Having empathy means you have the ability and capacity to understand and share the feelings of another person.
In a world where we’re all trying to increase diversity and inclusion, empathy is incredibly important skill to possess.
Empathy in the workplace can help you connect with your team and peers, help you understand the needs of others, strengthens working relationships, and makes employees feel valued.
In this episode, Mimi Nicklin, CEO and Founder of Freedm, takes a look the role of empathy in the workplace and how companies can create an empathetic culture.
Mimi Nicklin is CEO and Founder of Freedm, an inclusive marketing agency that has been built around a ‘Life First, Always’ motto and commitment to hiring without boundary or bias, with the company hiring a fully hybrid workforce of creative talent from across the globe. She is also an empathy expert and author of Softening the Edge, which explores the impact of the empathy deficit on our work and workplaces.
hello everyone and thank you for tuning in as always I am Kaylee batesman the content director at chican code and
today we’re discussing empathy and the digital future now having empathy means
that you have the ability and capacity to understand and share the feelings of another person in a world where we’re
all trying to increase diversity and inclusion empathy is an incredibly important skill to possess empathy in
the workplace can help you connect with your team and your peers help you to understand the needs of others
strengthen working relationships and make employees feel valued So today
we’re lucky to have Mimi nicklin who’s the CEO and founder of Freedom we’ve
asked today and we’re going to look at the role of empathy in the workplace and how companies can create a more
empathetic culture welcome Mimi thank you so much for having me I’m so
excited to be here thank you for joining us thank you so much and can you kick
off with a little bit about your background to start with please yeah of course I am I’m a marketer by by
experience my whole career has been in marketing in fact in the advertising side of marketing so I’ve been running
agencies my whole life and I’ve been an expat for nearly my whole career so I’m
speaking to you today from Asia Pacific I’m in Malaysia but I’ve spent the last about 14 years in Singapore Hong Kong
Dubai Sri Lanka South Africa um always in the field of marketing
um in 2018 I had a bit of a a life and professional change in that I started to
write my book uh softening The Edge which was a book that became all about organizational empathy as you said in
your introduction and empathy in the workplace and indeed in our world and the writing of that book changed my life
because by some crazy measures it became a bestseller
um and I think you know 2020 had a lot to do with that and not just the pandemic but a lot of other things that
happen socially in in that Year and have and continue to happen since um and in that stage of my life I
shifted to become not just a CEO of agencies um but someone that was speaking about empathy all around the world and talking
to businesses and Brands and audiences about why we need empathy in our work
which of course is five sevenths of most of our weeks but also in our world in our society and in our community and as
I meet you today that’s what I’m doing I’m just about to write my second book I’m just about to launch my second podcast
um and launch a whole lot of courses that that do this that help us create more understanding in our world
amazing and so when you went to to write your first book what what led you to
that was there was there an experience for yourself when you put you know I must share this with people
it actually was yes um there really was I had moved to Dubai to run
um a big business a big Global business um and I moved there alone as a single
mum to the Middle East and I took over a business that was substantially different from the one that I believed I
was joining in terms of its uh sort of financial stability and stage of the
business um and I was thrown hugely into becoming kind of an entrepreneur of a small
business from what had previously been a very sort of corporate advertising career you know kind of Vice President
of global blah blah blah like those big corporate structures right yes and suddenly suddenly I was an entrepreneur
and I had no idea how to do that um in a region that I didn’t know anyone I was as I said a single parent and I I
didn’t know what I was doing you know I was completely overwhelmed um and I met with a business coach over
lunch to say like help somebody help me out of this what am I doing
um and in that discussion she was asking me about my leadership style and I was talking about intuition
and she said Mimi can I stop you is it Intuition or is what you’re talking about empathy and at the time I was like
no no no it’s not empathy like what’s empathy got to do with work um but it did lead me to go and research
it I discovered the empathy deficit which is the term that we use to describe the lack of empathy that we have in our world you know within
Humanity today um and that led me to start writing about it not necessarily writing a book
just writing about it um and before I knew it I had about 35 000 words and somebody said well why
don’t you write a book and I was like well surely the only people that write books are like academics or John Grisham
