Empathy is necessary to be a great leader, but it is not sufficient. Truly great leaders are compassionate. If we take an eternal perspective, considering the human impact not just the financial impact, it greatly benefits us, and our relationships with our co-workers and our customers, and that is good for business.

Mass Readings Audio: http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/18_07_22.mp3

Welcome to the seventeenth episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me. If you haven’t already, please subscribe on the right side of the page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And feel free to share By Your Life with someone else you think would benefit.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace, and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we will reflect on the readings for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The theme this Sunday was the shepherd gathering lost sheep. Three months ago, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter (See 004 Good Shepherd, Great Leader), we heard Jesus claim the title of the Good Shepherd, not the hired-hand, but the one who lays down his life for his sheep. This week’s good shepherd doesn’t let the sheep go astray and if he does, he seeks the lost so that “none shall be missing.”

This reminded me of a Simon Sinek presentation that I watched recently. You can find it on YouTube. It is titled “Most leaders don’t even know the game they are in.” He begins the speech by saying, “Leadership is not about being in charge, but taking care of those in our charge.”

In this presentation to Live2Lead, Simon Sinek makes a very compelling case for two things he thinks great leaders need to have—empathy and perspective. There is a lot of merit to his arguments and I encourage you to watch or listen to his speech in its entirety. I’d like to briefly share these two things—empathy and perspective—and consider them in light of this Sunday’s readings.

Simon Sinek compares the perspective of companies who take a finite view of business, where there is a winner and a loser and success is measured by comparison to the competition, to companies who take an infinite view of business, where the company competes against itself to make itself a little bit better today than it was yesterday.  The company with a finite perspective is obsessed by the competition. A company with an infinite perspective is driven by purpose and obsessed by where they are going—and so should it be for us.

Perspective is important because it frames the questions we ask and the answers we get. Are we looking for a short-term gain or a long-term benefit? Are we driven by win-lose or win-win? Are we considering what is best for our customers or our employee’s or shareholders or our communities, or all of the above?

In the first reading, Jeremiah tells us that taking care of those in his charge is the responsibility of the shepherd and “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD.” The same is true of the leader.

Whether you are a formal leader with supervisory authority to sign someone’s time sheet, a project leader, a team leader, troop leader, volunteer coach, a parent or someone who works with others and has the ability to influence them by your example, you are a leader. You’d better take your role seriously because the Lord is serious about the consequences when he says, “You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.”

Wow! I’m not in favor of fear motivation in business, but fear of the Lord is another thing. I happen to think that if we were concerned about our divine performance appraisal as we approach our work every day, it would greatly benefit us, and our relationships with our co-workers and our customers. If we take an eternal perspective, and therefore ask whether this decision is helping or hurting another and consider the human impact instead of just the financial impact, in the long run it is good for business.

In St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, he references those who were far off and those who were near.  We look at things differently from these different perspectives. We ask different questions when we are far from God versus near to him. Is this the most profitable alternative or is this the alternative that is most pleasing to God? Stepping back to look at the business and life challenges we face from an eternal view, allows us to think more clearly and it simply puts things into perspective! (PUN intended!)

The second thing Simon Sinek said all great leaders have is empathy. In the Gospel reading, Jesus, the Good Shepherd and Great Leader, is an example of an empathetic leader.

If we remember the previous Sunday’s Gospel, the disciples had been out on assignment curing the sick and driving out demons. When they returned, “people were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.” Jesus, empathetic leader that he was, knew that the disciples needed to refresh themselves. “He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

Great leaders know they need to take care of their employees – taking care of those in their charge. They don’t sacrifice the welfare of their people for the benefit of their customers or shareholders. Great leaders know that when they take care of their employees, their employees will take care of their customers, and that is good for their shareholders. This is the model of Southwest Airlines. They commit to provide employees with “the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.”

So, Jesus and the disciples went off to that deserted place, and the crowds of people followed. Have you ever planned to take a day of vacation and had to cancel it because someone on your team was sick? Have you ever closed your door, so you could eat your lunch in peace and quiet, only to have someone interrupt you? How did you respond? Was it begrudgingly or with a generous heart? When we don’t practice empathy, it is difficult to respond with generosity.

