Why We need More Empathy in the Workplace | Shola Kaye | TEDxPeckham
Shola Kaye
Communication Specialist
- Empathy, DEI, and communication speaker and facilitator; author and award-winning speaker
- Expert at creating psychologically safe, highly engaging, interactive experiences
- Former professional entertainer, culturally sensitive, creator of the Inclusion Launchpad program
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Shola Kaye helps global organisations prepare for the future of work using the power of empathy, effective communication and inclusion nudges. Shola’s work is frequently described as practical, easily implementable and inspiring. Her team has developed The Inclusion Launchpad, and The E.Q. Accelerator programs to help support lasting change. She shares accessible case studies and implementable insights gained from working with international corporations across a wide range of industries.
Shola’s clients include American Express, Deloitte, Google, IBM, Nestle, Henkel, Reckitt, HSBC and Oracle. She is the author of two books and has written for a variety of industry publications.
Early in Shola’s career, she worked in consulting and account management in New York and London with clients such as Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab and British Airways. She has conducted neuroscience research at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
What differentiates Shola as a speaker is that she has also spent time performing across the globe and captivating audiences as a professional entertainer. She therefore understands what it takes to keep her keynote attendees engaged and participating throughout the session, and she provides multiple opportunities for valuable self-reflection and outstanding levels of interaction.
Shola’s experiences as a Black woman working for global corporations gave her an understanding of some of the many challenges faced by companies today as they seek to create environments of empathy and belonging, supporting their ever-more diverse, often remote, teams. Her work allows organisations to increase innovation, bolster belonging and develop engaging, productive environments.
At the moment her most popular keynote is on Delivering Feedback with Empathy. Everyone needs to deliver feedback at some stage in their lives, and the way in which this is done has the power to make or break careers, as well as relationships!
Shola also works with many global teams that need to find ways to reduce bias and reach across cultural differences, creating an atmosphere of collaboration, inclusion and high performance. Her sessions on Inclusive Communication and Psychological Safety have been booked by a variety of international associations and, as a skilled facilitator, she’s often called upon to run sessions that are a hybrid between conventional keynotes, town halls, and large group workshops.
As an introvert herself, she loves to create experiences in which everyone feels deeply involved and empowered to participate fully. Her virtual keynotes often elicit hundreds of comments in the chat, with off-the-charts participation from attendees. She’s also a popular speaker for International Women’s Day and has worked with many organisations delivering communication programs that help women and other underrepresented groups speak up and cut through, enabling them to go further, faster, in their careers.
Speaker Video
Shola Kaye Speaker Demo Reel
Shola Kaye: The Benefits of Leading with Empathy
Shola Kaye: Emotional Intelligence for Leaders
Shola Kaye: Psychological Safety and Intersectionality Keynote
Shola Kaye - At Women in Data 2019 - Speak up on the spot
Delivering Effective Feedback with Empathy. Develop the skills to support and co-create your colleagues’ success. Delivering effective feedback is a valuable life skill. Feedback can be empowering, inspiring and can drive an individual, and their team, towards fantastic success.
However, if delivered in the wrong way, feedback can be divisive, demotivating, and destructive. And when we avoid giving feedback to spare someone’s feelings, the eventual outcome can be just as damaging.
Learning Objectives:
- Discover the four elements required to create psychological safety so that your feedback is well-received
- Gain insights from powerful personal stories and statistics on how feedback affects motivation and performance
- Explore the repercussions of poor feedback styles such as The Drive-by, The Comparison, The Public Humiliation, and The Wrecking Ball
- Take away an effective strategy for delivering feedback as an individual contributor
After this session, you’ll feel renewed energy and enthusiasm for giving and receiving feedback. You’ll have a deeper insight into the role your personality plays when delivering feedback and will be able to take steps to optimise your performance. You’ll learn some effective frameworks for sharing feedback in a way that gets results.
Inclusive Leadership: Develop Cultural Awareness, Create Psychological Safety and Unleash the Potential of Your Global, Remote Teams. Inclusive leadership is essential for success in today's complex, dispersed and diverse workplaces. Inclusive leaders create a sense of belonging for all employees, regardless of their background, location or identity. This leads to increased engagement, happiness, and productivity. If you want your organization to succeed, you need to equip your leaders, and their teams, with the skills and knowledge to communicate inclusively.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the need for inclusive leadership, the six key traits of inclusive leaders, and how to translate those traits into essential behaviours
- Learn to develop a psychologically safe environment that supports innovation and creativity
- Develop cultural awareness and use language that is respectful and inclusive
- Recognise the power of inclusion nudges for remote and in-person teams, and learn some simple but effective strategies for running inclusive meetings
After this session you’ll feel better able to support your remote, diverse, cross-cultural teams, creating an environment of understanding, innovation and high performance. This session may also be delivered with a focus on Inclusive Communication, making it appropriate for individual contributors, mixed teams and whole company keynotes.
Human Skills for the Future-Ready Workplace. This keynote explores how emotional intelligence skills — in particular, empathy and self-awareness — can create a successful, high-performing workplace culture. Enlightened leaders focus on the whole person rather than on task accomplishment. Through understanding, emotional intelligence, and other ‘power’ skills, we can create environments of belonging, innovation, and productivity. This is an interactive keynote with opportunities for reflection and stories to help land the learning.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the benefits of an emotionally intelligent approach to overcoming differences and creating cohesion
- Recognise the value of self-awareness and self-regulation in the workplace
- Create a link between empathy, feedback and performance
- Gain insight into the generative power of encouragement and effective communication
This session helps your emerging and established leaders understand why it’s so important to recognise the whole person and develop stronger bonds with their teams. They’ll walk away with the practical relationship tools and transformational insights that facilitate success in workplaces of increasing complexity and technological advancement. Keynote may be additionally customised by mapping your corporate values onto the discussed skills and behaviours.
Elevating Empathy: The Power of Effective Listening. Walk away with the tools and the inspiration to become a more respectful and understanding leader, manager, or individual contributor. During this highly beneficial keynote, you’ll explore the vital components of empathy, how to be a better listener and how to develop compassion. Deepen your relationships and provide support for colleagues, friends and family.
Learning Objectives:
- Explore data points that emphasise the importance of empathy and perspective-taking for workplace success
- Participate in powerful self-reflection exercises to learn more about your style of listening and your listening strengths and weaknesses
- Find out how empathy and listening support diversity, inclusion, engagement, retention and innovation in the workplace
- Explore the themes of curiosity, courage and being a catalyst for change
This session will help create an environment of understanding, lower resistance to change, and will prepare your employees for further interventions in the areas of D.E.I., Wellbeing, Emotional Intelligence, Kindness, Leadership Effectiveness and Respect in the workplace. Participants will take away frameworks and tools for approaching others with compassion, and communicating across differences.
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