right and I really like neither of those um but you know my friend convinced me
to try and and and that was the beginning really you know someone said yes um and 2020 happened as it did and the
book got finished and then yeah then you know my my life has had substantially changed I remain in advertising my
agency Freedom um still exists right we I do that I run and I run a branding business but I spend a huge amount of my
time and my passion on this on trying to communicate to people why we need more empathy in the world
yeah and it’s so interesting though that you when when you started that um you described what you you uh you
described it as intuition um which is is so interesting that that actually somebody pointed out to you
it’s in fact um empathy because what role does empathy play in the what in
the workforce then I mean you know you you didn’t actually realize at the time that you were talking about empathy yeah
I I I realize in writing the book that I had been using empathy my entire
career from well my entire life actually and now when I really sort of look at it
I think I you know I probably got that from my parents but particularly my dad who was also a writer and I think most
writers have a great ability to empathize because in order to tell stories and and to talk from other
people’s points of views you have to understand them so in writing the book I did discover that it you know that it
was empathy I have been using but I I as you sort of mentioned there I hadn’t really been aware of that what we know
is that there are very few business indicators that aren’t impacted by
higher levels of empathy so empathy as you touched on in the introduction is the ability to perspective take
fundamentally right if you really sort of make this simple it is a skill set
and not an emotion I like to talk of it as Humanity’s data set it is the ability
to understand the people in your business whether that’s your staff your colleagues you know your teams your
suppliers your stakeholders your board of directors your competition right whoever it is that you’re working with
and amongst this ability to perspective take is to understand where people are
coming from why they behave in the way they do the things that they’re good at or less good at the things that motivate
them um you know the great resignation why are people resigning how do you increase tenure and higher levels of empathy have
been connected to Performance output Innovation creativity teamwork
communication you name it so there are very many indicators that show that high
levels of empathy in the workplace are beneficial to both bottom line and Top Line to all kinds of growth
particularly in any business where you have lots of people which is the majority of businesses unless you happen
to be running on a production line and even then you need empathy with the people running the production line so I
mean fundamentally we’re people first right we’re all human and I always like to say we’re more alike than we are different and empathy allows us to
understand that yes and I’m just listening as well to
um you just pointing out there just realizing you know what employees are good at and what makes them tick and how
to get the best out of them even if sometimes that can come across as it might sound blunt it might sound like
you know you’re not um uh a very um empathetic person even if it comes out
quite blunt but um um my boss here I find her quite empathetic and she said to me once
um we were talking about artwork and creativity it’s really not my skill so she pointed that out and said you know
what actually it’s really not your skill and I thought you know what you’re absolutely correct it might have sounded
Blum but if you’d led me down that route you wouldn’t get the best out of me because I feel like I’m being pushed
into an area that I’m no good at um and probably wouldn’t you know actually it’s not worth me trying to
skill up in artwork because it’s just not my forte um so and I thought you know I I think
all of us have been at that company where we’ve been pushed into areas where there might be a lack of resource and I
think perhaps your manager is just thinking you know what we need somebody to do it and I think perhaps you’re not listening to who would be best for that
job and who is it you know and best suited to and whether or not they actually want to take up skills in that
area it’s just a case of sometimes your manager just asking even if it sounds incredibly blunt
asking and and you know critically as you said asking because curiosity is the
core of empathy you know the question why you know any question um any question that allows you to be
more curious about the person that you’re like you said putting into that role or moving or shifting I talk about
an example in my book which you reminded me of um about a young man and the team we had
to move our team around when we were you know rebuilding this business we had to do um we just had to use the space
differently in the office and there was one young man who really didn’t want to
move um which was very emotionally connected to where he was
um and we had to move him you know there was a significant shift in the space so we had to move him and I talk in the
book about the process I went through with him which was extremely slow one to understand why he cared so much because
