D642 Task 1 Empathy and Collaboration Reflection Example

The Same Three Voices in Every Meeting, Including Mine: A Reflection on Empathy and a Plan for More Inclusive Collaboration by a Composite Marketing Coordinator on a Remote Team

Student Name

School of Business, Western Governors University

D642: Empathy and Inclusive Collaboration, Task 1

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

The Same Three Voices in Every Meeting, Including Mine: A Reflection on Empathy and a Plan for More Inclusive Collaboration by a Composite Marketing Coordinator on a Remote Team

My Preferences and Working Style

I am a marketing coordinator for a composite regional credit union, working fully remote on a team of eight spread across three time zones. The self-assessment I completed for this course described my preferences clearly: I think out loud, I am energized by fast discussion, I like to decide quickly and I prefer spoken conversation to written communication. My professional relationships are strongest with the two colleagues who share that style; we often finish each other's sentences in meetings. The assessment and the reflection it prompted made me look at the other side of those strengths.

Where Our Collaboration Falls Short

When I reviewed recordings of our last four weekly planning meetings, the pattern was obvious. Three people, me and my two like-minded colleagues, did about 70% of the talking. Two teammates, Priya, our designer, and Marcus, who handles member research, spoke only when asked a direct question. A newer colleague based in Arizona, joining at what is 7 a.m. for her, rarely spoke at all. Decisions were usually made by the time the quieter members might have spoken. Afterward, I learned in one-on-one conversations that Priya had seen a flaw in a campaign we approved and had not raised it, and that Marcus had member survey data that contradicted an assumption we built a whole plan on.

Research suggests this pattern matters for results. In studies of groups working on a range of tasks, a collective intelligence factor predicted group performance, and it was associated with the average social sensitivity of members and with more equal distribution of conversational turn-taking, more than with the individual intelligence of members (Woolley et al., 2010). By dominating our meetings, I was making our team less capable than its members.

What Empathy Requires of Me

Empathy is often described as a feeling of understanding for another person, but in collaboration it is a set of behaviors: noticing who is not speaking, imagining the meeting from their position and changing how I act. From Priya's position, our meetings move too fast to think through a design concern before the topic changes. From Marcus's position, data he could share in writing never has a place in a conversation dominated by quick opinions. From my Arizona colleague's position, the meeting is early, she is new and she does not yet know whether it is safe to disagree with people who have worked together for years. Teams learn better when members feel safe to speak up, raise concerns and admit uncertainty, and leaders and peers shape that safety through everyday behavior (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). I am not the team's manager, but my behavior is part of what makes our meetings feel open or closed.

My Professional Relationships and Network

The self-assessment also asked me to look at my professional network, and the result was uncomfortable in a similar way. The colleagues I talk with most, inside and outside the credit union, are people much like me: extroverted, fast-moving marketers. I had built few relationships with people in member services, compliance or data analysis, even though their perspectives shape whether our campaigns work. My network, in other words, reinforced my blind spots rather than challenging them. Over the next two months, I will schedule short virtual coffee conversations with one person each week from a department I rarely work with, asking what they wish marketing understood about their work. I expect these conversations to improve our campaigns, but they are also practice in the same skill the course is about: listening to understand someone whose view differs from mine, rather than listening for a chance to reply. I will keep brief notes on what I learn from each conversation and share useful insights with my team, so that the benefit of a wider network reaches everyone's work, not only mine.

Practices for More Inclusive Collaboration

First, share agendas and key decisions in writing at least a day ahead, so that people who think before speaking can prepare. I will propose this to our manager and model it for items I lead.

Second, invite written input. For every major decision, we will use a shared document where everyone adds ideas and concerns before the meeting, which gives Marcus's data and Priya's design concerns a place.

Third, change my own behavior in meetings: I will speak after at least two others have spoken on any topic I care about, and I will ask a specific quieter teammate for their view when I sense they have one.

Fourth, rotate who leads the weekly meeting, so that leadership of the conversation is not always with the fastest talkers.

Fifth, move the meeting to a time that is reasonable in all three time zones, and record it for anyone who cannot attend.

Research on inclusion suggests that climates in which people are treated fairly and their differences are integrated into decision-making reduce conflict in diverse groups (Nishii, 2013). These practices aim to create that kind of climate in our small team.

Checking Whether It Works

In six weeks, I will review meeting recordings again and compare how talk is distributed. I will ask each teammate privately whether they feel more able to contribute and what still gets in the way. I will also track something concrete: how many ideas or concerns raised in the shared documents change a decision. If the balance of voices has not changed, I will ask the quieter members what would help, rather than assuming I know.

Conclusion

My preferences for fast talk and quick decisions have strengths, but on a remote team they helped exclude colleagues whose insights we needed. Reflection and research showed me that empathy in collaboration means noticing who is silent and changing my own behavior. Written agendas and input, rotating facilitation, waiting my turn and better meeting times can make our collaboration more inclusive, and checking results with my teammates will tell me whether they are working.

References

Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 23-43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305

Nishii, L. H. (2013). The benefits of climate for inclusion for gender-diverse groups. Academy of Management Journal, 56(6), 1754-1774. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.0823

Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science, 330(6004), 686-688. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1193147