What if empathy wasn’t something we talked about, but something we actually trained, practiced, and scaled?
My guest today, Ed Kirwan, is doing exactly that. Ed is the CEO and Founder of Empathy Studios, a creative education organization using the power of film to develop empathy as a real, learnable skill. He’s also the founder of Empathy Week, now the world’s largest empathy festival for schools, reaching more than 1.8 million students across 56 countries since 2020.
In this conversation, we explore why film is such a powerful catalyst for empathy, what Ed has learned from years of working with students around the world, why empathy is becoming a critical skill in the age of AI, and how developing empathy can boost well-being and help create a better world.
This is a hopeful, practical, and deeply human conversation about what empathy looks like when we stop treating it like a soft skill and start treating it like a core capability.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- The emotional power of film to supercharge feeling and connection.
- Why empathy and related skills are necessary to reap the benefits of AI.
- How humans are adapting, seeking things that are real and authentic, and why making something look worse may actually be better.
“That’s the power of film. It can really supercharge emotions; it can supercharge feeling; it can supercharge connection.” — Ed Kirwan
Episode References:
About Ed Kirwan, CEO and Founder, Empathy Studios
Previously a science teacher in London, Ed founded Empathy Studios, an education and creative organisation using the power of film to develop the skill of empathy in all. A director, filmmaker, and educator for 10+ years, Ed also started Empathy Week, the world’s largest empathy festival for schools, which has reached 1.8 million students across 56 countries since 2020. Their framework for empathy development is backed by the University of Cambridge, and Ed’s team now works across teams and leaders in the business world to help develop and embed the skill of empathy – foundational to high-performing and thriving teams.
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Connect with Ed Kirwan:
Empathy Studios: empathystudios.com
Empathy Week: empathyweek.org
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ed-kirwan
Instagram: instagram.com/edkirwan
YouTube: youtube.com/@Empathy-Studios
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. What if empathy wasn’t something we talked about, but something we actually trained, practiced and scaled, starting with our youngest people? My guest today, Ed Kerwin, is doing exactly that. Ed is the CEO and founder of empathy studios, a creative education organization using the power of film to develop empathy as a real, learnable skill. A former science teacher turned filmmaker and educator Ed has spent more than a decade exploring how storytelling can unlock connection, compassion and collaboration. He’s also the founder of empathy week, now the world’s largest empathy festival for schools reaching more than 1.8 million students across 56 countries since 2020 backed by research from the University of Cambridge. Ed and his team are now bringing this work into organizations and leadership spaces, helping teams build empathy as a foundation for high performance and well being. Today, we explore why film is such a powerful catalyst for empathy. What Ed has learned from years of working with students around the world, why empathy is becoming a critical skill in the age of AI, and how developing empathy can boost well being and ultimately help create a better world. This is a hopeful, practical and deeply human conversation about what empathy looks like when we stop treating it like a soft skill and start treating it like a core capability. I’m delighted that Ed came back to the show to share what he’s learned over the last few years. Take a listen. Welcome back. Ed Kerwin to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on again a few years later to give us an update on all your efforts with empathy week and empathy studios, and all the work you’re doing with young people around helping them strengthen and cultivate their empathy, as well as the work you’re doing with organizations and leaders now. So we are compatriots on this journey of trying to help the world be a more empathetic place. Welcome back.
Ed Kirwan 02:49
Thanks for having me. It’s, it feels like yesterday, but we, I think we just discussed it’s been a couple of years. So yeah, things have changed, but it’s really exciting that, yeah, where we are in the world right now, in some ways, and in other ways, it’s just made it even more obvious that we need more empathy and leadership, and we need more empathy in the
Maria Ross 03:06
world, for sure, for sure. So refresh for folks that don’t know you, or folks that haven’t heard you in a while, tell us your story going from filmmaker to doing the work that you’re doing now, and tell us a little bit about empathy week and how it’s evolved.
