested in your answer to Lori's question.
[00:03:54] Emily Honor Hubbard: And that's really important what you say, Kris, because a lot of people that don't expect engineers to be especially good at socializing or communicating well, I think actually cause part of the problem that lets engineers just get away with not necessarily participating in cross functional meetings the way that we can. And so I get really excited talking about this because when I was in college, I got to study the impact of experience based learning with people that had different abilities, a lot of times called disabilities, but people using prosthetics or with visual impairment. And when we had engineers design products for these people, there was a whole process over these 10 weeks that allowed them to better step into what is the end user looking for? And then they started to realize, Oh, I'm not designing it for myself.
That's, that's what we do naturally. And so when I go into a company, I kind of take that perspective and show someone like, Kris, if you were to spill your coffee right now, when you're drinking it. The reaction of me and Lori would probably be something like a jump, right? Like, all of a sudden she's got burning hot coffee on her body.
We have this reaction called effective response where we think that is happening to ourselves. And so then we start to recognize, okay, maybe, maybe it's not that hot. Maybe Kris is screaming, but we move into this phase that says, it's not happening to us, it's happening to Kris, and then how do we regulate our emotions to try to help her out?
[00:05:56] Kris Harrington: Mm hmm.
[00:05:57] Emily Honor Hubbard: And I like to point out all these five constructs of empathy, then the last one being Perspective taking because a lot of the times we feel comfortable empathizing with someone when there's a physical pain or challenge that they're going through, we don't always do that well when it's emotional.
And so, yeah, a lot of what I've seen in manufacturing is just that we would get so stressed out because of the pressure to turn out new products and meet deadlines that we didn't get to go through that whole empathic process. And then challenges spiral from there.
[00:06:45] Kris Harrington: Yeah. So when, when you're talking about that empathic process, it's really the engineering process of bringing something new to the product. Is that right?
[00:06:59] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. It's really understanding that there are so many stakeholders when you build a new product, and that includes the end user, but also all of your co workers. And I like people to remember that the engineers voice can be heard sometimes, and we can get afraid to ask because if an engineer responds in a condescending way we won't necessarily want to ask a second time, like, well, what do you mean?
How do I market this correctly? If I don't know what it is, right. So we can practice all of that.
[00:07:39] Kris Harrington: Sure. Yeah, I know my, the favorite engineers that I've worked with are the ones that are continually asking questions about the customers and curious about how they're using something before they go back to redesign or upfit or create something altogether new, right?
So their, their curiosity comes out. And I think that curiosity is where I've certainly seen empathy come into play from that engineering perspective. If I just kind of go back in my personal experiences. Yeah. Can you share a success story where empathy and cultural competency led to a breakthrough in a manufacturing setting?
[00:08:26] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. So I do believe part of what inspired me to do the work I am doing today is a lot of interaction between the US and Mexico, Canada as well. I mean, you'll see a lot of different cultural barriers. I lived in Mexico for three years, and I started to notice when we would have English speaking meetings, not everyone in Mexico would participate until we hung up on the call, and then we would have a bunch of conversation in Spanish, and then the problem would get solved, and the other half of the team doesn't know, so with that type of miscommunication, I realized that sometimes we try to make really quick decisions based on the local team and our local perspective.
Again, going back to any pressure that's put on us to get a product out the door quickly. So, I was really lucky at one company I was able to realize that we were trying to move forward with a 70, 000 rework. You know, a lot of people threw out different ideas and never wanted to solve the problem. But I said, can we just wait for three days?
Because I think there's another opinion that's not getting heard in this discussion. I called everyone from US Mexico and Canada that had something to do with this project and we ended up finding a rework that was less than 1% of that proposed 70, 000.
[00:10:05] Kris Harrington: And it really just required having more perspectives and the right people in the room, it sounds like, and listening to others that, yeah. I've certainly seen that cross cultures where you have multilingual speakers or English as a second language and the default speaker typically, especially and a conference call.
Is the one that has the strongest English speaking abilities and everybody else is kind of listening, but not necessarily participating. And often somewhere English is the second language or when the reverse is true, Spanish would be the second language and we're listening in on a Spanish conversation or spoken in Spanish.
If we don't ask good qualifying questions and clarify clarifying questions, often things are missed because we don't understand everything. Being able to slow the conversation down and asking those clarifying questions can get to, I think the heart of what you're, you're really talking about there.
[00:11:11] Lori Highby: Well, I just like that you took the time to kind of ask all parties involved independently, because there are intimidation factors that come into play. And as you talked, Kris, like people tend to sometimes overpower a conversation, which not necessarily doing it intentionally. They, you know, they have good intentions, but they don't realize that others aren't as outgoing and comfortable.
Even when, especially when there's more people involved in the conversation at once. So yeah, it's important to give everyone a voice at the table, regardless if it's everyone's sitting at the table at the same time or not.
[00:11:50] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. And a lot of times, someone born in the U. S. doesn't necessarily learn a second language.
And so, I mean, part of empathizing is wanting to be able to see where another person's coming from, but if you haven't lived that experience of trying to speak up in a meeting in your non native language, it's, it's hard for our brain until we practice it again, and we can get better.