for most of us let’s be honest I mean you might prefer to be you know I don’t know next to the coffee machine or not but it’s not really a big deal to most
people yeah but for this young man it clearly was and I had to invest significant time not only in listening
to him but in making sure he knew he was being listened to because I also knew as the leader that I was going to have to
move him anyway so I was going to have to approach that with the highest level of empathy that I could whilst getting
to what the corporate objective or goal was but maintaining our Humanity right making sure he felt heard that I
understood what his concern was that we addressed that as much as we could and I also took him through that process in a
way that allowed him to empathize with me right to understand why his boss was
making him do something he didn’t want to do and so yes you’re absolutely right empathetic communication listening to
people and asking those questions is critical to whether it’s you know a small thing like moving desks or
something bigger like a change in your career or your skill set yes and and I suppose as well with him
if he’d felt that you hadn’t been listened to on the smaller things he might then have assumed that if he
needed to approach you on something bigger that he wouldn’t have had that trust and he just wouldn’t have felt
that you know if I do need to talk to you about something that’s happening in my career later in in time then he just
you know wouldn’t have felt comfortable approaching you and it’s interesting that you wanted to look into the reasons
why because even something like a smallest moving in an office um I can only assume that you know
perhaps he might have had anxiety levels or you know like some some people
um really get used to their environment don’t they and they think you know what if I move I’m going to feel um quite nervous at work or you know he
might be quite introverted if you’re moving in from a corner and they sound like very tiny things but they would you
know really affected his working day absolutely they do and they did
um and you know in the end he was a able to move very comfortably you know because but it took me time right real
time and Trust as you said to find out but what’s stopping you what you know what is the problem what is it you know
and once I was able to understand all of those things I was able to find him another space in the office that replicated that we were able to do that
together you know we became a team and and often that you know people often ask me the difference between sympathy and
empathy and one of the things I would say to people is that empathy brings you together and that’s this story is a
great example of that you know it allowed us as Boston team member to get close enough together to be able to make
resolutions and decisions that work for everyone that you know created pro-social Improvement which is actually
what empathy does on a mass scale so all the way up to like mental health suicide levels like big picture social things
that we could talk about all of them when you see empathy go up you see pro-social Behavior become more cohesive
more beneficial for the group um and of course in that story it’s a very small one it’s moving desk but the
same principles apply when you’re talking at a societal level yes so interesting you mentioned the difference
between empathy and sympathy I remember seeing a wonderful little cartoon years ago and it had that it had the
difference between the two and the empathy as you said is you know finding a solution or trying to work together to
help that person whereas on the cartoon it had sympathy was just somebody saying oh would you like a sandwich it was just
completely unrelated you know all they’ve done was Pat them on the back and say oh do you like a sandwich
it’s so true there’s actually also a little cartoon from um brene Brown and
she has a little cartoon as well where there’s two people walking along the road and they they’re cartoon characters
and they fall into a pothole like a really deep pothole and she says empathy is looking into the pothole that your
friend has fallen in and said like um sorry sympathy is looking in there and saying like oh I’m really sorry you fell in the hole whereas empathy is like
can I get on in there with you and get you out you know so it’s exactly the same as your sandwich thing like the
sympathies I mean it’s a very kind emotion I always but it doesn’t help but it doesn’t do anything it’s just
kindness right and kindness is good we need more kindness in the world but empathy for sure allows you to increase
understanding and therefore you know create more behavioral change yes yes and it sounds that the tech sector do do
you think there’s a lack of empathy in the tech sector currently I think it depends which side of the
tech sector you’re looking at like whether you’re looking at the tech itself or the people yes and I think regardless of which side you look on the
answer is probably yes and no simultaneously um because we are seeing great strides
and I think perhaps today we’ll talk a little bit about kind of um web 3 and metaverse and those types of things but we are seeing great strides of sort of
um the ability for for technology to change social behavior human behavior to potentially increase levels of empathy
