Objectives: In today’s world of rapidly changing complexity we are faced with many emerging
challenges, where existing societal patterns rub up against new thinking. A lot of times these
raise ethical or moral concerns. Many of the challenges are new to humanity, organizations and
their leaders, often leaving them with no solutions. The hope for our future is through
innovation and creativity that will enable us to adapt and evolve to new levels of thinking and
action. Social science theory and praxis tells us that embracing diversity is key to creativity and
innovation. In organizations it is paramount that we listen to differences, differences that offer a
diversity in perspectives on how to approach challenges. The empathy walk assignment is a
social experiment that gives you an opportunity and a tool to gain insight to tapping into
diversity through an empathetic and dialogic approach. Learning and using the four elements of
dialogue are key to performing this assignment.
Directions: You will challenge yourself to go push yourself out of your ‘culture box’ and speak
to someone you do not know, and someone you normally would not approach and talk with. You
will attempt to have at least a one-hour dialogue/conversation (not an interview) with this
individual; the topic is totally up to your discretion. Use the four elements of dialogue that are
shared in the first lecture (week 2) to set up the conversation.
Step 1: You will have set a strategy for your EW social experiment. Who do you want to
approach? Why would I normally not talk to this individual? Where and when do you want to do
this?
Step 2: Conduct your social experiment. Attempt to have a 1-hour conversation with someone
that is different from you.
Step 3: Post-conversation reflect on the experience by taking notes to keep a fresh perspective
on the experience. Ask yourself questions like: What feelings bubbled up for me?; Did the
conversation flow?; Were there similarities that you shared with the individual?; were there
differences?; How did you feel in the end?; what emotions were stirred?; How might this
experience be valuable for me in the future? Were there challenges or failures that occurred?
How might this experiment connect with business ethics?
Step 4: Write a reflexive paper (maximum of 1200 words) using an APA writing style as a
guideline and the Empathy Walk rubric provided in BrightSpace.
A reflexive paper is written in the first-person, and is sharing your experience from sentinel
(senses) perspective and can bring in feelings of emotions experienced during the empathy walk.
You can write about initial feelings when undertaking the assignment, to the experience itself,
and ends with bringing in post feelings––what did you learn and how might you apply this as
leader moving forward.
Once the assignment is complete upload this in the assignment dropbox using a ‘Word or PDF’
Sample Solution
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