Notice I said, “practice empathy.” “According to the latest neuroscience research, 98% of people (the exceptions include those with psychopathic tendencies) have the ability to empathize wired into their brains – an in-built capacity for stepping into the shoes of others and understanding their feelings and perspectives.” The problem is that we don’t develop this potential by practicing empathy in our everyday lives. This is not because of a moral deficiency, but because this in-built capacity has not been awakened and put to use.

A few weeks ago, I went to Walmart. On my way into the store, one of their blue-vest clad employees was returning an abandoned cart to the area outside the store so another shopper could use it. I normally wouldn’t have paid much attention to him except he was being followed by a woman who was screaming and yelling and swearing at him. She was toting an infant in a car-carrier and waving her free arm in protest. Apparently, he had taken the shopping cart she had left parked outside the restroom. I felt sorry for the guy. He was just trying to do his job and was now on the receiving end of her rampage.

The woman grabbed another cart and continued her tirade as she walked into the store. I was a few steps behind her and was happy to keep my distance. My first reaction was to judge her by her very inappropriate behavior. But then, I watched as she struggled to get the infant seat into the cart. It looked heavy. We were halfway up the main aisle of the store and she was still carrying on, talking to herself now. I felt sorry for her. I also felt sorry for her child. What kind of example was she setting? It was probably the same kind of example she received as a child.

I share this story because practicing empathy doesn’t mean you agree with someone. I certainly don’t agree with how the woman treated the Walmart employee. Empathy also doesn’t mean that you know how they feel. Instead, it means that you awaken in yourself the ability to consider how you would feel if you were in their shoes. As I watched the woman carry on, I thought that I’d be irritated too if I had left a cart outside the restroom and it was gone when I returned carrying my infant child in a heavy car carrier.

Daniel Goleman, #1 best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence, says a prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the other person.

How would that situation have been different if the woman had practiced empathy for the Walmart employee? She likely would still have been irritated, but instead of ripping off a slew of obscenities, she might have thought about why he did it. Maybe he was afraid of losing his job if he didn’t clear the cart away. Maybe he understood that customers regularly left their carts outside restrooms, but he’d just been reprimanded by his boss for not clearing them away from there. Maybe the fire marshal had recently visited the store and written them up for carts blocking the aisles. Considering the situation from the employee’s point of view may have allowed her to tame her irritation.

Daniel Goleman says, “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large.”

Instead of considering the employee’s perspective, her self-absorption fanned the spark of irritation, into a flame of anger, that grew into a bonfire of lashing out in an uncontrolled, foul-mouthed, tirade. All the while, she self-justified her behavior and continued to hold onto the anger, after the cart situation had been resolved.

As I reflect on this brief encounter at Walmart that morning, I think about how I was able to empathize with both the Walmart employee and the woman on a rampage. However, for me, that’s where it stopped. I was simply an empathetic observer. I did nothing to reach out to the employee to reassure him, nor to the woman, to help her with her heavy load.

That’s the difference between empathy and compassion and between me and Jesus. He was trying to get away for a little “R&R” with his disciples, but “when he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. As Daniel Goleman says, “True compassion means not only feeling another’s pain but also being moved to help relieve it.”

So maybe Simon Sinek is only partially right. Great leaders must have empathy, but that’s not enough. Empathy is necessary to be a great leader, but it is not sufficient. Truly great leaders are compassionate. Sinek described the difference between the boss who lacks empathy and the empathetic leader. The first walks into an employee’s office says, “Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row, you’d better do something to get them up or I can’t guarantee what the future will hold.” And the second walks into the employee’s office and says, “Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row, are you okay?” The compassionate leader would add, “Is there anything I can do?”

Which brings me back to perspective. With an eternal perspective, we might be more likely to actually do something for others, not just feel sorry for them. Jesus didn’t say “Whatever you feel for the least of these, you feel for me.” No! He said, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me. What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Jesus modeled compassion, not just empathy. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to awaken in us our capacity to be empathetic toward others and the grace to be moved to compassionate action.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. 

May God bless you abundantly and may you glorify the Lord by your life.  Amen

Remember to subscribe on the right side of this page and help us spread the word by forwarding to a friend, sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Just click the icons at the top of this post. And let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Many thanks to Fr. Stan Fortuna for his musical gifts, especially the traditional and contemporary versions of Come Holy Ghost (Come Holy Spirit) that you hear in this podcast. You can find more from Fr. Stan http://www.francescoproductions.com/ or on Facebook.