How to build empathy in a team?

In my opinion, there are three points that are the most important, by starting to build security we can start to be personal with each other. By being personal with each other we strengthen security. But it is also very important that everyone works towards the same goal. To feel a sense of belonging.

Key elements

• Build trust among the team.
• With trust we can show vulnerability – our greatest strength.
• Avoid disconnection – make sure the team have common goals.

Communication is key

Building trust can take time, but I’ve learned that it usually goes faster if someone takes the lead and starts to get very personal. And if you manage to get someone on board early on, it can become, let’s call it normalized. Then it becomes easier for others to talk about private things that are beyond the surface that we usually show of ourselves.

I find that having a “check-in” during a team meeting where everyone can assess their harmful stress is a fantastic tool for building not only trust but also camaraderie and getting the team to work towards the same goal.

Of course, it has to take time, there is a barrier to being personal. All teams work differently and are in different stages. In teams that I have been most successful in, the teams that have not worked together for that long and are quite new. There is also a big difference between a team with only senior developers and teams that are more mixed. I have been surprised that teams with exclusively men enter the next phase significantly earlier than mixed teams.

This surprised me a lot. I had suspected that a mixed team would enter this second phase more quickly. Then there are a number of other advantages to a mixed team so I still believe that it is the best form.

Dynamics of a team with empathy

• Structure
• Forming meaningful connections
• Consistency
• Focus on self-reflection

Tips for activities to get you started

So you’ve decided this is the way to go, but how do you get started?

If there is already a sense of security in the team and you feel that you can be open with each other, I strongly believe in creating a user manual for yourself and then presenting it to the others. By opening up and telling about how we want to be contacted, how we learn or what we have difficulty with, we show vulnerability to each other and that is a fantastic component.

User manual

• Create and present a user manual to the team.
  • My name is:
  • Conditions I like to work in:
  • The time I like to work:
  • The best way to communicate with me:
  • The way I like to receive feedback:
  • The things I need to stay motivated:
  • How I learn best:
  • Things I struggle with:

Check-ins

• Check-in during team meetings

If the team does not have a basic trust, it is of the utmost importance that it is created before you proceed with, for example, the exercise above. I assume your team has a team meeting once a week; at the beginning of the meeting ask everyone to rate their negative stress between 1-6, everyone chooses whether they want to include private things or not. After running this for a couple of months, the meeting usually has become deeper and you can, in addition to getting closer to each other, start working on stress, task distribution.

However, it is very important that it does not become an environment where it is considered good to feel stress. If you start to see tendencies towards this, you must immediately address them.

I am open to talking about these topics if you want a deeper insight.