[00:12:22] Kris Harrington: So true.
[00:12:23] Lori Highby: Your diversity is definitely something that I see more and more of conversation being talked of.
But how does this play a role when it comes to leaning into innovation with engineering teams and how can leaders really kind of take advantage of this and, and harness this potential.
[00:12:42] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, I love talking about neurodiversity and I've just started doing this for companies as well as an interactive way to understand. Neurodiversity for me is this idea that we all have strengths and things that we struggle with. But then with a neurodiverse diagnosis, there's usually a greater difference between those two parts of our personality. And so that can then obviously be very advantageous if someone has a strength for solving certain types of problems. But then they might have a lot of trouble asking for help and bringing people in to solve something when it's outside of their comfort zone.
So it's actually up to 20 percent of people in the world demonstrate neurodiverse characteristics, and this includes ADD, ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder, dyslexia, but it doesn't just stop there. So what I think is especially important Also being in, sTEM, knowing that the 20 percent is likely more represented in STEM.
We have the ability to say, okay, whether or not someone's comfortable because everyone has their own level of progress, if they do get a diagnosis, we can still be nice to any person, regardless of whether or not they have a diagnosis. and consider themselves neurodiverse. And so one of my favorite activities with a team is to do something called empathy columns.
And anyone can do this. You can do it in your head right now. I'm a big fan of writing it down. But you think of a time recently, like in the last week, where you had a disagreement at work. And then in the first column, you write down what happened from your perspective. How you felt, what was frustrating about the disagreement, everything.
Don't hold anything back. And then after you understand your perspective well, you write in a second column what the other person might have experienced. As if they were writing that same thing for themselves, but you're the person writing it. And so, you know, if my perspective was I got yelled at, but then I'm writing over here in this column.
Well, I had to yell at them because I already asked three times. Mm-hmm . And I felt like they weren't listening to me. I found that to be really impactful and, and it's one of my favorite activities.
[00:15:35] Lori Highby: It's putting, putting yourself in the other person's shoes, which I, I really like that activity.
I've never heard of it, but it's one, it gives the individual, the opportunity to reflect back on their emotions and how they responded because sometimes you just right there realize, Oh, I probably could have handled that better or something along those lines. Right. But then putting yourself in the other person's shoes and looking through, their lens to figure out, you know, maybe it was a me situation or, or there's an opportunity for us to have another conversation about this again. That's a great exercise.
[00:16:07] Kris Harrington: It's a really good exercise. We talk about it, but the physical writing of it, I think really create change in your mind about a situation.
[00:16:17] Emily Honor Hubbard: Oh, I totally agree. And you can bring any of that information to your one on one, right?
[00:16:23] Kris Harrington: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Kris Harrington: I like that. So I'm curious if you, if you look out and you look into the manufacturing world and the trends, I'm curious, is there anything that's trending in manufacturing that you think will require a stronger focus on empathy and communication like you've been talking about?
[00:16:46] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, so I'm especially excited about this transition to nearshoring.
And nearshoring is causing a lot of companies in the U. S. to bring manufacturing to Mexico, and maybe it was overseas, but we've seen a lot of shifts in the last few years that offer reasons why it's beneficial to have manufacturing much closer to maybe the final assembly that happens in the U. S. And so considering that we have a lot of physical movement of plants, it'll be important to understand, I believe, North American culture and its unique dynamics.
However, we're also at a time where technology is increasingly changing. I mean, every day it's an exponential trend in what AI and blockchain are capable of. I see this shift where we're going to become very comfortable reprogramming computers, but it'll still take a lot of time to reprogram ourselves, our own thinking.
And so, yeah, just maintaining patience with that, I think will be interesting to see as we move forward.
[00:18:10] Kris Harrington: Yeah. I can see the connection on the AI, you know, side or even just the speed of all technology and how we respond to that. And I really liked the way you said how we have to catch up and, you know, having patients for that.
That's something that's very interesting. You can already see how people are in so many different stages as they respond to the speed of technology. Some not even trying to understand, have no interest until maybe they have to, and others right at the forefront and some in the middle trying things, but not fully understanding.
So yeah, we're, we're at all of these different places with it. So it's interesting.
[00:18:55] Lori Highby: Fascinating. All right. I think this is a great time to switch to the second half of our show, which we refer to as I Just Learned That. So Kris, why don't you finish that sentence? What did you just learn?
[00:19:09] Kris Harrington: Yeah, well, you'll, you'll know that I just recently returned from Paris, France, and I was at the Olympics for 2024.
And it was such a fascinating, wonderful, amazing time. The energy was so positive. I highly recommend anybody who ever has an interest in attending a major sporting event like the Olympics, just do it. Because you know, to have the world come together in one location is really, really, really special. I don't even think I could have imagined how special it was going to be for me. I knew I was going to enjoy it. But how much I enjoyed it and the energy it gave me is just even difficult for me to describe. But I had an opportunity to visit the Louvre while I was there. And I know we talked in previous episodes about what I would do while I was there.
