An Empathy Movement in Organizations: Making Empathy Repeatable, Transferable and Scalable
Speakers:  Marie Miyashiro & Ranjitha Jeurkar   (15 min) 

To Video, Summary, AI, Outline, Full Transcripts 

Marie Miyashiro

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/pH8ijaG-5VxsPRMF_yoxFOT_w4g?view=summary

Marie Miyashiro and Ranjitha discussed the importance of empathy in organizations, emphasizing its repeatability, transferability, and scalability. Ranjitha shared her journey with nonviolent communication (NVC) and its impact on her work. Marie highlighted the complexity of organizations, using a tree metaphor to illustrate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup dynamics. They stressed the need for a "we" perspective to address organizational empathy effectively. Marie also shared her experience with a global company that achieved cost-of-living wages for 85,000 employees, underscoring the potential for positive change through empathetic leadership in organizations.

Action Items

• [ ] Follow up with Tony to find a way to connect for a conversation (Marie already sent a chat and will pursue further contact).

• [ ] Return to the session topic and present one additional point (talk about one more thing) in a later part of the discussion or follow-up session.

Outline

Introduction of Maria and Ranjitha

• Speaker 1 introduces Maria and Ranjitha, highlighting their roles and expertise in empathy and nonviolent communication.

• Maria is a global corporate leader in empathy, while Ranjitha is a certified nonviolent communicator from Bangalore, India.

• The focus of the discussion is on making empathy repeatable, transferable, and scalable in organizations.

• Speaker 1 hands over the floor to Ranjitha for the presentation.

Ranjitha's Journey with Nonviolent Communication

• Ranjitha shares her discovery of nonviolent communication (NVC) over a decade ago, which helped her understand empathy better.

• She expresses her desire to share NVC with organizations in a meaningful way.

• Ranjitha introduces Marie Miyashiro, whose work inspired her to take a new approach to sharing NVC in organizations.

• The session is presented as a conversation between Ranjitha and Marie, inviting audience participation through comments and questions.

Marie Miyashiro's Introduction and Initial Thoughts

• Marie Miyashiro greets the audience from Honolulu, Hawaii, and acknowledges Tony's introduction to NVC.

• Marie emphasizes the importance of organizations in the empathy community and the potential for positive change within them.

• She introduces the concept of working with people within organizations to influence positive change.

• Marie highlights the global cohort of certified NVC trainers, including herself and Ranjitha, and their shared mission.

The Complexity of Organizations

• Marie discusses the complexity of organizations, comparing them to living systems with universal organizational needs.

• She introduces the concept of three levels of relationships in organizations: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup.

• Ranjitha elaborates on the intrapersonal level, emphasizing self-empathy and awareness of one's own feelings and needs.

• Marie uses the metaphor of a tree to illustrate the intrapersonal level, highlighting the balance between individual and organizational needs.

Interpersonal and Intergroup Relationships in Organizations

• Ranjitha explains the interpersonal level, focusing on empathy in interactions within the organization.

• Marie introduces the intergroup level, using the Amazonian rainforest as an example of a living system with patterns that can't be seen at the individual level.

• She emphasizes the importance of balancing individual needs with organizational goals to achieve progress and growth.

• Marie shares her experience working with a global company to achieve cost-of-living wages for 85,000 employees, illustrating the impact of empathy in organizations.

The Concept of "We" in Organizations

• Ranjitha discusses the concept of "we" in organizations, highlighting its importance in understanding and improving organizational dynamics.

• She shares her experience of how language and policies in organizations reflect the "we" level.

• Marie explains the historical context of organizations, noting their relatively recent invention in human evolution.

• She emphasizes the importance of diversity and biodiversity in organizations, using the Amazonian rainforest as an analogy.

The Role of Empathy in Organizational Change

• Marie argues that working with organizations can lead to significant positive changes in the world.

• She shares her experience of working with a global company to achieve cost-of-living wages, illustrating the impact of empathy in organizations.

• Marie and Ranjitha discuss the importance of repeatability, transferability, and scalability in bringing empathy to organizations.

• They mention other influential works, such as the Change Handbook and Sam Caner's work, that have informed their approach.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

• Ranjitha reiterates the importance of the "we" level in sharing NVC with organizations, emphasizing its role in culture transformation.

• Speaker 1 expresses gratitude for the discussion, highlighting the importance of addressing the nervous system in organizations.

• The session concludes with a sense of hope and joy, emphasizing the potential for positive change through empathy in organizations.

Transcript 

Speaker 1  0:00  

It is now my pleasure to bring on. Do we have both of my ladies here? I have Maria and ranjitha. I'm hoping that I got that name right, and I'm not going to try the last names, because we all saw how badly I did it that earlier. So it is now my pleasure to bring on Maria and ranjitha. Maria is a trans global corporate leader in her empathy Factor Book process and coaches nonviolent communication trainers to do the same. Ranjitha is a certified nonviolent communicator trained in Bangalore, India, who helps teams work to better together. And today they're going to talk on an empathy movement in organizations making empathy repeatable, transferable and scalable. Take it away, ladies.

