Frameworks & Guides
Discover the frameworks and guides I use in my work
Empathy in Action Framework Guide & Canvas
(Formerly called the Heart, Head, and Hand Framework)
This Framework focuses on sustainable change to build the right culture, structure, and systems to support the change over time. It centers the design on the worker voice, and emphasizes co-creation over outdated systems that no longer work for our modern world. This Framework and guide helps build community and trust, by participating and building out approaches over time.
This Framework and Guide allows you to build a movement of change with your organization’s most innovative and forward-thinking leaders to fundamentally shift your culture and system for the better.
This Canvas is also described in Chapter 14 in my book: Empathy for Change: How to Create a More Understanding World. Below are two versions of the canvas: a downloadable fillable Canvas in Google Slides and one designed in a Mural Board. You can use both of these to iteratively co-create a more compassionate culture.
Community & Movement Co-Design Framework
We work with ambitious, purpose-driven entrepreneurs, authors, and organizations to build community and/or drive meaningful transformations. Through our co-design process (see below), we bring clarity and definition to what we’re building, then co-create what might and should be, and finally help you launch, scale, and sustain the work that we’ve built.
We help translate the ideas you have in your head and throughout your organization to create a culture so valuable that people will not want to leave. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to make a deeper impact with your clients, we co-create a community with you that is so well designed it essentially runs itself and is so valuable people will pay to join.
What is a Community?
A community is a group of people taking individual or collective action around a product or program. It begins with a small ecosystem of enthusiastic members that you’re creating (usually from nothing), to help gather around an idea and to take action within their own work or home life.
In almost any community, people desire to:
Have a shared vision, language, and pathway for change
Discover reliable research, proven practices, and action steps
Learn, grow, be seen and supported by a community of peers
Collaborate and co-create with other leaders
Find meaning and be recognized for their achievements
Being part of a community means you’re being seen, heard, and witnessed as a whole person instead of a network which is large and only sees a part of who you are. Communities are usually small and intimate, usually not surpassing more than 150 people within the first year that they are launched.
What is a Movement?
A movement within an organization is a purposeful, organized set of people working towards a common goal to create or resist change or provide provide a voice to those who have historically not been heard. The lessons learned from this medium is inspired and guided by social movements in the past. It all starts with a small group of thoughtful and committed people to help guide the transformation throughout your organization.
For movements to succeed within an organization, it also needs support and commitment from its leadership, or it will fail. A McKinsey study found that 70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. When people are truly invested in change it is 30 percent more likely to stick.
A movement towards the transformation increases buy-in and participation of the change, because they are participants of change, and it’s not happening to them. That’s the true test of empathy: that you’re feeling with your employees not just for them.
Approach
Together, we develop a rich context, advance your ideas and impact into the world and build your capacity to care for a community. We work with you to set the right strategy, culture, structure, and a compelling story, while also leading public experiments to build a movement towards the transformation you seek to make.
This framework uses a mixture of Participatory/Co Design, Lean Startup, Innovation theory processes, and Appreciative Inquiry to co-create the future, together.
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The purpose, vision, goals, objectives and overarching strategy of the community design.
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A system of shared values, practices, and processes that hold the community together and make us interdependent.
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Clear roles, rules, pathways for growth and governance structure.
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The narrative, brand, tone, look and feel that inspires people to join the community and take action in their own lives.
Healing for Work Frameworks
Healing for Work is a online community and program for people looking for support in preventing or working through their burnout. It has been designed with strategies proven to foster deeper connection, build better relationships , be more present in your life and to create deep resiliency within.
The Healing Loop
Using the Healing Loop, each month we work in community with each other, learning about different topics and tap into the wisdom within and in the room.
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How we perceive the world (window) and practice self-awareness (mirror). Over the course of our sessions, we are heard, seen, and witnessed. We share our messy, complicated stories and work to reframe the narratives we have in our heads. We lean into having more compassion for ourselves.
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How we “show up” and engage relationally; how we listen, build relationships, and create strong containers for complex work. In between sessions, we engage in our world with our new awareness we’ve built in the first session. In our second session in our month, we create action plans based on real data and stories we’ve collected from our life.
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How we design, decide, implement, learn; how we influence direction, bring focus to action, engage in safe-to-fail experiments. With draft Action Plans in tow, we are able to live a more focused and purposeful life that has compassion for ourselves, but also for those around us. We’re able to feel more centered and respond with empathy and humility.
The Four Rs Framework
HFW helps you integrate adult Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and other proven methodologies like Positive Psychology into your own life to put this work into action within the workplace. In this year-long program we focus on the Four Rs Framework: Regulation, Relationships, Resilience, and Reintegration so you have a consistent presence guiding you through your transformation.
In a series of meetings, you will gain awareness of yourself, your relationships, and the system; discover what works, how to overcome barriers, and create actionable plans for a more centered and connected life, and eventually your work’s ecosystem. We’ll learn how to rejoin your community and build empathy for each other’s different roles and journeys on this path of emotional regulation as we navigate our professions.
By the end of this program, you’ll be a certified HFW program graduate and leader in self regulation, relationship building, and resilience readiness within your workplace.
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This module is all about how we might build self-compassion and power within ourselves to create the world we want to live in--to be actors in our life rather than reactors.
As we uncover our emotions and feelings, we’re able to practice self awareness (the mirror) and see how we perceive the world (the window). We’ll understand and define who we are, our purpose and principles, and our identities in the process.
Month One: Self-Awareness
Month Two: Self-Regulation
Month Three: Identity & The Window
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In this module we’ll move into work relationships. You’ll learn how to share feelings and emotions with others, challenge your assumptions, set boundaries, reframe failure as learning, overcome self doubt and take imperfect action.
This module will help us awaken compassion at work where we recognize moments of incivility, bullying, or shame as sources of suffering and act on your shared humanity to alleviate them.
Month Four: Social Dynamics & The System
Month Five: Boundaries
Month Six: Better Relationships
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This module helps you manage adversity by drawing on our inner resources so that we can emerge from a tough time stronger and better equipped to deal with setbacks and having the ability to ask for help.
Resiliency teaches us how to work smarter and involves three key actions: Reflect, Reframe, and Reach Out.
Month Seven: Self Reflection
Month Eight: Competence and Commitment
Month Nine: Reach Out
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In this final module, we’re looking back on all the things that we have learned and remember we have the power within ourselves to do hard things.
We’ll gather in community with each other again once a month to remember our learnings and renew our commitment to ourselves and healing.
Month Ten: Self Check In & New Conversations
Month Eleven: Reimagine Relationships
Month Twelve: Tools, People & The System
