Creating Meaningful Moments: The Intersection of Empathy and Excellence with Nancy Nouaimeh

This episode of the Excellence Foresight Podcast invites you to embrace the art of intentionally crafting meaningful moments, focusing on elevation, insight, connection, and pride in 2025. Drawing from personal experiences and the transformative insights of Chip and Dan Heath's "The Power of Moments," we explore how small acts of thoughtfulness can create deep trust and understanding in both our personal and professional lives. Tune in as we dive into the heartening story of Dietz, a designer at GE Healthcare, whose empathetic approach reimagined the intimidating MRI experience for children, turning it into a delightful adventure, and how empathy is key in leadership and innovation.

Let's step into this new year by reflecting on the times empathy profoundly shaped our paths in 2024. Consider those instances when simple acts of vulnerability and understanding created synergies and sparked genuine connections. By adopting a mindset that values the power of moments, we can design human-centered solutions and make every interaction an opportunity for growth, inspiration and excellence. Listen in for insights and inspiration to help you create meaningful, memorable moments that elevate the lives of those around you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

Hello everyone and welcome to this special episode of the Excellence Foresight Podcast as we kick off 2025 with excitement, full speed and boundless energy. This is episode one of season three the Power of Moments. I'm Nancy Nouaimeh, cultural transformation, leadership and excellence consultant, and it's so hard for me to believe that we're starting a new season Journey I embarked on two years ago, when I launched this podcast, to share valuable lessons with you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of this journey. As we bid farewell to 2024 and step into 2025, I wanted to reflect on a key lesson learned from last year, which is about the profound impact of creating powerful, meaningful moments in both personal and professional settings. This episode is about embracing excellence by intentionally designing moments that inspire, connect and uplift. So let's dive in.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Last week, my family and I had the opportunity to visit the Swiss Alps for the first time, an inspiring place to reflect on the future. We spent a white Christmas and we had those precious moments that allowed us to reflect, and one of those moments inspired today's topic and reminded me of Insights from the Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath, the book that had influenced me deeply, and my goal here today is to share those ideas and encourage you to be intentional about the moments you create and the impact you create. Here is one of my unique moments from 2024, a sweet memory. This past summer, on a warm October morning in Dublin, my husband and I spontaneously decided to walk to Killiney Beach, which is just 10 minutes from our house, to watch the sunrise, and we spent five minutes looking at the sun rising behind the horizon, and those five minutes of breathtaking beauty awakened our senses and deepened our gratitude to the life we're living. It was an unplanned moment, but it helped us celebrate our new life in the country and brought us closer amid our busy schedules. And similar moments exist in the workplace, and I've learned through my career that unplanned yet thoughtful actions can also create meaningful connections, deep ones, for example, taking a moment to appreciate someone's effort on the team or having an impromptu conversation, which strengthens relationships and builds trust. On a professional note, I also realized this year that trust is often built through defined moments, through the fine moments, sometimes short moments, few words that spark confidence, or experiences that reveal our vulnerabilities and create synergies with others, which is totally and absolutely fine. Vulnerability helps people to understand us and gets us closer to them, and that's where synergy gets built.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Now I want to go back to the Power of Moment, the book of the Power of Moments, and one of the stories that stood out to me in the book is about Dietz, a designer at GE Healthcare. He experienced a humbling moment when he saw how intimidating the MRI machines that he created and he was so proud of creating were for children. Observing a young girl trembling with fear, crying and not wanting to go in the machine inspired him to transform the experience. So what did he do? He re imagined the MRI process as a colorful jungle adventure, and he turned the clinical environment into an exciting safari. So this empathetic redesigning of the machine reduced children's anxiety and increased their cooperation, and also created memorable moments for them, for their parents, for their families, and that was really the invention that he had.