Unknown Speaker  0:45  

CJ, I'm going to share my screen.

Speaker 2  0:53  

Thank you Edwin and team for having us here and yeah, good morning to those of you joining in from the Americas, good evening, if you're joining from my part of the world, or maybe you're somewhere in between. My name is ranjita, and a little more than a decade ago, I discovered non violent communication, and it was something that answered this question for me. I want to be empathetic, but how you know, it was always one of those virtues that was talked about, but nobody ever told me how to do it, and NBC answered that for me. And once I discovered that, once I started learning NBC, I wanted to find a way to share it with organizations in a way that made sense and that made impact. And this, this was sort of it was my quest, and that's when I came across the work of Marie Miyashiro. Marie is here with us, and this, you know, coming across Marie's work was what helped me take a new approach to sharing nonviolent communication with organizations, making empathy repeatable, transferable and scalable, scalable, not scalable. So thank you, Marie. Marie and I are plan this this less as a talk and more as a conversation between the two of us, and we'd absolutely love to hear from you as we have this conversation. So feel free to send your comments, questions or anything that you'd like to share with us in the chat. Marie, over to you. Great.

Marie Miyashiro  2:27  

Thank you, aloha. And welcome to 2026 I'm speaking to you from Honolulu, Hawaii, and maybe if we can just take the screen share down for a minute so I can just see everybody, and we can see them. And I want to give a big shout out to Tony. I came in only at the end, but immediately knew it was NVC, and loved his energy. And Tony, I sent you a chat. I don't know if you're still here, but I would like so dig and enjoy connecting with you. So I don't know how to reach you, but you know, maybe we can find a way to connect. And I'd love to have a chat with you, if you're willing and open to it. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for that energy and that accessibility. As Kara Jean said, so you've got Tony on one end, and, you know, sort of the intro, and then you've got me and ranjita, sort of on the other end, like, how do we bring this to organizations? And I wanted to say something about organizations, because sometimes, you know, in the NVC community, I don't know how all of you feel, maybe you can go from one to five in the chat and give me a scale, give me an ranjita scale. But I think sometimes there are enemy images of organizations in in the empathy community, in the NVC community, because we are so, so aware of the harm that comes from these hierarchical systems, power over systems, as Marshall Rosenberg talked about. And so what we wanted to do was to show you how there is another way, and it is working, and it is possible to make a difference in the world by influencing the people who have access to great resources in organizations. These can be NGOs or, you know, corporate people. But you know, I have a surprise for you. In all these systems of power and organizations, there are people. There's like, people inside of these, these systems. And so ranjita and I and people with needs, yes, and people with needs. And so, thank you, ranjita. And so ranjita and I are part of this global cohort in the NVC community, most of whom are certified trainers in nonviolent communication. And here's a picture of Marshall. You know, we're all we're all like, like many people in the NBC community, our lives changed when we met Marshall Rosenberg. So the the beauty of this is, is that when I met him, we talked about, I was an organization. Research development consultant, so I was already doing work in how to make organizations more human and yet more productive, right? So it's like, thanks. Kara Jean, it's, it's this, how do we do both, right? So organizations, first of all, are both and worlds. They're incredibly complex. And the ability to grow a skill, and hey, Edwin, I didn't see you. Aloha and Happy New Year. The ability to be able to hold complexity is something that the certified trainers that that we're working with in our cohort, our learning is different than just the I and the you, the intrapersonal and the interpersonal. So we've got, we've got a metaphor that ranjita And I want to share with you about how we see organizations. I want to make sure I can see the next slide here. So what makes organizations complex with bringing empathy, and this applies to our work, nonviolent communication, or any of the other beautiful models of empathy out there. There are many we are not the only one. NVC is our favorite one, so we're sharing it with you. There are three levels of relationships in organizations, and these relationships are realities. So there's the intrapersonal. What would you say about the intrapersonal?

Speaker 2  6:29  

Ranjita, I think this is the one Marie that I was most familiar with, with learning nonviolent communication. Of course, we start with self empathy, empathy towards ourselves, being aware of our own feelings and needs, and this is my relationship with myself. So every person in an organization has a relationship with themselves in some way,

Marie Miyashiro  6:52  

exactly, and it's what we're telling ourselves. And Tony was talking about that a minute ago in the intro. So it's so great that we followed him. Thank you for arranging that. And we picked an image of a tree here, because this tree is part of a living system, but it's also an individual thing. You know? It's an individual living organism within this larger organism. So organizations are not like human beings, they I believe they have universal organizational needs. That's the work that I brought in my book, and I had met with Marshall Rosenberg. He and I co authored a paper about it. So I have a high level of confidence that it doesn't conflict with human needs. Because where it's different than a person is that it's not the same kind of consciousness as a human being. So organizations are do not have the same rights as a human being. The people are what matter, and they are creating this larger entity to do some kind of purpose. Hopefully it's a life affirming purpose in the world. So the tree is an example I like to use, because it is a living system all by itself, just like a human being. So that's the I, but there's also the you. And in this you,

Speaker 2  8:21  

yeah, most this is, I think, what most people talk about when they talk about empathy, especially at work. When I work with organizations, a lot of the time, the conversation is around empathy in the sense of when someone's angry at me, how do we angry with me? How do I respond to them? How do I actually talk to my boss? How do I talk to my somebody who I work with, a vendor or a client. And this is, of course, the relationship any person in an organization has with another human being in that sphere.

