Inside THE SENSEI LEADER Movement––What is "human-centric" leadership?

So Jim, we've been talking a lot about leadership and leadership in general, and one of the phrases that you keep batting around is human-centric leadership. Can you explain a little bit more about what that is? It's about people. Okay.

That's all it's about. Admiral Grace Hopper said it so well. She said, "Management is about things, leadership is about people." And for too long we've been focused on management. And she's absolutely right. That's what's happened. We do the SL15 survey and we always ask leaders, you know, how important are the soft skills, if you want to call them that. I hate that word, right? Soft skills, the interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, things of this nature, how you deal with people. And they always say that those skills are equal to, if not more important than the hard technical skills.

I mean, what does it mean really to commit to developing the soft skills, if you will, of leadership, and how is that different from teaching technical management?

It's not rocket surgery at all. It's just focusing on the things that are important to people. For example, and here's one, you know, people can look at this like it's really esoteric, and it's not. We talk a lot about compassion. That's the most practical thing you could be thinking about. The research is overwhelming. We're choking on the research. People work harder They commit more of an effort if they know that their leaders care about them. That's all we're talking about. That's what compassion is. Now, you can leave it in that philosophical frame, right? A lot of people do. But that's not what we're doing in our workshops. We want people to understand or come out of there with a clear plan. This is how I'm going to express compassion. This is what I'm doing.