I attended a masterclass on ’empathetic leadership’ last month. I wanted to save a few notes for myself.
Throughout the day, I kept thinking: empathy is knowing we are rarely the versions of ourselves we want to be.
Here are a few points I’d like to remember:
- Have an empathetic imagination, in which you can consider someone’s unique struggle while recognizing you can’t know someone else’s plight.
- “The responsibility of the I” is an idea for actors that can follow for writers and leaders that you can’t judge when you’re taking on someone else’s story.
- “Civic infrastructure” is a phrase that came to my mind: what are all the elements that allow and support a civic culture in a place?
- The entire session felt like the opposite of Twitter, in which people made mistakes and it was OK.
