"Think People, Not Programs"
The Power of Empathetic Leadership

Business owners know instinctively that happy employees are productive employees. When your staff is happy your business experiences less turnover, your employees are more committed to the success of the company. This principle is highlighted in times of crisis, as demonstrated in the "Great Resignation" during the pandemic, when people were forced to prioritize the needs of their home lives over the demands of their jobs.

"Empathy," according to the findings of a recent study by Catalyst is not just something nice to have around the office, it has strategic value because it fosters innovation, engagement, and inclusion in the workplace.

The Catalyst study defines Empathy as "the skill of connecting with others to identify and understand their thoughts, perspectives, and emotions; and demonstrating that understanding with intention, care, and concern" and holds that it is both possible to cultivate empathy in the workplace and that doing so can be linked to many positive effects, including employees who are more innovative and resilient in the face of challenges and crises.

Key findings from the study:

• Empathy is a force for productivity, life-work integration, and positive work experiences.
  Empathy boosts productivity.
  
• Employees with empathic managers and leaders are more innovative and engaged in their work than are employees with less empathic managers and leaders.
  
• Women of color experience less burnout when they have more empathic senior leaders.
  
• Empathic leaders respect employee life circumstances.
  
• Empathic leaders support both life and work needs.
  
• Empathic leaders foster inclusion.
  
• Senior leader empathy is linked to reduced intent to leave.
  

Companies with more empathetic leadership were 40%-60% higher in employee satisfaction and engagement, and 13% less likely to suffer work-related burnout: " In particular, while a high percentage of Arab, Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women said they were experiencing general workplace burnout, those with highly empathic senior leaders were less likely to report high levels of general workplace burnout (54%) than those with less empathic senior leaders (67%)"

Ultimately, empathetic leadership fosters an inclusive, equitable environment and is a key factor for any organization that prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusivity.

At the end of the study is a sample of responses from the study's participants on what kinds of things demonstrated empathy for them in both written and face to face communications, as well as actions managers and leaders can take to show empathy with their employees and staff.

Read the full study here

About Woke

Almost a year ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7 into law. The law regulates how race issues can be taught in the state's educational system, but HB 7 is better known as the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act, or the Stop WOKE Act.

Words gain and lose nuance and meaning in daily discourse as a matter of course, but how is it that "woke" -- shorthand for "being aware of inequality and racism" has now found its way onto a piece of legislation written specifically to suppress the awareness of inequality and racism?

The word has been co-opted by right-wing activists as a term of contempt liberally applied (pun intended) to, well, almost anything they don't like.."everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment." (David Remnick, The Political Scene Podcast) And while this can sometimes border on the ridiculous, like the great band-aid controversy, it has also been blamed for the banking crisis. In other words, "Woke" in a right-wing context, is an expression of anger and fear.

But the word at its heart retains its meaning of being socially aware, being empathetic, being informed. The origins of "Woke" in its political sense are uncertain, but probably are found in the early twentieth century in the labor movement and early Black activism. The linguist Tony Thorne (Dictionary of Contemporary Slang) notes that "woke" (as opposed to "awake") is a Southern US dialect. There are sporadic uses of "woke" in news articles and blues songs in the 50s and 60s, and it was understood well enough as a concept that in 1965 Martin Luther King gave a commencement address to Oberlin College called "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution."

"Woke" was well established shorthand, especially in the Black community, by the time Erykah Badu released "Master Teacher" on her album New Amerykah -- often bookmarked as the moment the word entered popular culture. But Badu's "woke" is something more immediate than the general liberal definition of "socially aware.":

“Woke is definitely a black experience — woke is if someone put a burlap sack on your head, knocked you out, and put you in a new location and then you come to and understand where you are ain’t home and the people around you ain’t your neighbors. They’re not acting in a neighborly fashion, they’re the ones who conked you on your head. You got kidnapped here and then you got punked out of your own language, everything. That’s woke — understanding what your ancestors went through. Just being in touch with the struggle that our people have gone through here and understanding we’ve been fighting since the very day we touched down here. There was no year where the fight wasn’t going down.” --Georgia Anne Muldrow

For Black people to be woke is to be aware that you live in a place hostile to your existence.

In the wake of GeorgeF loyd's murder and Black Lives Matter movement, "woke" became the mainstream rallying cry for change, and in the process the word became appropriated and diluted, an inevitability since white people never dace the same consequences and risks as Black people. "Socially Aware of Racial Injustice" means something entirely different for them and is a pallid substitute for a word that was meant to describe living under the constant threat of violence for being Black.

Inevitably, when words become co-opted people start to question whether or not they should even be used. "Slang amongst Black people is a love language," says Khiara M. Bridges, professor of law at UC Berkley School of Law, "and I am frustrated when that slang becomes appropriated and used by others and the meaning morphs. There’s something really sinister about this term not only being taken from us but also deployed against us. It’s a double violation.”

But at the same time, there is a power in reclaiming language from those who have appropriated it and weaponized it. Booksellers, who believe in the power of language to change the world for the better, know this better than anyone. Kathleen Newman-Bremang, in her essay "When Did “Woke” Lose Its Meaning & How Do We Get It Back?" has a suggests the best way to reclaim woke is to make people say what they mean when they use it:

"...succumbing to pressure to relinquish a word that was once so powerful to us over to people who only want to use it to harm us feels wrong. It’s heartbreaking, and I don’t want to do it. But we can’t deny that its meaning has shifted, and naming exactly what people mean when they say it now is important for holding up a mirror to their white supremacist intentions. Next time someone uses “woke” in a derogatory manner, or calls a book or TV show “woke,” ask them what they really mean by that term. Make them say the quiet part out loud. Because it might be harder to say “I hate Black people” than “that’s too woke.”

A Conversation with James White & Krista White, authors of Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World

What does Anti-Racist leadership look like in practice?

Businesses seeking to foster an anti-racist culture within their companies face rethinking policies that have been in place, unquestioned and unexamined, often for years if not since the beginning of the organization. But what does this look like in practice?

James White and Krista White, President and CEO respectively of Jamba Juice and authors of Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World, were recently interviewed by Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP) about the leadership qualities needed to effect real corporate change within an organization.

The first priority? Creating space for all backgrounds and voices:

"Anti-racist leadership is also about expanding the conversation beyond Black and white. Not only must it include other races, religions, and ethnic groups, demonstrably important by the recent prevalence of anti-Asian attacks and anti-Semitism, but it must also include every aspect of identity. Queer rights, trans rights, disability rights, and women’s rights, just to name a few, are included in how anti-racism is defined. To proclaim that Black Lives Matter or to Stop Asian Hate, we must first acknowledge and honor all intersections of these identities." --Krista White.

The authors share examples of successfull anti-racist leadership within a business setting, noting that what all the examples had in common were that policies changes were tied to the achievement of measurable goals. New policies were monitored and tracked to ensure they were doing what they were intended to do.

They also emphasize that collaboration -- using teams to assess problems and find solutions, is a more effective tool than a policy that is implemented from the top down. Collaboration is the difference between a new policy that is imposed, and one that is embraced.

"Our three most critical takeaways for CEOs are first – this work is about improving culture; the CEO should never delegate this leadership. Second – a rigorous examination of all people-related systems and processes is critical. Finally – the action and lever for sustainable change involves focusing on the middle management of the company." -- James White

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