Heather McGowan - Empathy Meets AI: Expanding Cognitive Capacity and Workplace Potential

Heather E. McGowan is a keynote speaker and author of The Empathy Advantage and The Adaptation Advantage with deep experience in the Future of Work field. She describes the importance of empathy with AI's growing influence and fostering a connected, resilient, and adaptable workforce. Heather discusses how AI can transform cognitive work and why leaders must shift from relying on their own expertise to harnessing collective intelligence. She explains how the promise and tacit agreement of work has changed, leading to younger generations’ focus on mission, impact, and mentorship.     TAKEAWAYS   [02:35] Interested in human behavior and art, Heather goes to RISD to study industrial design.   [04:00] Heather learns to ask the right question – is the process, not the product, that matters.   [04:54] Observing people helps Heather identify unarticulated needs, as seen with the Swiffer.   [06:21] Heather designs various products then does an MBA to bridge design and business.   [07:36] Her mentor’s influence directs her towards ESG-focused private equity work.   [09:49] Integrating design and business, Heather works in academia for several years.   [10:50] Heather starts defining how work is changing for her academic and corporate clients as the Future of Work emerges.   [12:24] Challenging the concept of having to take single discipline courses before collaborative studies.   [13:00] The importance of having a common mindset around problem solving.   [13:31] Using basic systems thinking to understand the impact of solutions.   [14:33] Interesting reactions to mixed-year participation in courses.   [15:25] How people responded to integrated design-thinking projects.   [16:15] Heather gets delayed positive feedback to their innovative approach.   [16:39] Insights from Heather’s experiences in education such as getting people to think propositionally.   [17:00] The genesis of the Adaptation Advantage book.   [17:45] The impact of set occupational identity and the rigid 'education-career-retire' model.   [18:26] Lifelong learning with learning and careers overlapping not sequential stages.   [18:55] Retirement is not good for us, now that life expectancy has increased.   [19:30] The AARP starts to focus on people’s ‘next’ or ‘encore’ chapter rather than ‘retirement’.   [20:46] Heather’s research and writing focuses on Future of Work tacit vs explicit knowledge.   [21:17] Explicit knowledge can be automated, while tacit knowledge needs human interaction.   [22:15] AI as a “third lens” for understanding human cognition and expanding our capabilities.   [23:39] Heather warns that over-reliance on automation risks atrophying our skills.   [24:59] The benefit of enhancing cognitive capabilities, not just reducing costs.   [26:16] The long broken agreement about work between employers and employees.   [27:38] Gen Z seeks mission, meaningful work, and mentorship since there is no job security.   [28:04] Empathy is necessary to connect with employees and understand their mentoring needs.   [28:55] Leaders must not rely on individual intelligence but shift to collective intelligence.   [30:34] Heather predicts AI will disrupt cognitive work much like electrification disrupted labor.   [31:28] Heather connects rising polarization with declines in socialization and greater loneliness.   [32:08] How our brains are shaped for agitation because of our solitude.   [33:00] Workplaces serving as essential social trust-building spaces.   [34:32] Leaders must build trust through authenticity, logic, and empathy.   [35:30] The compelling letter Airbnb’s CEO wrote to employees being laid off.   [37:36] Being transparent about the challenges of fast-changing circumstances.   [38:16] Human-centered policies which optimize for thriving employees improve retention and financial performance.   [40:45] When leaders reach a very senior level in organizations their empathy decreases.   [42:47] Heather encourages reweaving the social fabric to foster collaborative exploration.   [44:16] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Talk with coworkers about shared values. Ask how they're doing, if they're getting enough sleep, if they're working on a project that is meaningful to them. Share experiences where you've been able to bounce forward, not back. Your job is to help your team adapt to change and become the next best version of themselves.       RESOURCES   Heather McGowan on LinkedIn Heather’s website Leading the Day After article Sven Hansen and the Reliance Institute Letter from Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, to employees Frances Frei, HBS Professor       QUOTES   “We need to start taking longer strides and putting greater visions out there and say it's going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it."   "Trust comes down to three things. Authenticity, logic, and empathy. So authenticity is do people experience the real you? Do they feel like you're giving them the honest approach when you're delivering things to you, or are you putting on a Persona? Logic is, do you have a sound theory of what you're asking people to do? Ability to communicate, a division of where the organization is trying to go? And then do you demonstrate that you care what that work means to the individual?"   “Now, most leaders are leading teams of people who have skills and knowledge they do not have at least some of them, and it may not even be within their group. So you can't lead with Individual intelligence, you have to lead with collective intelligence. You cannot get collective intelligence without empathy. So that's the first piece of how we need to lead differently.”   “If we only use technology to replace what humans currently do, it's a race to the bottom. If we only let humans get lazy by using ChatGPT, we will lose. What we need to do is ‘Where is the ability to enhance? Where can I become better? Where can I make my organizational capacity stronger, greater, more resilient?”   “The promise and the agreement on work, the tacit agreement we've had for work has changed. It really became the last promise for the Boomers was ‘I trade my loyalty to an organization for the security of employment’. That promise has been broken for many decades, But the organizations that are still expecting that loyalty, that be it not providing that promise of security, have to realize they have to provide something else.”   “I think what Gen Z is pushing for, which I think a lot of folks are on board with, is instead, I know I'm not going to get security. So I want three things. I want mission. I want to be part an organization that's trying to do something big and hard and meaningful. I want to be part of something bigger than myself essentially. I want meaningful work.”