to allow us to understand more diverse groups than ever before because it breaks down geographical boundaries and all of these types of things
having said that of course in a in a parallel world where you can create your
own avatar you can create your own new identity you can create a whole separate world for yourself that also allows us
to some extent to behave without social consequence or at least social consequence in the real world
um so I think it’s a complex question it’s it’s a it’s a question that’s very sort of based on on social structure uh
the other thing that I would say is that people often blame technology for lack of empathy you know that’s you know
maybe you’re talking about cyber bullying or something and people will blame I’m saying in quotations here like
social media but the reality is it’s not the social media’s fault it’s the people on social media right so that’s why I
say I think it’s very sort of a nuanced way to answer the question because the reality is Tech is only as good or
empathetic as the people that are building it and the people that are using it because Tech is Tech
um so as I said I think it’s a multifaceted answer and there’s definitely great opportunity to to fill
some of society’s woes through some of the technological innovation out there I think when it comes to the Working World
so sort of corporate Tech businesses I personally don’t work
in them but the ones that I work with I think there is probably a lack of empathy on the whole I think the tech
sector has some of the longest working hours and the most high pressured environments of many that we see out
there today and that and in that way I think you know even just look at the Twitter debacle currently well the last
two months it’s very easy to say that there has been a huge lack of empathy in the decision making made at Twitter so
yeah it’s a big question and I think depending on the area you look at you know we see both the good and perhaps
the less good yeah and I think as well that that working in the tech sector it ties into
a lot of roles are remote as well and that people can feel very disconnected
from their teams quite easily um if you’re you know you find yourself working on your own quite a lot as well
and I suppose trying to to have that empathy and to show that towards team
members that you might not necessarily see that often um in person that that can be quite
difficult as well it can and again it’s a question I get asked a lot which is does remote working
reduce empathy and Leadership or in in a team and I would say no uh it doesn’t
have to but it does take perhaps a little bit more effort to empathize consistently on a screen one of the
things that the pandemic did do which was quite a positive thing you know amongst all the horror is it was a real
leveler for the introverts and the extroverts of the world right because many many not all stereotype but many
people that have been working in remote Tech roles for for many years do so because they are introverted they like
their own space they don’t want to be in public forums or open plan offices all of those things and those roles have
been available for much longer in Tech than they were in other Industries what the pandemic has done and just this
ability to open up hybrid working to the world is it has leveled that balance
between the introverse and the extroverts because now all of us are online not just half of us as it were
um but creating empathy on on a you know a digital platform like we’re on now it does take a little bit more effort you
have to concentrate you have to really focus on your eye contact I often say in conferences you know that media training
will tell me that I’m supposed to have you know this much room between my head and the top of the screen and and I
ignore all of it because every time I’m on a screen I lean in I lean into the computer right I want people to feel my
shoulders are in the room with them um if you look away on a screen it’s
very obvious you know whereas if you’re in a meeting room you probably wouldn’t notice if somebody quickly looked out the window and watched a squirrel for a
minute you wouldn’t notice if they did it on a screen you know if I looked away from you now and started watching
something out the window you would immediately be like well where’s she gone you know and you’d feel maybe like
I’m being rude or I probably would be so I think you can create empathy for sure
and and there’s now um MRI data coming out so sort of Neuroscience data coming out to show
that the levels of empathy can be complicated on platforms but it does
just mean we have to work a little bit harder at that because we for so long have been connected in a physical world that much of our empathy is um second
nature and sometimes when you’re separated by a platform you have to sort
of code that second nature into your first nature and takes a little bit more attention to detail to make that happen
yes and you and you’re absolutely right it did take a little while to get used
to obviously you know your entire team being on a zoom screen and you’re right
I thought at the time it was quite a leveler um I worked at a small company when we went into lockdown and they they
were a great company I always felt that we were very listened to um but I did find that sometimes in
