Creating empathy for a population

I recently had the privilege of working with someone during their coming out process as a transgender woman. We are colleagues and friends, and she came out to me before sharing it with the wider organization. I knew she was preparing to send an email where she would announce that she had a new name and new pronouns, and I wanted to support her however I could.

I looked for articles online about coworkers coming out as transgender, in order to have something to share with my team. I found an article in the Harvard Business Review with lots of useful information. It was thorough and well-researched. But it didn’t have quite the emotional impact that I was looking for.

So I decided to write my own post on medium.

In this post, I use storytelling right up front in order to create empathy and emotional connection. This was a bit tricky, as I didn’t want to talk about any specific individual—I didn’t want to put my coworker any more on the spot than she already was. I needed to talk in general about what trans people experience, instead of using her as a specific example.

I create two characters, both anonymous—the anonymous trans person and the anonymous “you.” You might have a coworker who asks you to call them by a different name. You might be feeling uncomfortable about it. You might be unsure how to respond. In order to create this imaginary character, this “you,” I need to know exactly who I am addressing, and exactly what I want them to experience. The story I tell isn’t about a trans person coming out—it’s about you, and why you choose to overcome your own ignorance, discomfort, and confusion in order to support your trans coworker. I need to acknowledge that someone might be resistant in order to tell them a story about how they could overcome that resistance.

I showed my trans coworker the post before I posted it, and she was delighted. Not only that, the company chose to post a link to my medium post on their public-facing blog. Check it out for yourself, and let me know whether you think it’s an effective approach.