Ed Kirwan 03:20
Yeah, amazing. So my background is, actually, I was a scientist. I studied biochemistry at university. I spent, actually a year in a lab. I was awful at it. They suggested that I did some work with outreach and kids I love that became a teacher and taught for a number of years in North London in the UK. I was a science teacher, and I left, and I just sort of picked up filmmaking as a bit of a hobby to start with, doing some passion projects and work, particularly around homelessness. And I saw and experienced the power of film. Even if I look back at my films, then I think, gosh, they were awful, but they still had an impact on people in various ways. And I kind of merged, over the years, merged my two passions of education and filmmaking together, and ultimately, since sort of while filming in 2019, all the way through to now, I’ve been making films that particularly around people’s life stories, cinematic documentary style, films that schools can use and educators can use to help students develop that skill of empathy. What’s happened since we’ve sort of spoken is that companies, organizations have picked up on it and said, Oh, can you do something with us? And I’ve trained leaders from organizations like the BBC to private healthcare companies, law firms, even alcohol and beverage companies, basically anyone that works with anyone, which is basically every organization in the world, right, clearly needs this skill. And I think what’s happened since we’ve spoken is obviously the, you know, a few years ago is the rise of AI, and I think that has kind of pushed forward this agenda of, actually, yes, tech is booming, but what’s left is actually the huge. Human skills. That’s what companies are hiring for. We’re seeing a mental health crisis in young people across the world, social media and the internet and addiction to phones and all of this sort of thing. And actually, what schools are looking for, what companies are looking for, is actually the same thing. How do we develop as humans? How do we be better for ourselves? How do we be better for other people? Essentially, all of our work now is combined around using film as the tool. Empathy is the skill we’re developing, and we are an education company as a whole. So that’s
Maria Ross 05:29
right, that’s where we’re at. I love it, and I know that you used some of this as an educator in the past, yes, and you, I recall from your story, last time that you had some great success with building empathy, and sort of that was like the seed of the idea of empathy week, and now it’s a global movement. But can you share a little bit about that personal story of how you leveraged film and then discovered the impact on behavior and on collaboration?
Ed Kirwan 05:57
Yeah, so obviously, when I was a teacher as well, I used video and film, and it wasn’t mine, because I wasn’t even a filmmaker. Never made anything, but I used film. Can get you from zero to 100 very quickly, more quickly than someone talking. I think even if you took the best speaker in the world, whoever that is for whoever, maybe it’s Nelson Mandela, for some people, for example, you could take his story, and obviously he’s been dead a few years, but you can take some of his work and his his quotes, and you can add music to it, make it cinematic, and that would have more impact than hearing him speak live for 10 minutes, potentially. I think that’s the power of film. It can really supercharge emotions. It can supercharge feeling, supercharged connection. And I used to use film with a group of young lads called that well, they were self, called themselves the you gang. They basically all failed their mock GCSE science exams. These are like exams in the UK when you’re 16 years old that allow you to progress really important exams. And they all got ungraded, or you, which, at the time, was the lowest grade, and they came up the stairs one day shouting, You gay.
Maria Ross 07:04
You gay. They embraced it, yeah,
Ed Kirwan 07:09
sweating at the top of the stairs. I was before then obviously I like, put an act on to try and tackle these young boys who were, you know, disenchanted with the education system, felt left behind, lot of anger, chip on their shoulder, trouble with the police, gangs, that sort of thing. But on the inside, were deeply emotional. Wanted to do well, wanted to be seen, heard, understood. I had the basketball connection. I’m six foot five. I’m quite tall. I play basketball which didn’t match up in their mind. Geeky science teacher, basketball, hip hop culture, bit of a clash, yes, but really good for them to see that. And I basically worked with them for a year, and I used NBA highlights videos and speeches, you know, Kobe Bryant and various ones as a reward, but also as a like, stop complaining. Like, get on with it. Yeah, your life’s tough, but and use videos to motivate. And started to hear them almost like jokingly say some of the quotes, but also realize that they were sifting in. Yeah, like you said, I took a few years away from education, well, from teaching, but realized that actually empathy week came about from my experiences of filming and my experiences of education. And really, actually sounds a bit harsh, but a lot of the education film material that’s out there is crap. It’s not very good, right? And