EP 466: Making Room for Others with Leonie Smith

The Center for Nonviolent Communication describes what they teach as "empathy in action." And so it seems fitting to close out this series on Decoding Empathy with a look at nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication, and making social spaces at work & beyond that work for more people.

I talked with Leonie Smith, founder of The Thoughtful Workplace, about how she uses the tools and practices of nonviolence to help individuals and teams feel more seen and understood.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Leonie Smith and The Thoughtful Workplace
• Watch the Ask Leonie video series
• The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul Han
• "Ahimsa" on Wikipedia
• The Center for Nonviolent Communication
• "The 'Magic' of Meeting in Person" by Devon Price
• The Notebooks of Simone Weil edited and translated by Arthur Wills

Related:

• My conversation with Mara Glatzel on the economics of "neediness"
• My conversation with Charlie Gilkey about implied rules and better team habits

Check out the full Decoding Empathy series!

Every episode of What Works is also released in essay form at whatworks.fyi!

• (00:00) - What if meetings came with instructions?
• (02:54) - A bias toward sameness
• (07:33) - Introducing Leonie Smith, founder of The Thoughtful Workplace
• (08:33) - Violence is embedded in Sameness
• (09:36) - What is nonviolence?
• (11:11) - What is Nonviolent Communication?
• (14:08) - Example: how to request accommodation
• (16:54) - Welcoming diverse forms of expression
• (18:23) - Managing a wider range of expressions (without it getting out of control)
• (21:14) - "Widen our window of tolerance" for normative behavior
• (23:49) - How do we know if what we're doing is working?
• (25:49) - Leonie's vision for the thoughtful workplace of the future
• (27:13) - Simone Weil on reading people
• (29:12) - Byung-Chul Han on listening
• (30:20) - Credits

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What is What Works?

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.