meetings it might be hard to get a word in if you’re as you say quite introverted and then suddenly when I
found that you know we’re on Zoom you know you can raise your hand you felt like if somebody would spot that you’re
about to say something and somebody might yeah you know somebody might say oh you know Kaylee did you have
something to say and that’s not always as easy in a meeting um because everybody’s so focused on you
know for all gathered around a spider phone talking to a client so they’re not necessarily watching each other’s body language and but actually you really did
notice that on a screen and suddenly become more aware of how we work as a team and and um and and at that company
we want one of the lucky companies so where we disappeared into lockdown and we still did very well and we actually
felt like we did better as a team um than we did you know in person in the office and I don’t think that was the
case for all teams at the time so no for sure and congratulations because it you
know there definitely were like the teams that did and the teams that didn’t Thrive and so if you were one that did
that really Testament to the leadership and the people that were in your team to making that work which is really really
great yes I was quite lucky at the time um well the digital future solve the
global empathy crisis do you think no I don’t think it will solve it
um as I touched on earlier I think there’s huge potential to improve it so what we know for example with
um VR right any any level of virtual reality or augmented reality for that matter we have got data that’s shown in
areas things like homelessness domestic violence that these pieces of tech these platforms are able to increase our
empathy for others so there was work that has come out of the US for example uh in San Francisco actually where they
have a huge homelessness problem as a city they have for many years and they because it’s been going on for so long
they were finding that people were being very um sort of nonchalant non-empathetic disconnected from the homelessness
issues so they used a VR experiment where they showed sort of very kind of
middle class well-off people what it was like to go from having a home to being homeless and help them experience
actually how easy that is like how easy it could happen to someone
and the results of that showed very clearly that the people that went through the the virtual reality
experience were we were able to impact their empathy levels significantly so we know Tech can do that equally in a
in a metaverse or a virtual world or I guess any platform for that matter you’re able to connect with people that
you wouldn’t otherwise connect with you know otherwise right so even today you you and I Kaylee you know we’re
connecting as if we’re next door but we’re on different sides of the planet different time zones different weather
you know completely different worlds yet we’re just in a room talking you know like colleagues and friends so again in
that way technology is enabling us this digital future is enabling us to understand other people’s mindsets and
Concepts and outlooks um in a very different way which wouldn’t have been possible beforehand and then finally I
think you know diversity and inclusion technology is going to massively help in that way because I’m of the belief that
you can never be truly inclusive if you only ever hire and engage with people
you know in your postcode basically which is you know more or less the truth in most countries right you tend to hire
from people that live nearby because they at least they used to have to always drive to the office and now obviously technology is enabling us to
hire people from vastly different cultures contexts societies backgrounds
all into one organization again allowing us to truly be far more diverse and
inclusive than we ever have so there are many ways that technology is going to enable that but do I I think it’s going
to solve it absolutely not because fundamentally this is Humanity’s problem we have a 30-year empathy deficit of
nearly 50 percent which means that we have lost 50 percent of a skill set that is evolutionary right we need we need
like physiology physiologically need empathy to survive and over the last
three decades we’ve lost 50 of that ability we have a loneliness endemic
Which is far deeper and wider than any health pandemic we’ve ever seen we have a mental health crisis wherever four I
think now 400 million people suffer with depression it is now the largest cost to our Healthcare Systems worldwide
so much not all of that but so much of this is being fueled by segregation by all of the isms right so when empathy
goes down the isms racism sexism nationalism anyism go up these are human
problems and there is no Tech in the world that can solve them other than people people have to solve these
problems right we have to reconnect at large we have to understand each other at large we have to fill these gaps and
create a society that’s far more you know connected that’s based on those values again um so can it Aid absolutely it’s a
phenomenal tool as it is in many areas of society but can it solve it I don’t
think so I think we have to do that ourselves unfortunately yes I completely agree and you just mentioned you just
touched upon there the the empathy deficit um what do you think companies can do to