it’s not entertaining, and it speaks too directly to the issue bullying. It’s basically someone saying, Don’t bully. You could hurt someone’s feelings the eye rolls the back of their head, right? Or it’s actually give them a story that doesn’t, that is about bullying, but doesn’t speak directly about it, or is about, I don’t know. It could also be about positive things, about following your dream and your passion, right? Or could be about health issues, could be about diabetes, right? Recently made a film about a Mexican filmmaker. He speaks about lots of things, from grief to passion for football to the culture of Mexico. The first sort of two minutes of the film, he talks about diabetes. And I’ve just visited school two months ago, just before Christmas, where the head teacher said that film allowed a young lad and who’d just been diagnosed with diabetes, to really come out of his shell and to understand and talk about his own diagnosis of diabetes with his classmates. And I think this is the power of film, and this is what I’ve realized from the seven years now that I’ve been using film. Yeah, it’s originally we were like, great, you’re going to develop empathy for the person in the film, and therefore you’re going to meet someone and see but actually, the real empathy building comes after the film, where people start speaking next to each other, and you’re either, I always say you’re either one of two people. You’re either Person A which is, my gosh, like, that is a bit of me. I. Feel seen, I feel heard. They’ve explained what maybe I couldn’t explain about my culture or my experiences, and the power of that is afterwards, I can talk about that. Maybe it’s something like racism or something that I’ve experienced that’s really bad, or maybe it’s something really positive, like passion for music or something, but I can relate to it. I can talk about that. What happens if I then feel more confident to talk about myself in light of this film, is that all the other people around learn about me? Yeah, and that is empathy. Is the building of human I call it like human data over time. So you’re understanding what, what makes someone tick. Who are they as a person, what’s happening for them. So that’s Person A, or your person B, which is like, my gosh, that is, I just have no insight into that person’s world at all. But now I’ve learned it, and I can now at least see what it’s like to be from Nepal, maybe, or from India, or from Mexico, or listing some of the places we filmed. But I can also see a bit of myself in that person as well. Yeah. And when you get these groups of students or people or leaders or senior leaders start talking about stuff, yeah, that’s the empathy building. And what’s amazing is that I walk around, especially in like, a corporate environment, I could show a film that is just like, nothing to do with anyone in the room. What does everyone start talking to talking about the film, they start talking about themselves. Oh, I once had a neighbor that, or my wife’s partner. Of my wife’s not that would be, not be her great, would it? My wife’s like, you know, parents, or where she came from, did this, or, you know, and then all these stories, right? I think that the trouble we have in the world at the moment is the time for that to happen, lacking the time for true empathy to really take place. But this is what we’ve been doing, and this is how we’ve been using film, and why I think it’s so incredibly powerful to build the skill of empathy.
Maria Ross 11:56
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve talked to my first empathy book, the empathy edge, the power of story and, you know, giving people full license to binge streaming networks to just take in other stories, take in documentaries or fiction or nonfiction. I recently heard a speaker talking about the fact that you’re able to actually make more points in nonfiction. This is coming from a former journalist about the issues, because people let their guard down when they’re reading fiction, but also, there’s power in sharing real stories as well with people of just to your point. It’s not so heavy handed, you know, it’s to your point with young kids and even adults, right? Like I clearly see what this is about and what they’re trying to make me feel or make me think, versus just telling a story about someone and framing it in a way where they can draw their own conclusions and also just get to know that person, they let their guard down a little bit. It’s really interesting. I was watching a few weeks ago, we had our son, who’s 11, watch the Martian with Matt Damon, based on the science fiction book about the astronaut who gets stuck on Mars because the team thinks he’s dead, and he ends up surviving for years. And I was not convinced he was going to sit still long enough for the movie, but he did, and this it was more powerful for him to learn the lesson of perseverance and resourcefulness from seeing in in the form of a story, then a video about you should be resourceful, and you should never give up, and you should you know what I mean, it’s just to your point. There’s the rolling eyes, but he’s getting that lesson in the context of someone’s story. And I think that’s what’s so powerful about the work you do. And I want to add, since we spoke a few years