Applied Empathy: The New Language of Leadership

A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK

"With Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura shows us how to unlock our ability to design solutions, spark innovation, and solve tough challenges with empathy at the center."—Arianna Huffington

Michael Ventura, entrepreneur and CEO of award-winning strategy and design practice Sub Rosa, shares how empathy—the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes—could be what your business needs to innovate, connect, and grow.

Having built his career working with iconic brands and institutions such as General Electric, Google, Nike, Warby Parker, and also The United Nations and the Obama Administration, Michael Ventura offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward.

Empathy is not about being nice. It’s not about pity or sympathy either. It’s about understanding—your consumers, your colleagues, and yourself—and it’s a direct path to powerful leadership. As such, Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work and the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value).

For leaders of all levels, this groundbreaking guide lays the foundation to establish a diverse, inventive, and driven team that can meet the challenges of today’s ever-evolving marketplace. If you want to connect to the people you work with and for, you first have to understand them.

• Questions and Empathy
• Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)
• Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
• The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences
• The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking
• Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real World
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
• The Road to Character