improve their empathy deficit well we touched it earlier on listening
and I would say listening is the backbone to all empathetic Evolution or you know sort of solution really the
sustainable health of our employees I think that this year 2023 will be the
year that listening leadership uh will go mainstream right we have to start listening we’re seeing things like the
great resignation and now the great re-engagement this need for people to find new ways to be connected and
motivated at work if you do not listen you are going to lose those people and as we’ve seen the young ones just will
act in a very Brave and Bold and in into independent way right they’ll just walk
out and find something that suits them better and we’re also seeing for the first time in history we see four
generations in the workplace which is perhaps not as common in in cities like London and New York and very sort of
very advanced cities but in much of the world you know we’ll see for example the chair man of that company is perhaps in
his 70s and then the CEO is maybe in his 40s and then you’ve got mid management like maybe early 30s and then you’ve got
the entry level people coming in at late 19 that is four generations in one
office potentially right and we have huge what we call generational gaps in
understanding you know all the way down to how we communicate whether you use a phone versus insta chat or whatever
you’re using right so I think that the one thing that all organizations have to
do but also can do um is to listen at large we have to
build listening LED organizations where we’re listening to our people not only will that improve things like motivation
and tenure and engagement all those things we’ll also see things like strategic thinking and creativity go up
because as listening goes up self-censorship goes down because as people feel heard it’s a self-fulfilling
prophecy actually as they feel heard they speak more right and the more will speak the more confident they get the less they sell censor the more ideas
reach a table the more inclusive thinking you see the more diverse opinions get brought to the table
um the less they’re thinking I’m not going to be here next year I’ve already started looking for another role
or two words Listen to More would be the answer yes and do you think that that
listening and you know empathy is a skill that can be taught do you think that sometimes people might think you
know if somebody speaks up are they are they just complaining are they trying to play the victim you know is it can you
teach somebody to to be empathetic yeah you definitely can we we’ve seen it
we’ve got the data we’ve got the evidence and and now the experience to you know to to prove that you can
um it is a skill set that like many skill sets the more you practice it the better you get at it right so and you
may have heard I think it’s quite a British phrase you know practice makes perfect the last few words of my book
are practice creates permanence which is just the more you get used to listening the more you practice that understanding
the more natural it becomes the better you get at it um empathy is uh built in to all of us
right empathy exists in the prefrontal cortex of your brain so we are all born with empathy right so lots of people ask
me but Mimi don’t you just have more empathy than everybody else um and the answer is no we all have
exactly the same amount of empathy but of course if you don’t practice it you you lose it right so you have to use it to to keep it in practice so yes you can
train it we’re doing it all over the world already we’re seeing it um I sort of have a catchphrase that I say
now all the time which is the more the world talks about empathy the more empathy the world will have and I see it
all the time you know I work a lot in Asia and sometimes those audiences are like a thousand people on a team’s call
um and every time I finish them I have a very clear sense that we have created more empathy because even if one percent
of a thousand people that’s the same call um decide to listen a bit more you’ve made an impact and of course if you do
that in countries like India where there’s such vast populations we’re making a change so yes you can do it in
your organization there are workshops there are processes um all kinds of things that you can build into kpis culture manifestos lots
of different ways yes yeah and already in this conversation you touched a little bit we
talked a little bit about remote working and and loneliness um and and as you said you know most of
us have had to adapt to some are form of remote working it how can we battle the feelings of loneliness
um again I think a huge part of that is is listening LED
um when people feel that they’re not seen or heard um you know loneliness obviously goes up
and I have a chapter in my book that’s called Lonely But Not Alone um because for this exact reason often
we’re not alone you know you might be in an office with another 150 people but you can still feel lonely you can feel that you are not being seen or heard
um so to overcome some of those feelings I think the most important thing is to find ways to connect whether that’s in your workplace and as you touched on if
you find a platform that you’re comfortable on like you were saying earlier on Zoom you’ve you felt that