ago, after we spoke, I brought the empathy week initiative, which I want you to explain in a second, because it’s coming up again soon, to my son’s school, and the feedback was phenomenal. Some of the teachers didn’t implement it the right way. But now I know it’s you know. Now you’ve made it free, you’ve made the resources available, you guys have tuned and tweaked things so it’s really easy for teachers to implement. And I love that you’re now branching out into doing this work in organizations too. Because even as I was kind of experiencing it, I was like, oh, there’s so many organizations that actually need this, and now you’ve branched out to that. So you know, we got to experience it firsthand. Can you explain, for anyone that’s not familiar with it, what that initiative is, and then help us understand how it fits into your larger initiative of empathy studios,
Ed Kirwan 14:32
yeah, so since we’ve spoken, we’ve, like a lot of businesses, had to tweak change, you know, constantly grow. Essentially, empathy Studios is our mothership, our umbrella organization, and we are now empathy 365, and what we’re doing, well, we’re just about to launch it. We’re launching a platform like Netflix, like an empathy streaming, but original content, all of our original films, so that’s going to eventually be available for schools. And this is a decision to one make it. Listening to teachers. How are they using things like you said they weren’t. The teachers in that other school didn’t necessarily, some of them didn’t necessarily implement it. What has everyone used? Everyone’s used YouTube, everyone’s used Netflix or some sort of streaming provider. And then so we’ve basically user experience creating a platform with all of our content. So rather than five films a year you’re actually going to watch, be able to scroll and go through things and short so we’re creating this just like amazing platform of content which will eventually produce more and more. And now empathy week is our festival. So that’s our festival that’s free for anyone, anywhere in the world. And now what that does is it doesn’t have a full film program, but it does have film content. It has lessons. We now have training for teachers, so we have accredited CPD, continuing professional development training for teachers so that can be online, so any teacher in the world can access that. It’s saving schools money whilst delivering value. We’ve got one on AI and empathy, which is led by an amazing, amazing teacher called Scott Hayden in Basingstoke, which is town in England, and he’s kind of head of tech and learning at college there. And he just is phenomenal. His CPD got rated 96% score, and there was like 150 teachers on this and he’s coming back for round two, because obviously, things move so fast. And then we’ve got, like, the Ruth Strauss Foundation, they’re talking about grief and bereavement and how to teach us to support because teachers don’t get this training. So they’re doing an amazing session on that. And then we’ve got born free, which is an international wildlife charity talk about, you know, actually challenging some of the things that we do, especially in primary schools around animals and empathy for the planet, empathy for one so all of that’s free, and that’s just for teachers. We’ve got assemblies for primary students, and we’ve got on demand speakers, so we’ve got six professionally filmed, sort of Ted style interview of people from Rob who’s basically this producer in London. He’s produced songs for the 1975 I don’t know if they’re big in America or not, like they’re known sort of all over the world. He’s produced, like, loads of their songs. Holly humstone, other thing he’s just talked about, how did he get into production? And so rather that be like, you know, careers advisor at school or college. This is how you do a career. Do this test. It will tell you what careers you might like, Yeah, screw that. Get to this. This is a guy, and he’s like, to be honest, I don’t even know really how I got here. I did this and I did this, but this is what we this is what we’re trying to do. So that’s empathy week, and that’s free for any school anywhere in the world. Last year, we reached half a million students, which was amazing. We’re already at, I think, you know, going to beat that this year again? Yeah, we’re seeing this need. And really, so really, the whole the way this works is empathy week is really the gateway. It’s the entrance. It’s free, right, for schools and any educators to get involved. And in our platform with empathy studios, it’s ongoing, yeah, it’s ongoing, yeah, it’s the nitty gritty. You can then search things. But I think I want to make this point, we used to charge depending on the size of school and whether you were private or state or whatever. It got a bit confusing. We were charging anywhere from 600 pounds, GB pounds, all the way through to 1400 we have basically made the decision as a team to go the scale, and we think we can get lots of schools involved, but to bring the price down. So we’re charging 395 pounds this year for a year subscription. It works out at like 20 p per child for most schools. That’s the equivalent of, I don’t know, 4050 cents.
Maria Ross 18:33
Is that to the platform, or is empathy? Week is going to be free, empty weeks free.
