Summary
Michael Jenkins explains why being an “expert human” is becoming increasingly important in the age of AI. While technology and digital transformation continue to accelerate, he argues that organisations risk overlooking the human skills that enable people to navigate disruption, inequality, sustainability challenges and declining trust.
Jenkins introduces the ACE model – altruism, compassion and empathy – to describe the human capabilities that matter most at work today. He explains how empathy must lead to compassionate action and why HR leaders are well positioned to embed these skills by supporting self-compassion, normalising human conversations at work, and creating simple, everyday opportunities to strengthen empathy across organisations.
11-minute watch
With the division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms shifting fast the need for ‘human’ skills has never been greater.
At the same time, the experience of the pandemic has led to many employees questioning the meaning of work. And then there are macro level issues, such as climate change and inequality, which have made their way onto the corporate agenda and led to a resurgence in the concept of purpose both from an individual and organisational perspective.
To address the great disruptors of today we need more human workplaces, says Michael Jenkins, CEO of Expert Humans and partner at FutureWork Forum. And critical to this, especially for leadership, is the development of altruism, compassion and empathy (ACE).
“If we are able to leverage more empathetic behaviour, more compassionate leadership, one of the net benefits is that we will be able to create a more human and humane workplace for people to then grow and develop and thrive in,” he says. “And that leads to talent retention, innovation and improved wellbeing.”
In this video Jenkins looks at the five disruptors that expert humans need to tackle today, discusses a simple model for developing altruism, compassion and empathy in your organisation and offers his top three tips for starting your ACE journey.
Listen to the full podcast The ROI of Empathy. How Compassionate Leaders Drive Business Results
About Michael Jenkins
Michael Jenkins is CEO of Expert Humans and partner of FutureWork Forum. He is the former CEO of Roffey Park Institute and has been director of INSEAD Executive Education in Singapore, director of the Foreign Languages Centre University of Bath and an analyst at Toyota Motor Corporation. He graduated from Durham University in Chinese followed by postgraduate studies in Japanese language, politics and economics at Nanzan University in Nagoya. Michael is the author of Expert Humans: Critical Leadership Skills for a Disrupted World (Emerald Publishing).
Transcript
I think there's an awful lot that could be done to perhaps demystify AI and exactly what AI is because I think you have a certain school of thought which regards AI as still extremely embryonic.
And we're not about to be overtaken by robots, for example, but of course in our everyday lives we interact with chatbots and so forth. So there is a modicum of impact, I think, by AI in many different aspects of our world.
What does it mean to be an expert human?
So sometimes people ask me, Michael, what do you actually mean by an expert human? And the reason why I coined the phrase or word 'expert human' for my book is that for many years, I've been working with people who are absolutely fantastic when it comes to technical skills, whether they are lawyers, engineers, doctors, medics - people who are really good at the jobs that they do. And yet it seems that they haven't really had the opportunity to perhaps work on some of those other skills, the human skills side. In other words, to have the opportunity to become an expert as a human. And so it occurred to me that maybe as the title for the book Expert Humans would be quite a good one.
Why AI makes human skills more important
I think the importance of expert humans in the world today is probably to do with the disruption that all of us are facing. And of course, organisations as a whole have to deal with a number of macro level disruptions, which I examine in the book and ask the question can expert humans tackle these particular disruptions?
And I'm thinking specifically of things like digital transformation, for instance, which can obviously be very good. I'm particularly a great advocate for digital transformation, AI, the application of all of these things I do believe can help the human condition. And at the same time, I think we need to recognize that there's going to be quite a bit of impact now going forward as a result of digital transformation for all of us in the workplace.
Then of course you have global human health, which was another disruptor that I looked at in the book. The pandemic of course has triggered so many different changes in the workplace. So that was the second disruptor that I looked at.
So I also thought about inequality, thinking about the inequality that exists in the world but also the fact that the pandemic, if anything, has exacerbated the situation around equality in organisations today, particularly I think for women and for other groups for whom I think we've worked very hard to improve access to the workplace. I think we need to be very careful that we don't lose the gains that we've made over the past decade or two in that area. So I think we need to continue to recognize that inequality is a very big disruptor in our world today.
