“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou
As unpredictability persists, leaders increasingly seek new ways of thinking about running schools and caring for their communities. Adults and students alike have been differently impacted by Covid-19, structural racism, environmental crises (e.g. fires, floods, extreme heat) and political divisiveness. Providing compassion and direction under these stressful and uncertain circumstances requires new perspectives and methods.
Empathizing with the difficulties your employees face is an important step in the process of helping them build resilience and learn from setbacks. Some leaders fear that too much empathy can lead to a lowering of standards, that being empathic makes it harder to maintain high levels of performance and accountability. The opposite is true. The employee who feels seen and understood is more likely to respond positively to requests for changes and improvements. NB: the same is true for students!