Ed Kirwan 18:37
And what we say in our team is we are trying to make the skill of empathy equitable. Yes, because the OECD have basically said that the students that have the least amount of skills in social emotional learning are the most disadvantaged. Exactly when we spoke about disadvantaged students five years ago, we meant purely academics. Now it still is academics, but it’s also social, emotional learning. What’s the World Economic Forum just released? You know, last year, year before, the top skills for 2037, of the top 10, including empathy, human based skills, yep, so if the top organizations in the world are hiring for human skills. Of course, AI and tech is important there. They’re hiring predominantly for human skills, and the most disadvantaged students in the world are having lower levels of social emotional learning. How we say, as an organization, we are here to develop the skill of empathy and build the empathy generation. If we’re not making it equitable exactly conscious decision. We can’t do the platform free film is incredibly expensive, right, right, but we, this is our sort of mission, to sort of build it in everyone. And I think, yeah, come and join us.
Maria Ross 19:54
I mean, to your point, I mean, that’s actually all the research and the data that’s coming out around with the change. In AI. Number one, what’s required to help current workers navigate that change is empathy. That’s actually going to help catalyze people to adapt and be resilient in this change. But number two, and I’ve said this many times with AI, that is going to create an environment where leaders who are hiding behind all the doing and the tasking, and they sit in front of their computer and they don’t interact with their teams, they’re going to have nowhere to hide, because it’s going to lay bare the fact that they are not skilled at collaboration and innovation and motivating their teams and figuring out how to remove barriers and how to innovate. Those are the skills that AI can’t replicate. There was a study done by MIT about the five complementary skills necessary to reap the benefits of AI, and those top skills are very human skills. It’s empathy, it’s emotional learning, it’s resilience, it’s all of those. I’ll put a link to that study in the show notes, but that’s exactly your point. And when we’re talking about readying young people for the jobs of the future. Yes, we still want to teach them how to code. We still want to teach them how to do all this stuff, but AI is going to be shifting what they need to be proficient at doing. And I love that you’re taking the stance of if the people that are falling behind the most already do not have access to these human skills that’s just going to exacerbate the socio economic gap. And then they’re going to graduate from high school, graduate from college without the skills that they need to compete. Yeah?
Ed Kirwan 21:32
And then we’re going to see unemployment levels, right? You know, every 100% Yeah, everything that everyone’s fearing, yes, will come true. But I think what’s interesting about kind of AI is people think, oh, it gets so good, and then it will just take everything. But I’ve started to see, you know, I don’t know if you’ve seen the Apple TV logo. How that the new one? How it was made? They purposely decided not to use AI, and they did everything human. So they cut out the glass for the Apple logo. They did all of the effect they could have just made it in 45 minutes using AI and using tech and using digital. They decided not to Coca Cola. On the other hand, tried to use AI for their advert, and it flopped. And what’s interesting now is that the higher level from a company perspective and from a brand perspective, value is going to be, you know, value and how your brand, company is perceived, is going to be higher if there’s more human 100% Yeah, humanness involved in it. I’ve just seen at the weekend on Instagram a prompt about people are turning AI generated photos where everything looks like plush into realistic. There’s a prompt now to make it look realistic as if it was taken on a phone. Taken on a phone. So this prompt is now make it look worse, so it makes it look more believable, right? People are making people that I know purposely put spelling mistakes in their emails. Like we as humans are so clever and so adaptable, and everyone’s so scared about AI doing everything perfectly are taking over, but actually we adapt. People haven’t started to, you know, talked enough about how we adapt around this as well. And I think there’s this need to build the human skills is becoming more and more important. Because that’s, that’s, you know, the AI is going to take a lot of the hopefully boring dole stuff, right? And we are going to be able to engage more as teams and be creative and have the time to do that. I think if we look at it through that lens, yeah, it’s important, but the fear is we don’t have the skills to do that, because we’ve been doing too
Maria Ross 23:34
much, maybe right, right? Because we’re focused more on the on the technical skills than the people skills. And hopefully, with the dawn of, you know, with not the dawn, it’s already here, it’s the day of AI, we’re starting to realize that that’s where we have the hole in in proficiencies and in leadership, and in all those places. So the companies that get it are like starting already to prepare for that. And I would also submit, the school systems that get it are starting to realize this ahead of the curve and doing as much as they can. I would love you to take a moment to talk about the results that you in the past years you’ve been doing empathy week. What are some of the results your team has found? I know you had some independent entities that were doing some auditing of changes in behavior and changing changes in issues, just with the population of the kids that took part in empathy week. Can you share some of that with us?
