Is empathy in the workplace a new leadership quality?

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A headshot of Jennifer Tejada speaking on stage at Web Summit Lisbon 2022.

Leaders in the tech industry discuss why empathy is necessary for post-Covid 19 management – and how it can foster better relationships with customers and employees.

Although it might sometimes seem like another exercise in ticking boxes, leaders like Velia Carboni, chief digital and technology officer of VF Corporation, and Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, believe in empathy as a valuable business tool.

In this episode of The Next Stage, Velia and Jennifer talked about the importance of empathy in the tech industry – how it can lead to happier employees and even better products and services – and business in general.

“You have to have that empathetic gene of being a people leader, I think, to deliver in today’s world,” said Velia.

Empathy as a necessary post-Covid 19 management tool

Jennifer added that this is the case now more than ever since the Covid-19 pandemic changed how everyone works and lives.

“If you think about the last several years, we had employees coming to CEOs like myself for information on how to stay safe, how to survive the pandemic, how to take care of their families, because maybe they didn’t trust other authoritative bodies,” said the PagerDuty CEO.

“And so you’re now leaning into using a very different muscle when you’re trying to help your employees bring the best version of themselves to work every day. Empathy has a very broad definition but it’s absolutely an obligation of leadership; it’s an important responsibility and something that at PagerDuty, we’ve really embraced to our own success,” added Jennifer.

They also discussed how technology has enabled a more empathetic approach to managing a distributed workforce and how chat and instant messaging platforms can cultivate empathy between colleagues.

Velia Carboni, chief digital and technology officer of VF Corporation, and Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, were in conversation with Jared Lindzon, a freelance journalist at the Globe and Mail, on the Corporate Innovation Summit stage at Web Summit 2022.

Main image of Velia Carboni chief digital and technology officer of VF Corporation, Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, and Jared Lindzon, freelance journalist at the Globe and Mail, on the Corporate Innovation Summit stage at Web Summit 2022: Eóin Noonan/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

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