Intentional Power

4Be Empathetic: It's Not How You Feel, It's What You Do

Maria Ross, author of Empathy Edge: Harnessing the Value of Compassion as an Engine for Success, is an expert on the power of empathy in the workplace. She is also a regular guest executive to our class. According to Maria, “Empathy is the engine for business results in today's complex world.” But, as she explains to our students, our capacity for empathy is under attack as never before.

“When it comes to empathy, each and every one of us has been tested these past few years,” Maria told our students in the winter of 2023. “Yes. Of course. Covid. But our empathy was being already challenged well before the global pandemic pushed us to the brink.”

She's right. Let's start with the onslaught of natural disasters that have been piling up including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and on and on and on. Add to that news of refugees fleeing chaos from around the globe, reports of alleged war crimes, the political upheavals and deepening distrust within the United States and beyond, the public display of violent murders of Black men and women by police, the seemingly never ending sexual harassment in the workplace, and, yes, Covid. As Maria says, “It's enough to make any leader want to dig their head in the sand and tell employees to focus on work.”

That's exactly what Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, said to his employees at a January 2023 company all‐hands meeting. He told them, “We should think about how we ...