Ed Kirwan 24:28
Yeah, so this was actually based on the program which would would essentially equate to the platform. But so it’s the lessons and the films, and we have a framework which is empathy for myself, empathy for others, and empathy in action. And that breaks it down into kind of three subsets that schools and teachers can focus on. And when we’re talking about then a story, or we’re talking about what’s going on in the world, we can first start thinking about ourselves. And why do we think the way that we think is that because of our upbringing, our culture, and connecting with that before then thinking, oh. Why does that person acting in that way, or why are they doing that to then what do we do about it? Right? And we’ve kind of used that framework throughout our films and throughout our lessons. And we basically did a pilot study in 2022 and then we did a bit more of an in depth study in 2023 24 and we had the University of Cambridge kind of come and look at what we’ve collected and found sorry and basically what we you know, Nothing’s ever perfect in this field of empathy and self reporting as well. And as a scientist, I know that, but we got, like, massive PR from what we basically put out there, which is what we showed that teachers reported improved behavior. After just five films and a set of lessons, they showed that students actually had more awareness of other cultures and actually also the self esteem increased. And I think it’s for me, it’s common sense if you spend time learning about other people, and if you do it in an environment where, like a classroom, where you get to talk and listen to other people talk about their lives as well as those people that you’re experiencing. You know, if I’m sat the back of a class and someone in front of me has just talked about, actually, they moved country and it was really hard for them, and they can relate to that story. Yeah. Am I less likely to throw this rubber at the back of their head? Maybe, yeah. My argument would be, yes, yeah. And what happens if you do that? What we found is that it has to be consistent. You know that this, it can’t be this, oh, here’s an empathy assembly. Yeah?
Maria Ross 26:37
It can’t just be the one week and then it goes away. Yeah? And it
Ed Kirwan 26:40
can’t be the one drop in the ocean, okay, this is a consistent practice of, you know, how are the people thinking? How am I thinking? And we have, for example, it’s not new to us. Lots of people have a feelings wheel, or emotions wheel. We put that before and after a film. So we do a check in. How are you feeling? Watch the film. How are we feeling now? And often those two things change. We do this with corporates as well. This is the great thing about what we do. It just works with everyone. Actually, everyone can do it. What are you thinking feeling right now, media, and that could be any media, it could be a book, it could be a thing, but we use film. And then what you feeling afterwards? Yeah, and the change between those two when you start asking questions. Okay, you don’t need to necessarily tell me, but I’m almost certain those two things have changed. You know, every now and then you’ll get a kid be like, No, I was bored before. I’m bored now.
Maria Ross 27:32
Mostly contrarian, yeah, yeah. Mostly
Ed Kirwan 27:35
you’ll have, oh, well, I now feel inspired, or I feel sad, or I feel hope. Okay, why? And then when you start asking why, they go, Well, this part of the film, or this part of the film said that. And then you start to, like, unlayer what this does. And if you do that over time, what happens is also teachers start to understand their students more. They understand maybe why that student hasn’t done their homework. So rather than coming in and being like, where’s your homework, you haven’t done this the second time in a row. They’re actually like, Hmm, single parent. They have to leave the house really early because their mum leaves for work. So they’ve got two or three jobs. They actually stand around in the cold for an hour before school. Yeah, don’t have access like you. Then start to go with using empathy and action, right? What can we do? It’s the second time. Second time in a row, your homework hasn’t been done, right? How can I help you? What’s going on at home? What’s happening? What can I and it takes patience, and it’s hard, and it’s, you know, it sounds so easy to just say, I’ve been there, I’ve been in the classroom. I’ve been doing 14 hour days. You don’t see light as a teacher in winter, I get it, but the more that you do that you build relationships, those relationships and trust and connection, and I always do, like this sort of kind of backwards circle framework, which I basically say, Look, we all want to have great well being. We all want success. We want to be productive, and we want to, you know, yeah, do well achieve. Now, if you go back a step, think about the best time in your life when you were like the happiest or, you know, where you didn’t have any worries and you felt good in yourself. I almost guarantee you had great relationships, right? You weren’t worrying about going home. Was that your relationships were in a great place, or you you didn’t have any arguments with friends at school or anything like that. What makes great relationships trust. Trust is built on connection, and connection is built on the skill of empathy. You can only truly connect if you understand someone, if you can enter a little bit into their world. If we develop that skill of empathy, you can build those steps, and you can build great relationships, and you can build a foundation for great well being, for productivity, for success. The key though is to connect that loop and continue to develop the skill of empathy. Because if you stop right, then you stop trying to learn about other people. You stop trying to like, build those relationships. Something happens and it all breaks down. I think that’s where companies struggle with change. Because change happens, and all of a sudden the system breaks. And, right, yeah, well,
