Next to my desk sits a pie-size piece of concrete. An impression of my daughter’s hand is in the middle of the pie. The concrete, when it was wet, embodied empathy. It molded perfectly to shape and size of my daughter’s hand.

Empathy is our commitment to accurately comprehend another’s inner, unseen reality. Our authentic curiosity and inquiry make it possible for people to impress upon us their ideas, feelings, perspectives, and experiences. As we listen and seek to understand, we create models in our minds that represent another person’s inner world. Our models can mirror this reality with remarkable accuracy.

Empathy promotes exceptional and effective work—it infuses what we do with unmistakable human-centered elements. This kind of work combats our inclination to relate with others, even the people we serve, on terms that meet our needs.

Much like the handprint, empathic work molds to the needs of others. This is why, for example, the relative comfort of your chair is a direct commentary on the chair manufacturer’s degree of empathy for its customers. If you’re not comfortable, they clearly didn’t prioritize you in their design process. Avoid this mistake in your projects.

Make sure your 3Ms—messages, materials, and messengers—represent the actual needs of the people you serve. People intuitively respond to empathy. Projects that embody empathy cultivate engaging environments that change lives. They prioritize the needs of the people they’re intended to serve, not its practitioners.

Tags: empathy, engage, engages, engaging environments

Paths form where we walk. As depicted in this photo by Dutch photographer Jan-Dirk van der Burg, repeated travel over a piece of ground creates a path.

Our brain follows this rule as well. A substance produced in our brain called, myelin, is the brain’s version of packed earth. How does this happen? Neural sequences that fire together wire together. In other words, actions—what we do—form these myelin paths.

Knowing a little more about myelin can shape how you cultivate engagement and empathy, especially with youth:

1. Like a trail in our brain, myelin creates highly efficient pathways by coating neural sequences that we use. This process is called myelination.

2. The speed increase in signal transmission between neurons that result through myelination are like the difference between walking and traveling by jet.

3. Myelin allows our brains to regulate itself the same way we regulate speed in traffic by feathering the gas and break pedals to avoid getting into an accident.

4. Myelin is essential for inhibition: the ability to avoid or stop behaviors with negative consequences.

5. Lower rates of myelination in youth, especially males, helps explain the lack of inhibition that characterizes adolescence.

6. Overuse of alcohol and other drugs inhibits, and in some cases stalls, myelin production. Such substances are the equivalent of fencing off the path in the photo above. Eventually the path vanishes into its surrounding environment.

7. The adolescent brain is hyper-vulnerable to the use of drugs, including alcohol. During these years the brain is actively producing myelin that will expand the function and efficiency of the brain. Alcohol and other substances inhibit this process in adolescence than later in life.

A highly-accessible book on this topic is, The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle. For a deeper dive, read this article about the relationship between myelination, alcohol use, and addictions. It’s fairly complex, but the research findings are truly stunning.

Research on myelin is a burgeoning new frontier, offering incredible insights about human behavior and relationships. I’m eager to see what new findings appear in the next few years.

Tags: adolescent brain development, engages, engaging youth

In this short video I demonstrate an innovative, highly effective approach to engaging young people.

I’ve been testing The Single Sheet for several years with a variety of age groups and messages. I’ve also helped organizations implement this method to increase engagement with their own messages. I recently filmed one of my presentations to demonstrate The Single Sheet in action. This video features highlights from that presentation.

The Single Sheet process engages people at a deeper level with a wide range of important messages. During this presentation we discuss the prevention message, “Avoid the use of alcohol.”

Know that the students’ thoughtful, insightful comments you see here are spontaneous. I didn’t prompt them to say anything.

Post this link to your organization’s website and Facebook page and help broaden the conversation about the how we can better engage people.

I’m grateful to my friend, a courageous educator, Heather Johnson, for furnishing her classroom, and to the students who participated!

Tags: design thinking, effective engagement, engage, engages, learning, prevention