My name is Sophia, and I am so glad to be a newborn in 2021. These are some challenging times for all of us. Thoreau said, “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?”
And before Thoreau, Marcus Aurelias said, “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
And more recently, the Grateful Dead have reminded us to be the Eyes of the World. Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings
We are all in our own world. As I, Sophia, sit here in the nursery, I look to others and others look to me. But I hope for a world where our leaders care. During this pandemic, our lives have changed. We need empathetic leaders, we need sympathetic leaders, we need compassion! We need leaders who can walk in another’s moccasins, as they said in ancient times. With our large forebrains, humans are the only species who have the ability to imagine ourselves in others’ situations….
Merriam-Webster defines empathy as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
Honestly, though, for modern leaders, empathy is not enough – as a newborn, I am hoping that you will develop compassion – which is not just a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, but is accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
A global pandemic has disrupted your world of work. My parents and their peers stare in the face of displacement and layoffs. Some face the hardship of re-skilling and re-training. They find our workplace has changed.
Empathy is table stakes for leaders these days. Those who are building strong organizations amidst these times of change are going beyond empathy and diving headfirst into compassion. The strongest organizations will be those that retain top talent by accommodating the changing needs of their employees.
If sitting is the new smoking, then compassion is the new empathy. When I grow up and enter the workforce, I look forward to a new world of work where compassionate leaders sit on top of great organizations and care for their employees.
Ross Smith, FRSA Modern Workplace Engineering - Supportability Ross is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and blogger. Author of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention and holds seven patents. He is currently a Ph.D. Scholar, part of University College Dublin's SmartLab program, researching the impact of AI, robotics, and automation on worker displacement. He has worked at Microsoft for over 28 years and is a member of the Leadership Council for the Anita Borg Institute, co-chair for Grace Hopper Organizational Transformation track. He is a co-leader of ABI Local in Seattle, and part of the gender partner LT and ”male ally” panel discussions at the IEEE Women in Technology and National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) Summit and TechCrunch. Work with iUrbanTeen and Native Americans at Microsoft. He is a member of the board of Spreeha, working to break the cycle of poverty. Developed 42projects to promote cultural change, develop organizational trust and improve the lives of the managed. To help develop the next generation’s interest in STEAM (STEM+Arts), he works with Skype in the Classroom program and events like iUrbanTeen day at Microsoft. He was invited to the White House for discussion on women in STEM. Keynote speaker for the ARTBA’s Transovation 2014-2016. The work of his teams has been mentioned in Forbes, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, PSFK, the American Journal of Play, Harvard Business Review, and the London School of Business. He has presented at SXSW, MIT Solve, Grace Hopper, Serious Play, Games for Change, and several other large conferences. His academic research papers are published on ResearchGate. He is a blogger for SHRM has worked on Skype Translator. He is an avid reader and loves to travel.
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