A short excerpt from a YouTube video by James Laughlin arguing that empathy is the top leadership skill today. The speaker defines empathy as putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to understand their personal constraints (e.g., child illness, divorce) and then enabling them to perform their best by meeting them where they are (flexible deadlines, time off).
I believe that empathy is probably the number one leadership skill that we need today. And what I mean by that is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand what they're going through so that then you can empower them to be their best self within these sort of constraints that they may have, whether it's, you know, my child is sick or I'm going through a divorce or, you know, whatever it is that is their fire that they're going through in their life at the time. And if you can put yourself in their shoes and say, you know what it's, you know, it's okay if you're late or you take that day off or, you know, you know, trying to enable people to, you know, be their best selves, give their best work product in sort of the environment that you can meet them where they're at.