Maria Ross 30:06
and I think it’s like, you said, it’s about consistency, and it’s about it’s a practice. So just like, you wouldn’t just go to the gym once and be like, I’m in shape now, right? You keep going back, you keep strengthening that muscle. You have your off days, you have your good days, and you have to maintain that. And so you have to be able to maintain that muscle of being able to ground yourself and be open to another person’s perspective and point of view. But it also means you’ve got to do some work on yourself. You know, my first two pillars in my empathy framework for effective and empathetic leadership are self awareness and self care. You’ve got to have that capacity. You’ve got to be constantly checking in with yourself on where am I today? Am I able to listen to Ed’s idea without defensiveness or fear, you know? And am I able to welcome a new team member who is neurodiverse and might work very differently than me? Probably not on a day where I got two hours of sleep and I’m starving, that’s probably not the best day for me to be to have that capacity. And so it’s equally learning how to take care of ourselves and continue to practice that but continuing to practice that muscle of curiosity and understanding and self regulation, right? Can I listen to your story without trying to interject, without trying to make it about me, without getting angry at how you see the world or how what’s happened to you that’s a muscle that it’s you don’t just you know, you don’t build the bicep once, and then you never work out again, right?
Ed Kirwan 31:40
And it gets unlike the gym, it gets easier, right? So the more you try and catch yourself, the more you actually are able to do it as well. I think that’s often missed. And yeah, is we always say, you know, the one thing to do to develop skill of empathy, increase the amount and the diversity of experiences you have, right? Like, there’s loads of other things I could say, but that is the one sort of line to the gateway into it and the continuation. So watch that different documentary, watch that different film, read that book, follow four different news outlets, not one
Maria Ross 32:13
exactly, all of these things well. And I was going to say this is where film and theater and books and music can help, because maybe you are in a homogenous community, and you’re like, but I don’t have access to all these different people. How am I going to understand them? Well, go find those sources. Go find the films, the videos, the documentaries, the books, all of that, and make that a practice of like, I’m going to read about someone whose life is different from me, or I’m going to watch a film about someone whose life is completely different from me.
Ed Kirwan 32:43
Oh, ask that call. I know people get a bit uncomfortable about this, like asking colleagues or friends or people about their backgrounds and things and like, oh, it might be too invasive. And I get asked this question, like, how do you ask this? I say because I sit and ask people in interviews, sometimes very difficult conversations, very difficult questions I’ve asked, for example, Pete, who’s now a friend, but I’ve asked him, did he feel guilty about finding notes from his dad after his dad took his own life? Imagine asking that question in a room, one on one, like it’s very difficult question to ask, yeah, and risky, but that you remove the risk by being human. I say, anytime you don’t know what to say, or you don’t know what to ask. You start with, I don’t know if I’m asking this in the right way, right? And you have all of the unlike. I’m coming from a place of good intention and wanting to learn, and it’s been on my mind. But I just wanted to ask, like, you haven’t really spoken much about moving here 10 years ago, how was that for you? Because obviously a completely different culture. But, yeah, different culture, but you can ask questions and someone might shut you down and they might be offended, but if you put it in the right way, they shouldn’t be offended. And that’s such on them, and you can there’s so many different ways to, like, learn about things and people. And on that note, part of what we’re also doing is we’ve put five six films now, of ours, which previously were behind paywalls, they’re now on YouTube. But if you want to experience some of the films that we’ve got, and again, increase the amount of diversity of experiences. Yeah, we’ve got Lipper, we’ve got Huss, we’ve got tendie, trying to think who else is on there. Now actually, 10 days film is now an International Film Festival, select for Vancouver, International Mountain Film Festival for 2026 which is super exciting as well. So yeah, if you’re like, oh, but film can it really and also, if you’re in a rush, all of our films like 10 minutes or less, and we’ve got versions for students on there.