people could maybe speak a bit more because they could put their hand up and they could be noticed finding the platforms that resonate with you finding
the places that you feel most comfortable to be seen you know and that could be a social network it could be like a Persian cats appreciation Club on
Facebook right it doesn’t matter where it is to overcome loneliness you need to
find people that can see you and hear you and connect with you um and if you’re not finding that in
your workplace on a consistent basis firstly I would say you should if you can speak up about it and speak to your
line manager and talk about that but I also say to many sort of Junior to
mid-level people that if you are not finding the culture is created at the top of your organization you’re probably
better to find somewhere else in the long term because culture has created top down that is just the reality and if
you’re in a workplace where you’re feeling very lonely that you don’t feel you have connection or that there’s not enough people that resonate with your
way of working or seeing things um you’re probably not going to find it over time so you might want to find a
different Community to to tap into um talking of tech I I always find that
people give a touchless earlier social media is such a bad rep but when I moved to Sri Lanka which was 2021 to cut a
very long story short I got caught in a covered lockdown nightmare with my
little girl she was four we were in a very remote part of basically the jungle and my bank cut me off and I didn’t have
any food and we were in lockdown and in a foreign country and I didn’t have any cash and I didn’t have any way to feed
her and it was just a bit of a disaster um and I was able to document that on
Instagram and it was amazing how I didn’t feel alone like the safety that I
got from sharing that and just from people some of whom are my you know my friends and some of whom are people I
just know on Instagram never met them in real life well like how can I help hey I’m in India I’m not that far can I send
you something my sister’s friends grandmother’s aunt is you know two hours from you so at my loneliest like most
fearful time in the last few years Tech filled that Gap you know and of course I
called my my family as well but having that Network around you that was watching and that feeling that if I
didn’t log on if I just disappeared off stories for sure they would have noticed for sure someone would have said hey Mimi’s
always here and she’s not where is she gone uh and they would have known you know so I think in that way technology can be a
huge Aid to to overcome loneliness and that you probably you probably hadn’t
noticed how much people notice and how much they were listening to you I’m
always amazed people message me like every day and they they tell me things like oh because I remember when you did
this thing and I’m like do you I don’t remember doing that so you’re right you never notice how much people notice but
I think I believe that people are all intrinsically good um you know intrinsically people want to
help we are pro-social we want to connect we want to make friends we want to be loved we want to be inspired we
like to connect with people that motivate us um so yeah I think social media can be a
huge Force for good when it’s used well and you mentioned a little bit um
earlier about uh VR and how um you know being able to experience
um what other people are going through and how that can help what about web 3
is something that we hear about a lot um and and that immersion into it into
an environment um do you think web free is the next step for human connection
it’s a big question um what I think is that it’s a very complex
time for us to be developing a second Universe because our first one is in turmoil so from We’re creating web 3
from a point where there is so much stress and tension and segregation and
aggression and violence in our world that we’re probably creating something in a very alternative mindset and I
think that potentially we should be fixing this world before we create a second one so that’s my concern about
the creation of the direction for web3 um I also think that when you have an
unstable society which for sure we’re living within right we have political social economic turmoil
all around us and of course the UK will have one perspective of that I don’t know how many of your listeners are in
England versus not but all around the world you know there are cost of living crisis as an inflation crisis and War
zones and all these things uh offsetting you know how we see the world so when you have the ability to go into
a secondary universe as somebody completely different you know I am you
know a very small petite female um today but of course I could log on to a metaverse and join a metaverse now
um as a as a tool strapping weightlifting mail right how I would
behave would undoubtedly change right because I would have a different Power structure and a different voice and a different way of seeing the world
what that means for social engagement when we’re escaping turmoil I think is
like a social experiment that is yet unseen is there space as I touched on
earlier to create connection with people you wouldn’t otherwise connect with yes are we able to overcome stereotypes in
many ways yes because you connect with people on connection on their engagement on the things they say and not how they