Speaker 1: 3:54

This story highlights how empathy, understanding and addressing the emotions of others can really transform ordinary experiences into extraordinary ones, and this is one of the things that we all look for. And as leaders, we now understand that empathy is not optional anymore. It's essential, and from Dietz's experience we learned three main things. First, empathy allows leaders to step into the shoes of their teams, customers and stakeholders, and this enables solutions that really resonate. It helps us understand the needs and design things that suit them. Second lesson is about the genuine care and how much that care, when demonstrated, fosters stronger relationships and loyalty. And the third lesson is that empathy drives innovation. It helps us create human-centered solutions that inspire and uplift, and Dietz saw this on the face of the children when they entered his MRI machine, the Jungle Adventure MRI machine the children when they entered his MRI machine, the jungle adventure MRI machine.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Now, reflecting back on 2024, I ask you to think about moments when empathy shared your journey, shaped your journey, when you were understood, when you connected deeply with others and when your actions made a difference. These are special moments. Chip and Dan Heath introduced the concept of thinking in moments in the book. Instead of letting us live a life that unfolds passively, we can actively design meaningful moments, and those moments often fall into four categories, and this is what he explains in this book. There are moments of elevation, moments of insight, moments of pride and moments of connection. In the moments of elevation, these are experiences that rise above the everyday. They're filled with delight, joy, excitements, things we remember with happiness. They're crafted through intentional efforts to create extraordinary experiences and one could think of many examples, such as celebrations, achievements, thrilling events that stand out because they break the script of the daily life. And let me stop here and tell you how can you create these moments. You need to look for elements of surprise. Add an element of surprise to your moments. Boost sensory appeal. This helps you raise the stakes to make the moment meaningful, and that's what is the moment of elevation.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Second is the moment of insight. Moments of insights provide clarity or shift in perspective, offering a new way of understanding or seeing the world. They often happen during times of realization, such as when a challenge leads to an unexpected solution. And, being from a quality background and working a lot on problem solving, I've lived some of those challenges and I'm so proud of the results that we got the outcome and one of the projects that worked on in 2024 was designing a model for assessing PMOs focusing on maturity and impact, and that was a challenge how can we really help the PMOs really transform to provide better value and to provide a better impact? And that was a moment of insight, when we got into the details of the model and came up with a great solution, and that was really to understand the world of the PMOs and asking provocative questions and looking at it from a user perspective, looking at it from a PMO and the team of the PMOs. So how can we create those moments of insights? I personally encourage self-discovery. It's very important to understand things, to understand who we are, to understand ourselves and others and the environment and the context in which we live and work, ask provocative questions or create situations where people can learn something transformative about themselves or the world. So the moments of insights are really very critical in our life, but those are the special moments that help us really do unexpected things.

Speaker 1: 7:52

Moments of pride these are experiences that highlight accomplishments, recognitions or milestones. They celebrate achievements and affirm a person's skill or identity, and examples are also many receiving an award, promotion or even a simple heartfelt acknowledgement. And for me, in 2024 one of the most beautiful moments of pride that I witnessed were during the shingo um shingo conference in europe in in november and when the ipsum team was on stage receiving their prize, the shingo prize. You could feel the pride in every word they said, in every smile they had to each other and every in every word they said, in every smile they had to each other in every gesture they had. It's everything they experienced and everything they shared with us was all about pride and the achievement they've had all together. So how can we create the moments of pride? Recognize other achievements, multiply meaningful milestones, help people appreciate their own progress. As leaders, we have plenty of opportunities to really show those moments to our team and acknowledge what they're doing and make them feel proud of their achievements.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Now, moments number four are the moments of connections, and for me they're not less important than the others. They're even more important because they are moments that deepen relationships, build the trust or foster a sense of belonging. They arise from shared experiences, mutual understanding or acts of kindness and generosity. And there are ways also to create these moments by sharing meaningful experiences, encouraging authentic communication and fostering collaboration or teamwork. And that's a work to. There's work to be done to create moments of connections. And those moments really we feel them when we start working in newly with someone or we create a new teams and we want to build that trust. So authenticity, self-awareness, clear communication, transparency and really caring awareness, clear communication, transparency and really caring and making sure that everybody feels comfortable on the team are really important to create those moments of connections. Moments of connections really builds great teamwork, and from great teamwork come accomplishments, and from accomplishments come pride and recognition. So, as you see, these four types of moments are really important. We can really focus on each one of them and have those elements as part of the moments we live, in our work and in our life. So this really aligns seamlessly with the Shingo Models principles.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I teach and I live by Creating value for the customer and seeking perfection. This is what the book taught me and this is how I aligned it with the work I do. It's really focusing on creating value, focusing on perfection, focusing on excellence and making sure that every moment counts. By intentionally designing moments, organization can enhance employee engagement, build trust and drive continuous improvement. So the book the Power of Moment is really a powerful book. It gives us a lot of insights, a lot of stories, a lot of ideas, a lot of tips on focusing on creating unique and meaningful moments.

Speaker 1: 11:02

The Excellence Foresight Podcast is about excellence, and excellence isn't just about achievement. It's about creating moments of elevation, connection, pride and insight. It's about leading with empathy and care and creating lasting impact and inspiration. As we enter 2025, I invite you to think about how you can make every moment count, whether at work, at home or in your community. So here's my view, my call to action Commit to practicing empathetic leadership and designing impactful moments this year. Ask yourself what's one small thing I can do today to make a positive impact on my team, my customer or even my loved ones. I'd like to hear about a moment that shaped your journey this, this past year. Share your story with me on in the comments. Thank you for being part of this journey and I wish you a happy new year filled with empathy, purpose and moments that matter. This was the Excellence Foresight Podcast. Stay tuned for our monthly guest episodes, thank you.