And I guess the fourth disruptor that I looked at was sustainability. Of course sustainability is rising to the top of the agenda for many organisations. A lot of organisations, particularly the forward-looking ones, are trying to see how they can integrate a sustainability agenda into their overall business strategy, which I think is incredibly laudable. And I think we would all like to see more of that. Of course, there's a link between sustainability and global human health, of course, because the more we encroach on animal habitats, the greater the likelihood of zoonotic transmission of viruses is going to be, we can probably see more of that in the world going forward.
And then last but not least, the other big disruption, sometimes friends and colleagues say, well, why did you put this into your book as a disruptor? I decided to add trust into the mix because I think one of the things that we're facing right now is a crisis of trust in institutions, in political systems, in politicians as a whole.
But also I think in terms of interpersonal levels of trust as well and trust within organisations too. I think many of us would agree that with trust is such a bedrock concept underpinning so many different things in organisational life. The fact that trust is, if I can put it this way, under severe pressure from many angles, I think that was something that I also wanted to look at within the context of the book Expert Human.
The ACE model: Altruism, Compassion And Empathy
Altruism, compassion and empathy. I'm currently living in the land of acronyms. So, altruism, compassion, empathy is what has given rise to the very simple model in my book, which is called the ACE model. So A for altruism, C for compassion, E for empathy. And in terms of explaining what each one is, I've used a very simple graphic that looks like a dart board and in the centre of it is altruism and I see altruism as a sort of aspirational human goal.
I also see it as an incredibly understudied area of the human condition. I think some good work has been done but I think that there's a lot of very interesting work that could still be done to understand the power of altruism, particularly in an organisational context. So altruism is basically doing good without any net benefit to you yourself. So it's a selfless act to do good because it's a good thing to do. Now in my book, I've also parsed altruism into probably 12 different types of altruism. So there are varying degrees of altruism, which makes altruism incredibly interesting.
So for example, mixed altruism. And an example of mixed altruism might be when you decide to go and work at an animal shelter or an animal sanctuary, for example. So the altruistic part is that you want to help animals. You feel a really strong desire to do that. But at the same time you also need to earn money to be able to survive. So the driving force behind that decision is an altruistic one but at the same time, we can't expect to do all of that very good work for absolutely no compensation ourselves, otherwise we wouldn't be able to eat ourselves. So it's a fascinating area, the whole area of altruism.
In terms of compassion and empathy - and this is probably one of the things that I feel very passionate about - is that empathy is the pathway to compassion and the big difference between empathy and compassion is action. So if I take empathy first. Empathy is a wonderful thing. And we may come on to discuss some of the sort of negative aspects of empathy a little bit later, but empathy is a great thing but it's the segue, it's a pathway to compassion. And the reason for that is that I can empathize with your problem, challenge, condition, for example, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to act to alleviate the pain or suffering that you might be feeling. In other words, to be able to share the feelings of others, which is effectively what empathy is, is a very good thing but I don't think it should end there.
It should actually then progress to what I would call the next stage, which is compassion. And that is where you actually do something in order to make a difference, to make a positive difference. So that's why in that simple model I have altruism in the centre then compassion and then empathy.
So the immediate task at hand is to ask the question, what can we do to really dial up our ability to be more empathic, or empathetic. How can we do that? That's one of the big questions I think that I pose in the book.
How HR can build expert humans
I think there's probably three things to do perhaps. The first is to think about yourself and how you can strengthen your own self compassion, try starting there. The reason why I mention that is that in many studies of compassion, it's very important that we develop our ability to deal with what's called distress tolerance. In other words, we can't really be empathetic and be compassionate to other people if we don't have the emotional bandwidth and the energy to do that. So that'd be the first thing, maybe think about how can you do a bit more to take good care of yourself?
The second thing is I think that, as I mention in the book, HR people are in pole position to really make a difference. I talked about bringing it up as a subject, something that we normalise and talk about. I think that's something that doesn't need to cost a lot of money and that could be really effective to do that.
And then the third thing as, I've touched upon in the book, think about things that you can do to dial up that capacity to be empathetic. Think about reading some good fiction, watching some good films as well. It doesn't have to be anything like a chore. Let's make it fun and let's make it engaging. And I think our HR professional colleagues are in a great position to be able to encourage everyone in the organisation to embrace it and have a go.
About the author