Maria Ross 34:34
So Well, I want to mention too, for anyone listening, what I also loved is that you have age appropriate you have age appropriate films and age appropriate discussion guides, so it’s not like a kindergartner seeing the same film as an eighth grader. So I wanted to make sure people understood that it’s the same story, it’s the same person, but it’s presented in a way that’s age appropriate so that they can get maximize what they get. It out of it right, 100% and
Ed Kirwan 35:02
so that we can be a whole school. We’re not in early years. We’re not in under fives yet. But also, one of the things we have been asked in the past is, you know, or people said, Oh, gee, you know, could you do animations and things like that? And actually, we’ve been into schools and said they love the fact these are real humans. They get loads of animation, loads of Ellie, the elephants and Tony, the Tigers and pepper pigs, all of this stuff. They get loads of these animation things. And this is actually a real human, yeah, and I think that is the power of some of the stuff we’re doing. Okay, it might be super simple for the age, you know, could be money in Mexico. She talks about a passion for music and Mexican culture, and it’s two, three minutes, and it’s just, but the kids get to the five year olds get to see, oh, that that’s some Mexico. And that’s,
Maria Ross 35:49
well, they get to see a person that looks different from them as well, like, not just a cartoon rendition, but an actual person. And I think that’s they talk a lot about proximity, helping to build empathy and exposure, because if the more you are exposed to other people who are not like you, the more empathetic you can become, and more more understanding and curious. But I love that. It’s not, you know, not that animation and has its place. Of course, it’s done wonders. But also, you know, not dumbing it down for kids, they’re a lot smarter than we think they are now. Is everything age appropriate? Of course, not, but, but being able to show it, that’s what I’ve always loved about the work that you’re doing, is that there was something for a teacher at every grade, and there’s something for a student at every grade to be able to latch on to and say, Oh, I can. I can relate to the story, or I can understand something about the story. Or maybe this evokes something for me.
Ed Kirwan 36:46
Yeah, it’s exciting talking to after I realize how far we’ve come. And also, yeah, just the stories of teachers and I, you know, our ambition is to, at the moment, we’re producing like, five films a year. We want to up that to 1520, or maybe, like, you know, imagine one every two weeks, coming out, coming out. Yeah, and creating this environment where, you know, we talk about enabling everyone so they can be seen, heard and understood, yeah, because I do believe that if everyone felt truly, seen, heard and understood, there would be no
Maria Ross 37:16
war. We’d have a better world, for sure, Oh,
Ed Kirwan 37:19
for sure. Because, because everyone feels doesn’t mean we’d all agree. Doesn’t mean everything would be Hokey Pokey. It just means there would be connection. And as I’ve said, connection builds trust, and trust builds relationships, and relationships builds well being and the ability to connect better. So, you know, people, I think this is the thing in the corporate world and in organizations. You know, our mission, collectively, and of all the other people that are in this field, is we need to turn that dial of empathy. Is this soft, fluffy thing into this is a hard skill. Yeah, it impacts results. Yeah, it impacts results. It’s a practice. No one has mastered it. No one ever will fully master it. That’s exactly the reason why you need to work on it continuously. And if people dedicate their time to doing that, they will see these, what they would call previously intangible results become very tangible.
Maria Ross 38:16
Yes, absolutely. Amen. All right. I love it so much. We are going to have all of the links in the show notes so people can get to the YouTube page, and also the information on empathy week if they’re interested in participating in that. But for anyone who’s on the go right now, where’s the best place you want to send them?
Ed Kirwan 38:34
Gosh, I would say, get involved in the festival. Go to empathy week.org, and then if you want the platform, empathy studios.com, they’re quite easy to remember, hopefully Perfect.
Maria Ross 38:46
Well, Ed, I am so excited. I’m excited to try to bring this to my son’s new school this year, and I hope lots of folks listening will think about bringing this into their own organization or their own kids schools as well. So thank you so much for your time. More importantly, thank you for the work that you’re doing in the world.
Ed Kirwan 39:03
Thank you for having me and yeah, hope to hear from people listening soon as well. Thanks Maria.
Maria Ross 39:07
Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
