Empathy in Teams

Beyond our inner design circle

Empathy as designers has always been a driving factor in the way we build our understanding of users’ problems. We take pride in our empathetic sides to avoid making assumptions and instead ask,

• Who will be using this?
• What have customers said about this?
• What pain points do they have within their process?
• What is the real issue we’re trying to solve?

As designers, we have the ability to maintain a view of the root of the problem we’re solving as well as the needs of users. We get the gold medal in exercising empathy for them to understand the reasoning behind their behaviors in a way not many others can. This is not only our job but our passion.

Let’s look at how this works outside of our inner design circle and within our broader teams.

Our Teams

Take a second and think about who you work with throughout a typical week. It might be other designers, engineers, product owners, project managers, writers, QA—the list goes on and will be different for every organization.

No matter how our teams are built, empathy should extend to the roles we interact with, daily.

Extending our understanding to our coworkers is incredibly important when it comes to building work relationships and trust between roles. Our teams have diverse backgrounds and experiences so it’s natural to have some conflict or debate. Nurturing these working relationships with empathy can foster a healthy collaborative environment with multiple valuable perspectives.

Lend an Ear

Step away from your tasks for a moment and identify the needs and interests of the other roles you’re working with.

Think about the mindset of the first person you interact with when you walk away from your standup. Maybe it’s the PM you‘re kicking off a new project with, or maybe it’s a copywriter. What are their needs and wants throughout a project for this role? What do they require to accomplish their tasks? What would it be like to work in their role for a day? The things you expect other roles to understand about your work are the same things they desire from you.

In Practice

It’s easy to discuss needs and goals in theory but what does this look like in practice for designers? Whether you sit down one on one with someone or listen to a group of people on a panel, creating this habit to listen will develop the ability to see things from another person’s perspective — much like the way we design for users. Here are a few methods to build empathy with other roles.

One on Ones

A great way to open the floor with someone is scheduling some time with them one on one. These sessions can be kept casual and open, but keep a list of questions you want to ask them:

• What does your day-to-day look like?
• What does your typical sprint look like?
• What’s the most stressful part of your job?
• What are things I can do as a designer to help you or make your day?

Have your list of questions handy to keep the conversation moving while maintaining an organic flow of conversation. If you already have a good working relationship this act will deepen your understanding further and enhance your relationship.

For an extra challenge, try scheduling a one-on-one empathy session with someone you don’t know very well, or better yet, someone with whom you don’t have the best chemistry (yet). Maybe you and a product owner or engineer don’t always agree on projects, or you forget to include each other in important conversations, resulting in a bit of awkwardness.

Reaching out is the first step to begin improving this relationship. Start the conversation by stating your goal: to partner with them and multiple roles and improve your working relationships and understand each other's needs.

From there, let the conversation flow, keep your questions handy, and listen. If this is a tense working relationship, the act of reaching out will not be a gesture wasted, but one that will strengthen your understanding of each other.

Empathy Panels

At nCino, we hold Empathy Panels to give insight into other roles’ day to day, needs, and goals. Various roles across the company answer questions such as:

• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• What keeps you up at night?
• What is one thing you wish others understood about your role?
• When is the busiest or most stressful time of the release for your role?
• For someone in your role, what could someone else do to make your day?

The questions could be the same or similar to a one-on-one session. An empathy panel is beneficial to get a group of varying roles, including design, to answer these questions and discuss and discern other peoples’ needs together.

If you don’t have an empathy panel at your company yet, consider starting one. Reach out to a product manager, engineer, or a writer you work well with to start the conversation and consider:

• Who needs to be included in this panel?
• What questions will we ask?
• What format will we start with, IE a survey or group discussion?
• How can we message this beyond the group?

You’ll be amazed at how willing people will be to speak up, especially when it relates to their job. With a group started, provide these questions ahead of time then allow the discussion to unfold. These sessions can cultivate valuable feedback across roles which can then be communicated to your respective teams.

The discussions alone are incredible but when left to a small group, they can easily become an echo chamber. After these discussions are kicked off and feedback is flowing, the next crucial step further should be to relay the conversation to your teams and department.

While it can be close to impossible to get a huge department together to discuss their jobs and day-to-day, an empathy panel can provide a forum where representatives for various roles can speak for each. For example, our Product Development and Engineering department at nCino include well over 500 people (and growing), with multiple scrum teams within portfolios. These empathy panels are beneficial to open the conversation for all roles that contribute to the bigger picture of the department and company as a whole.

Retrospectives

Retrospectives are a common ceremony agile teams practice. These ceremonies improve communication between teammates, enhance motivation, and allow others to be heard. This same format can be utilized by designers and developers, designers and PMs, and any other roles that work together on a regular basis.

Retrospectives open the door for better communication and can help frustrated teams become more collaborative.

From a design perspective, you may have pinpointed places in your process that need improvement: designer to engineering handoff, communication with PMs, etc. Once you figure out what needs to change, you can share that need with the goal to improve and strengthen collaboration together.

For example, consider designer to engineering handoff, a common area for improvement on teams. Ask each other:

• What did we do well last release?
• What needs improvement from the designer’s perspective?
• What needs improvement from the engineer’s perspective?
• What pain points do we deal with when sharing design system specs now?
• What are ideas to improve communicating design system requirements?

Work together to come up with a list of questions to bring to the table. Treat this retrospective just like any other with a board to capture thoughts, feedback, and ideas. Specifically, with the designer handoff process, there will be plenty of ideas to improve and create an efficient workflow for all involved, so be ready to capture them.

Open Up

Conflicts and debates will always occur at some point. When they do, take a step back and consider the root of the problem. It could be the pressure of a deadline, demanding tasks, communication styles, different usage of tools, handoff process, or even trust.

Designers excel at solving problems for users. Flexing that same empathy muscle for our teams strengthens our communication with and understanding of our teammates. Your empathy-building methods may look different for each situation. When we disarm ourselves and open up conversations with our teammates, we truly partner together to understand each other, enabling us to build stronger working relationships and better products together.