Marie Miyashiro  8:51  

Yes, and they're affecting each other. And together, they're starting to make a forest and in a and the third level is a we. And these photos, I know for sure that two of these photos are from the Amazonian rainforest, most of which is in Brazil. And as you know, it's endangered. So I wanted to highlight this as a living system. And what I like about this picture of the we is that from above, you can see patterns that you can't see at the I and the U level. And this is what is different about bringing NVC to organizations, or empathy to organizations, is to try to hold embrace and accompany this group of people who are there for a shared purpose, they're there for a shared purpose. And it doesn't mean that the individual needs are subsumed. It doesn't mean that to the organization. What it means is that there's a way to balance. And integrate all three levels so that there's progress and growth in a way that affirms life. So people in organizations are there because they want to achieve something together, not achieving it does not meet their individual needs as well as the organization's needs. And there was one more thing I wanted to say about that, but it slipped my mind. So what's your thoughts about that? Ranjita, he'll come back to me

Speaker 2  10:32  

when you know this idea of the we Marie. When I heard it the first time I heard it, it made so much sense, because I think it's something we all experience when we are part of an organization and at the same time, it's something we talk so little about. So I experienced in the organizations I worked in, the the way I experienced the we. And those of you who are listening to us right now, I'd love to hear how you experience the we on the chat, how I experienced the we was sometimes there were ways in which people were talking to each other. There were certain kinds of language that were implicitly allowed or encouraged, and certain kinds of language that were discouraged. There might have been certain policies that hinted at something. There was how we were with each other. So a lot of these ways, I think we experience the we, and yet, when I discovered this, you know, the idea of the we, I thought, wow, we never talk about it, though it's such a huge, huge part of part of our life in organizations.

Marie Miyashiro  11:36  

Yes, and thank you for reminding me. What I wanted to say is that, you know, I think it's helpful to remember that organizations are a relatively new invention in human evolution. So the Neolithic era, when we began to use tools as human beings, was the last one of the last great revolutions, along with the Industrial Revolution, which was a few 100 years ago. So organizations are new before then, people mostly stayed in the areas they were born and raised in, and worked with people who came from their same cultural backgrounds. The world is so different now. So at the we level, we have things like diversity. We have things like, in this case, it's a biodiversity, right? So the canopy of these trees allow the what's underneath to grow on the forest floor. So they're all working symbiotically together, and in the best run organizations, this is what happens. There are very few organizations that run this way because we're still learning, we're still learning, and we're evolving. And there are so many ways in which there has been harm, and there are so many ways where there has been wonder and good. So again, that complexity of holding both end. So my view is, if you want to change the world, it's helpful to work with organizations, because they have a command of so many resources. And if we can affect the people in these organizations, the choices they make, I believe, will be different. And I myself, have personally worked with a company, a global, French based company that promised and worked for 10 years toward and achieved, giving a complete cost of living wages to 85,000 employees across the world. So this covered housing, medical, food for the family in the wages. So they they paid what could cover these people according to whatever country they were in. And I like working for these kinds of companies. And these are the kinds of companies, of course, that will be attracted to, to to this kind of work. So here we are. I told ranjita, the 15 minutes was going to fly by. So we just want to show you two more slides of the book. There's three books. Our work is only one of many wonderful things happening. And the three key lessons, I guess we have to do speed dating here. So three key lessons, I guess we'll just show the the summary slide. Ranjita of the three. Yeah. Thank you. So what? In order for us, because of the we it has to be repeatable. We use and repeatable means it comes from a model. Transferable means it can happen over and over again when you do the training, and scalable means there's a way for the organizational goals to be included in it. So and there's a there's other books, like the change handbook and Sam caner's work that has influenced us, but we're at our time, so it flew by

Speaker 2  14:58  

going to come back and. Yeah, I want to come back to this and talk about one more thing, Marie, and that's, you know, without the we, I think the we, for me, was the missing link in sharing NBC with organizations, because without the we, anything in organizations that we try to address with non violent communication becomes an interpersonal issue, and we know that when we are in an organization, it's not just about me and you. There's a larger, larger context that influences each of us and the relationship we have with each other. So I think the we for me, has been the missing piece in bringing more empathy into organizations, moving from building into internal capacity for individuals into culture transformation.

Speaker 1  15:44  

Ladies, this was incredible. Thank you so much. I love empathy and NVC going to business. Turns out businesses are full of people and people are full of hormone soup, and we can either address that nervous system upfront or manage those behaviors forever. I'm here in ecosystems over organization chart, so now you're speaking my language, and if you could stop the share, there you go. Yeah. Thanks. We are an hour in, and I am overflowing with hope and joy. Thank you to all of our.