When Chris Ferrari and Shridhar Shah, executives at first responder equipment supplier MES Life Safety, first heard about a new book club-style program at work, they were a bit skeptical.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing? Like, how does this make sense for our everyday business?'” Ferrari said.
“Kumbaya was the first thing that came to mind,” Shah said. “But after the very first session, I came back a believer.”
The initiative is called Reflection Point and is billed as a book club redesigned for the modern worker. Colleagues gather to share opinions and practice communication skills they can use later at work.
MES Life Safety CEO Marvin Riley brought the program to his team when he took over the company last year.
“It’s a way for us to bring our life experiences and share with each other, and to reach a common ground with each other,” Riley said.
There’s a direct link between empathy and commercial success, according to research conducted by the Harvard Business Review. The most empathetic companies outperform peers in the stock market by at least 50%.
“If we don’t talk together, we can’t work together,” said Ann Kowal Smith, Reflection Point’s founder.
Kowal Smith chooses the short stories for discussion, focusing on those matching issues and challenges faced by the team.
“The reason that this matters is because we give people a chance to practice the skills that enable them to open back up again, right?” she said.
When asked about criticism over this style of programming, Kowal Smith said, “If you believe that people who can’t talk to each other are going to take your business to the next level, then fine, this is not for you. But if you understand that people drive the future, then it’s really important that we invest in those people.”
The nonprofit has worked with close to 20,000 people across nearly 150 companies, from construction and manufacturing to healthcare and tech.
Riley says he’s seen a “dramatic change” in his team since implementing the program and is now exploring how to expand its impact.
“We’re going to build our culture layer by layer using this methodology, because it works,” Riley said.
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