Gautham Pallapa - Leading with Empathy

I also want to thank my son's friends and their parents, friends, teachers, caregivers, and other children who shared their perspectives, stories of adversity, stress, anxieties, and their approaches to handle and cope with the stress caused by the pandemic.

I am immensely thankful and indebted to my brother, Dr. Manu Pallapa, for reviewing the manuscript with a critical eye and a detail-oriented approach. His suggestions and perspective have helped me think many complex thoughts through, and break them down for better clarity and reflection. Our bond strengthened over passionate conversations around how our mother was empathetic and helped the community, and has made us closer than before. He has also helped keep me faithful to the book's premise and focused on core messaging instead of introducing tangential topics.

A few people have profoundly influenced my thinking and leadership style over the course of my career. Gene Kim with The Phoenix Project and his approach to DevOps methodologies started me down the transformation journey. Like many other leaders, I felt a strong resonance between the characters in the book and what was happening in my organization, and I made the book a mandatory read for my change agents before we embarked on our business transformation journey. With his book Start with Why, Simon Sinek helped me identify the purpose, the why, of our teams, and what business outcomes we wanted to achieve. Eric Ries with Lean Startup, and Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim with Accelerate have greatly influenced my thought process. My friend Mik Kirsten with his book Project to Product has always been so insightful, and his take on flow and value management is phenomenal.

Various works by Dr. Brené Brown and Adam Grant have heavily influenced my thinking on empathy, compassion, and reciprocity have helped me cope with being an outlier in many respects. Daniel Pink has been an enormous influence in my initiative for helping the workforce, empowering and enabling a generative culture, and increasing psychological safety in the workplace. A few other authors I admire and have learned immensely from are Liz Wiseman, Malcolm Gladwell, John Maxwell, and Patrick Lencioni.

I have also been fortunate to have worked with many empathic leaders at Pivotal and VMware. Pivotal embodied empathy in everything that they did, and it showed in their work. I would like to specifically call out three outstanding individuals who are kind, empathic, and have always been there for me—Raghavender Arni, Chad Sakac, and Matt Nelson. Every idea needs strong champions to keep it alive, and these three leaders have championed my pursuit of enterprise and employee empathy, for which I am indebted. Additionally, the following leaders inspired me, encouraged my work, and channeled empathy in their actions—James Watters, Jeaninne Moya, Derek Beauregard, Jeff Arcuri, Mark Kropf, Steve Becker, and Duncan Winn. Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of VMware and current CEO of Intel, is a highly empathic person, and he embodied compassionate empathy in his actions, town halls, and communications. It was a great experience working with an empathic CEO, and his book, The Juggling Act , helped guide me with work-life balance. I am blessed to work with many of these leaders at VMware.

I am incredibly proud to be a part of an empathic team that transforms organizations with a holistic view and not just from a technological perspective. Jesse, Henri, Rick, Mark, Carl, Bernard, and JT—I enjoy working with you and look forward to many more pairings, interactions, and intellectual conversations.

Special thanks to Siobhan McFeeney and Mahil Maurice for their stimulating conversations, discussions, and insights as we collaborated on improving enterprise and employee empathy during business transformations. A shout-out to Tanzu (Pivotal) Labs and their passionate approach to be kind, do what works, and do the right things. Some of my best times at work were spent at their SF labs, and I missed being able to physically visit that location over the last year. I would be remiss if I did not specifically call out Pivotal Act, especially Ellie Ereira and Aly Blenkin. Our engagement with Mercy Ships was an excellent opportunity for us to exchange our thoughts on compassionate empathy and truly help people in need.

I have been lucky to have had some strong, empathic mentors— Lyssa Adkins, Thomas Squeo, and Maureen Mahoney—who have helped me grow not only through my career but also as a person. I want to give a special callout to Hunter Muller and HMG Strategy, Jayne Groll and Helen Beal from the DevOps Institute and its ambassadors, Mayank Mehta and Lisa Peng from Pulse, and the Project Management Institute. Our discussions and intellectual conversations have been fantastic and stimulating.

Thanks to everyone at Wiley who helped me convert my thoughts and ideas into a discrete, tangible artifact. Special thanks to Sheck Cho, executive editor, for championing my proposal and supporting me throughout this process, the editing teams for crisping up the content, along with Samantha Enders and the marketing team who helped synthesize my ideas into this book.

Personal development and growth are impossible without influence from interactions with friends, associates, colleagues, peers, and community members. Here are some notable people who have helped me grow in more ways than they know:

Swati and Abhishek Patil, Vidya and Sameer Rao, Sara and Kevin DeMers, Arvind Thapar, Jen and Dan Welch, Dinika Joshi and Prasad Sahasrabudhe, Asanka Abeysinghe, Swetha and Mahesh Kashyap, Madhu Venkateshaiah, Ajit Koshy, Shilpa Ramachandra, Kaushik Madhavan, Nidhi and Swarit Agarwal, Jason Foster, Sharath Sahadevan, Brian Peterson, Raj Rangaswamy, Santhosh Nagaraj, John Stong, Jeremy Hofstad, John Staup, Shane Heddy, Sina Sojoodi, Tony Hansmann, Tom Spero, Cornelia Davis, Tyler Jewell, DaShaun Carter, Jeff Hinds, Niki Theophilus, Joseph Barjis, Zach Gould, Dennis Rijkers, Artur Margonari, Jason Schreuder, Kathy and Dan Lanphier, Carrie Kenny and Shane Newman, Stacey and Rodney Parker, Gowri Chaganty, Steven Pratt, Pranav Patel, Pat Clark, Kelley Dean-Crowley, Greg Ahl, Matt Kirilov, Nancy Williams, Kookai Apilado, Rhonda Harvey, Songqing Liu, Kafeel Pasha, Stacy Skradski, Dan Werner, Christine Stanczak, Indradip Ghosh, Anita Kanavalli, Anand Rao, Niall Thomson, Dr. Guna Raj, Dr. Geetha Pugashetti, Aishwarya Suresh, Anup Vijaysarathi, my students and colleagues at PCCE Goa and MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, my SPHS 93 friends, organizations that I have worked with, and people I have had discussions with and who trusted me with their stories.

Many people have been an influence and inspiration for this book, some of whom I never knew their name. Strangers who performed acts of kindness, people who demonstrated empathy when they did not have to. Some of the inspiration has not been positive, either. However, I want to acknowledge these people who suffer from apathy, insecurity, and hatred in their hearts. My earnest hope is that this book will help reduce such negative emotions and malintent in the world.

I want to acknowledge all of you readers, for purchasing this book and contributing to a good cause. A large portion of royalties received from this book will be donated to nonprofit organizations supporting the underprivileged, underrepresented minorities, and the homeless. By purchasing this book, you have made a difference in someone's life, performed a random act of kindness, and have positively impacted humanity. Thank you for helping.

And finally, humanity is not wholly defined without a spiritual perspective. I want to thank the Lord for protecting me through this complex journey of life and giving me the ability to express my thoughts and share my learning with my fellow humans.