One thing that I learned is that you cannot experience the Louvre in a single day. You cannot you know, I, I think I looked it up afterwards, because we were, we did dedicate one day to visiting the Louvre, which is a museum, a very famous museum in Paris, France, formerly the Louvre Palace, it was built in the 12th century.
And I think it became a museum in I wanted to say 1790 something, so you think about the historical nature of that and all that you get to see. But there was something written, I think it's on the Louvre page that indicated that if you were going to spend 30 seconds with every piece of artwork in the Louvre, it would take you 100 days, and that excludes sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom.
So you would just be looking at art. So just incredible incredible experience.
[00:21:00] Lori Highby: That's insane.
[00:21:01] Kris Harrington: Yeah, it really.
[00:21:03] Lori Highby: I can't even imagine how big it is.
[00:21:05] Kris Harrington: It's massive. I mean, there are floors we didn't even get to. It's massive, but highly recommend people make it to France. So Lori, what have you just learned?
[00:21:17] Lori Highby: Oh, there's so many random things. I'm going to go the businessy route with this one, even though I I attended a sales conference virtually yesterday, and I've had this like, dug it in my head that sales has changed. I think everyone has observed and experienced that, especially in the B2B space. But what's changed, and so my assumptions were like validated and I have some stats that I think are really interesting. And even though I've known this, it's just good to get, like they said, that validation, but 74 percent of B2B decision makers choose to buy from a company that's able to create a vision. So that's like storytelling. You need to like showcase and illustrate visually what that outcome is going to be, instead of just talking about, you know, here's, here's the bells and whistles, but like set them in the future. If you work with us, this is what you're going to feel like. The other thing, and I know that this is something that we've discussed in the past, but I thought this was really fascinating. 75 percent of B2B buyers prefer a rep free experience. It's all about them doing their own research before having any sort of, you know, sale being made. They don't want to talk to a sales rep. They want to do their own research their own way. And then when they're to that level of I'm ready to move forward, then, then they're going to take that that step. So they don't want to have someone talking through the decision making process with them.
[00:23:02] Kris Harrington: So, you know, that first stat that you said I think ties really into our guest here with Emily, storytelling side, right? That empathy and communication side of things, you know, because that's what creating a vision and storytelling is. Really means you have to understand your customer and you have to be able to create a vision for them.
And I think that is an empathetic act to do that well. So 100 percent that ties in very well. The second stat, the 75 percent B2B buyers don't want to have a rep in the process. I mean, we have talked about this. There have been other studies that, and I think, I think organizations. just can't believe this when they think about the traditional ways in which they've sold.
So we're really on the cusp of that changing, right? And how do you make sure that information is available and AI is changing the way information is available. So, you know, it's such a good point, Lori, thank you for sharing that.
[00:24:02] Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to just one more thing on that. And then just to illustrate, like it is changing because of what happened in our world, you know, with the pandemic and everything. Pre pandemic sales was you go out, you drop doughnuts off somewhere, you know, you're building this relationship, you're nurturing the conversation. And then we were trained as consumers to just start being online to do research and make buying decisions because we couldn't be face to face.
So we like reprogrammed our brains to like, this is how we make a buying decision now. And, and I, the B2B sales individuals and entities have not caught up to the way that consumers are making buying decisions now. Fascinating.
I knew it here. I observed it, but hearing, seeing the data and hearing someone validate that was just like, this is what I needed to hear.
[00:25:00] Kris Harrington: Manufacturers need to hear that. So it's great to share. Emily, what did you just learn?
[00:25:08] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah. Why does at the end of the day, and I know you had a guest with mindfulness manufacturing. I think there's so much more that we're going to start talking about with this great shift we had in the last few years.
For me, what I learned recently was that the highest brainwave states that have been observed in a lab are when we are practicing forgiveness. And I found that to be really cool because a lot of times we kind of get stuck or stubborn based on the same thing, a disagreement we had or a misunderstanding.
And if you realize that the act of forgiving someone, no matter how much they hurt you, actually allows you to reprogram your own brain. Then, I mean, it's worth at least trying, I'd say, right?
[00:26:10] Lori Highby: That is fascinating.
[00:26:11] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, we're we're part computers. They don't want us to know that.
[00:26:18] Kris Harrington: Our brain, right? Yeah.
[00:26:19] Lori Highby: Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Wow. That is that's really interesting. I kind of want to dig into that deeper me to further further understand that. Alright, so great conversation. If any of our guests were interested in connecting with you, Emily, what's the best way that they can reach you?
[00:26:35] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, so I would say my website. Empathicengineering. org, and I point out empathic and empathetic do mean the same thing. The company though is Empathic, E M P A T H I C. And I love, love, love talking to people on the phone, so that's the best way. As soon as you get on the website or find me on LinkedIn, let's talk on the phone. I love asking questions and learning.
[00:27:06] Lori Highby: Fantastic. We will include all that information in our show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
[00:27:14] Emily Honor Hubbard: Yeah, thank you so much and I'm excited. I'll get to talk to Erin soon.
[00:27:19] Lori Highby: Yes, you will, you will. All right, this is three broads wrapping up. We want you to go out there and make something awesome.
