Listen Until You Sweat: Virtual Reality for Deep Conversation

A volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) workplace requires a distinct set of leadership competencies: non-hierarchical influence, the ability to rapidly align across functions, creativity for drawing insights across domains, and most of all, “empathy,” the linchpin leadership skill in the modern workplace (manifested in our ability to listen deeply). Empathy allows us to imagine the world from different perspectives, unite across functions, generations, regions. It is becoming a requirement for deep motivation and true influence in a world of diffused and often scattershot attention.

Promising research from Chief Learning Officer magazine indicates that soft skills can, in fact, be trained, and that empathy is the foundational skill, having the greatest positive correlation with all productivity measures as well as other desirable leadership traits. Leaders who undergo behavior based soft skill training report a 49 percent increase in soft skills post training, and organizations demonstrate an average ROI of $4,000 for every $1,100 spent developing soft skills. Until now, “empathy” was believed to be mostly intrinsic. Research now shows that empathy can actually be trained by placing the viewer in an immersive, virtual environment.