Lesson 3: Empathy
Imagine leading a team and yelling at a member of that team in front of their peers when they make a mistake. I witnessed this happen while I was in college:
Dean Beasley was hosting a watch party to see our men’s basketball team play against another school. One player accidentally threw the ball out of bounds, and his coach started yelling at him. Dean Beasley asked me why the coach was yelling at him, and I said it was because he made a mistake. She replied, “I could not imagine yelling at a student over one mistake.” Although I thought this interaction was “normal” for sports, Dean Beasley pointed out that all leaders need to show empathy for their team.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings. Leaders who possess this ability can foster trust across the organization. As I contemplate which types of organizations I would be interested in leading, trade schools come to mind. A trade school offers training to high school graduates for careers such as construction work, electrical work, and plumbing. I aspire to establish an environment where individuals can complete a year of training to secure employment that offers a living wage.
Learning a trade in high school is not nearly as common as it was 50 years ago, so trade schools fill a widening gap for both workers and employers. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports over 49,000 job openings per year for industrial machinery mechanics. The median salary for these jobs is almost $60,000 per year. This presents an opportunity to prepare high school graduates to join the workforce with gainful employment.
My values are to act with love, humility, and wisdom. Leading a trade school will require building loving relationships not only with students but also with the families entrusting me to prepare their sons or daughters to find a job following graduation. Empathy is the only way to achieve that. My commitment to understanding the students and community will drive our collective success.
Empathy is Lesson 3. Next week, I will share Lesson 4: Consistency
