GOOD PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE MORE POWER.
EMPLIFY IS HERE TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN.
EMPLIFY MANIFESTO
"Why don't the good people have more power?"
It’s a question most of us have asked at some point.
When we watch a meeting go the way of the loudest voice. When we watch a kind colleague get passed over. When we watch the news. The philosopher Robert Hartman asked it openly, and devoted his life to answering it. We think it’s the most important question there is.
By good people, we mean the empathic, the conscientious, the considerate – people who think about others as well as themselves. The ones who glue teams together, notice a shift in the energy, remember the birthdays, do the invisible work that others depend on.
These are the people the world needs in power. They are also the least likely to be in power. There are three reasons for this, and none of them are their fault.
Three Fundamental Problems
OTHERS DON’T SEE THEM AS CREDIBLE. Kindness is mistaken for weakness. The qualities that make someone a strong people-leader – asking questions, listening, showing concern – are read as signs that they aren’t tough enough. So they get passed over for people who are more dominant and self-promoting.
THEY WERE BROUGHT UP TO PUT OTHERS FIRST. They learnt to keep their heads down and were never taught to assert their opinions, show authority, or exert power. When they look at the people who do rise, the rising looks undignified.
THEY AVOID POWER. They have seen how an addiction to it causes conflict. If power corrupts, the cleanest thing is to stay clear of it.
Each of these reasons is a triumph of the Taker Economy: a world that rewards taking, not giving. That codes kindness as feminine and feminine as weak. The Taker Economy has devalued the very language of care – kind, nice, gentle, helpful – until these words sound almost embarrassing to say out loud in a professional setting.
This is the world that empathic people have inherited. And, if all of this is true, why hasn’t anyone fixed it? Well, they’ve tried. There have been countless initiatives down the years that attempt to teach people to care who, fundamentally, don’t care. You cannot train someone to care.
Emplify turns this old problem on its head.
New Solution to an Old Problem
Emplify Helps Good People Into Power
You can’t train someone to care. So we find the people who already do.
We help them learn to hold their ground, to be recognised, to embrace power and use it for the benefit of others. They become Empathy Powered Leaders – empathic people who lead without losing what makes them good. If you recognise yourself in any of this – if you have ever wondered why the good people don’t have more say – you are not wrong, and you are not alone.
EMPATHY POWERED LEADERS JOURNEY
A six-part coaching programme that develops empathic professionals into effective, credible leaders. This is ongoing work with the type of clients that Jess Baker has attracted for many years. In addition to individual coaching, we plan to run group programmes and to train Emplifiers, coaches. who will run the Journey and so make it available to more people.
TOOLS FOR YOU
Free and low-cost tools that empathic professionals can use right away to support their own journey. The Credibility Check-In self-assessment and the Credibility Shift Audio Journey are already live. We’re releasing audios and new YouTube videos (like this one). There’ll be templates that members can use in their own workplaces. Scripts for raising difficult issues and when challenging organisational practices.
TOOLS FOR THE BOARDROOM
They need to hear this. We’re making sure they do. A white paper is already in circulation. A behaviour checklist managers can use today. An organisational diagnostic, a brief for HR leaders, and a board-level analysis of the real cost of promoting the wrong people – all incoming.
These give BCorps and other values-driven organisations ways to encourage and develop empathic people.
WHAT WE'RE BUILDING
Emplify Has A Broader Reach
INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP
The Super-Helper Syndrome book (Baker and Vincent, 2022) established the underlying psychology. The white paper extends it into organisational practice. We’ve written several articles for press and academic journals, and our next step is to carry out original Emplify-initiated research, make the findings public, and drive improvements to leadership, systems and cultures. If you’d like to listen to any of our podcast interviews, check out this playlist.
THE CALL FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Too much power sits with people who seek it for the wrong reasons: power over others, rather than power in service of something better. Emplify aims to change that by challenging professional bodies, leadership development schemes and the public conversation until more empathic people are recognised, developed and promoted. When leadership fails in plain sight, we will call it out and offer better solutions. We don’t trade in outrage. We trade in truth. And we won’t stop until the good people have more power.
OUR FUTURE LEGACY
Imagine a world in which empathic professionals are promoted more readily; organisations find and develop their existing empathic talent; the language of care is welcomed in professional settings … Maybe one day empathic people will have more power, in schools, in the workplace, in politics. Join us. It won’t happen without you.
“Too many good people are still being overlooked and underestimated by systems that exploit their empathy, but refuse to recognise its power. Emplify exists to change that – together.”
— Jess Baker, Co-Founder of Emplify
Emplify Co-Founders
Right now, Emplify is being built by us, Jess and Rod, with plenty of caffeine and conviction. We’re usually up with the sun asking what needs to happen next to grow this movement, and already, other people are stepping in to help make it happen.
Jess Baker CPsychol AFBPsS
Co-Founder & Chartered Psychologist
Jess Baker is a Business Psychologist, speaker and co-author of The Super-Helper Syndrome: A Survival Guide for Compassionate People. She wanted to become a psychologist aged 12, hoping she could learn to ease her mother’s nervous breakdowns. Now Jess is an award-winning leadership coach, runs live webinars for thousands of people, and speaks at conferences and festivals. She’s also a commissioned writer, and comments on leadership, future of work and women’s wellbeing in print media, on radio, podcasts and TV.
Rod Vincent CPsychol AFBPsS
Co-Founder & Chartered Psychologist
Rod Vincent is an Anglo-Irish Chartered Psychologist, co-author of The Super-Helper Syndrome: A Survival Guide for Compassionate People, and a musician. As a business psychologist Rod founded Human Qualities, with a team of consultants working all over the world. He has personally worked with leaders in forty-one countries. His poems and stories have won prizes in competitions and been published in a number of literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Stand and The Rialto. And he writes the lyrics and plays bass as one half of O’Reilly & Vincent.