look you know so we can overcome things like you know racial divides or discrimination
but equally we’re having we have huge amounts of fear in the world and then
you have fearful anxious people logging on and pretending to be somewhere else
at scale I think that the balance of how Humanity can handle that
remains unseen because we’ve never done it before right so I think it’s a very open-ended
um forecast for what that means um as I said earlier we’ve seen that empathy can
be increased in well-managed and well sort of safeguarded environments but so
much of web3 is you know unregulated unknown
spaces and currencies that who knows where that might go in in the years
ahead so we have to again just believe in people right because people are people are behind the platforms so we
have to hope and believe that our fellow humans are going to create platforms that
enable Progressive growth yes I was just going to ask you about and stereotypes
in the metaverse and I think you’re right there because it’s it’s an interesting one where you know the
technology meets people and as you say it’s the people that use it are the ones that are really
going to make the difference they’re not the technology itself so I suppose it is it is an answer that can’t be
questioning you whether or not um the metaphors will remove those stereotypes and how we see people
um but I as you mentioned uh right at the start so I feel like the pandemic really did that anyway in terms of us
working from home um and and being able to see you know your entire team on Zoom I really
thought that was quite a leveler and I I thought at the time I I was really
wondering how that was affecting um or how that improved things for for women working in Tech and a lot of those
barriers might have fallen away from them uh uh for for them um at the time so I think the next verse is going to be
incredibly interesting to see how it affects uh stereotypes and and whether or not they fall away or not
I think but I love what you said then I think on some level certainly on a
visual level you know that kind of visual stereotype when we’re as relating to things like skin color and ethnicity
it’s gonna it’s gonna help right because there is as we know huge amounts of unconscious bias in the world
um and people judge you on how you look that is unfortunately unconscious but
also natural right that’s a it’s part of it’s part of uh tribal thinking and part of just who it is to human
um so without a doubt the ability to create worlds where we don’t judge each other on how tall small fat thin what
color you know in much of Asia it’s not even just sort of ethnicity and races the shade you are of that right so you
will judge uh depending on how for example how dark your skin tone is comes
with a whole lot of stereotypes of your history where you’ve come from how much money you’ve got so those things
definitely we can overcome them by creating you know avatars and separate characters in that world so
yes lots of potential yes and we’re almost out of time and I’ve got one last question for you what’s next for you and
freedom you mentioned you writing a second book what are your what are your plans
so for Freedom we are a branding storytelling agency we’re predominantly based in Dubai but we
um we exist to create freedom for Creative Minds all around the world so we work with people across all
boundaries all borders like we’ve said today you know stages of Life backgrounds whatever you know we really
are completely sort of um borderless and biasless um so the next stage for that is to continue to scale that business
um and make sure that we’re able to impact young creative people’s lives by giving them access to a business that
truly is based on freedom right when you want how you want where you want around the
restrictions or requirements that you have in your life so for Freedom we have lots of objectives of that into into the
year ahead for me personally yes I have my second book deal it’s coming out of India which is really exciting for me
it’s a book sort of written from Asia for Asia um I have my brand new podcast coming
out so the empathy for breakfast show was my first podcast we had about a hundred thousand people come in the end
um and I’ve now sort of laid that one to sleep and it’s ready uh to start a new one and I’m hoping that that’s also
going to go live um on radio and then I’m launching some courses um the first set for for females
um uh and I’m really excited about that because for years people have told me like don’t you have online courses and I
was like no I can’t do them and finally I’m gonna start so lots to do this year
um you know my goal is to spread empathy so if every day I get to tell one more person about empathy and why we need it
then you know I feel like I’ve done my job yes cross well if you find some time
for us in this year we would love to have you back at some point uh to hear that journey is going yeah I’d love to I
would absolutely love to thank you well thank you so much Mimi thank you for for chatting with us this morning it’s been
a real pleasure you are so welcome and I really appreciate the invitation it’s been a really great conversation I’ve
really loved it so thank you so much thank you and for everybody listening as always thank you so much for joining us
and we hope to see you again next time
