Building empathy into communication, work processes, and leadership
When we look back on our experiences at work, we often remember those meaningful human moments when we felt recognized, supported, or connected with others. Sadly, many of us have also experienced moments when we felt undervalued, unseen, or uncomfortable speaking up.
Empathy plays a critical role in building psychologically safe and inclusive work environments where people feel comfortable sharing ideas, asking questions, or providing different perspectives—creating really meaningful moments that can stick with us long after they happen.
If practiced authentically, empathy is an essential skill that helps us see problems from different points of view and make better, more thoughtful decisions by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. It has also been shown to have a direct impact on innovation.
At Canva, empathy is woven into our values—particularly, “Be a good human.” We believe making decisions guided by our values enables us to create the best product for our community and the best culture for our team around the world.
Here’s a look into how we’re building a culture driven by genuinely living our values and empathy’s role in that.
Empathetic communication—whether with your manager (we call ours “coaches”) or teammates—helps to create an environment of trust and transparency, empowering teams to play an active role in solving complex problems while not being afraid to try new things and innovate.
Actively listening to your team to seek to understand their lived experiences and the support they need to feel empowered at work is an incredibly important part of empathetic cultures.
Some of the regular cadences we have in place include People Pulse surveys twice a year, a Fix-It Form where our team shares their thoughts and opportunities to improve our ways of working and a confidential Speak Up inbox where people can raise concerns anonymously.
Like many companies, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create high-impact teams. We’re continuing to evolve a work environment around balancing two of our core values: “Pursue excellence” and “Be a good human.” We do this by building a space where everyone feels comfortable asking the people around them for regular feedback and for our leaders to live by it, too. We’ve found sharing helpful guidance and resources on how to ask and give feedback that’s clear, actionable, and delivered empathetically is a great first step.
As part of this, it’s essential to talk about how empathy can sometimes be misplaced unintentionally. This can happen if you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, so you may avoid sharing feedback that could help them grow, or you could be vague about the details. While it may feel like a safer option, it can escalate over time into more significant issues, so it’s important to keep feedback specific and clear while also being caring—which helps to create a safe and trustworthy space for both parties.
It’s equally important to intentionally embed empathy into everyday processes because one single moment has the power to inspire other empathetic actions.
We’ve spent some time reviewing our entire hiring process and making adjustments, making the experience as inclusive and thoughtful as possible. Some of these initiatives include aiming to respond to every job application we receive and provide feedback to candidates across different stages of the process, particularly those who are unsuccessful but may look at applying for another role in the future. We also ask candidates if they’d like to make any adjustments based on their personal preferences and needs—significant for people with accessibility needs, sound sensitivity, or require built-in breaks during the process.
We actively screen for empathy through our interview questions because we believe it’s a critical skill in every role that enables our team to do their best work. For example, we often ask candidates if they can tell us about a time when they worked with someone with different viewpoints or opinions and how they approached it. This helps us to understand how the person listens to and respects different perspectives and collaborates.
Beyond this, creating dedicated support or resources on how to support teammates with empathy, including through life’s challenges, goes a long way. We share specific resources and guidance around caring for team members through grief and loss, family and domestic violence, and gender affirmation. We also recently evolved our Flex Leave offering with new pillars, including supporting family, hardships, and inclusion.
One of the most important foundations of building a culture of empathy is having leaders who lift teams to rise to new challenges and achieve their goals while being inclusive of people’s different preferred ways of working, well-being, and lives outside of work.
At Canva, we have two types of coaches. We use the word “coach” because we believe in fostering an environment where our team can partner and collaborate with coaches in their own craft to help grow their skills and lean on them for support when needed—without as much importance on titles or traditional hierarchy.
The first coaches are our people managers. Everyone has a coach to connect with regularly to set new goals, align priorities, and unlock any blockers stopping them from achieving their and Canva’s goals. Over the last decade, we’ve been incredibly intentional about the brand of leadership we build. We’ve created dedicated training programs to support our coaches in building self-awareness and adapting their coaching style to be most productive and inclusive of their coachees’ preferences or learning styles.
Secondly, we have professional development coaches. Whether it’s a three-month coaching program or a breakthrough session, our internal coaches stretch our team to solve challenges from multiple perspectives and support them in building their personal leadership skills.
Overall, there are endless possibilities brought to life by cultivating a culture of empathy. The ability to empathize makes it possible to guide solutions to problems when the outcome isn’t obvious. Experiencing empathy at work builds strong relationships and environments where people feel they can bring their full selves to work, empowering diverse perspectives and ideas.
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