Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.
EMPATHY
There is a phrase about the relationship between students and teachers that I really like. “Students don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” As a person who is very involved in the hiring of educators, I would be a better assessor of a candidate’s potential success if I could develop a question that would, without a doubt, point to a teacher’s capacity for care.
It is possible that this capacity to care and the ability to empathize with members of the professional community is more important for school leaders than it is for teachers. It is, at a minimum, equally important.
Leaders who drift away from the ability to empathize with a teacher’s full course load and schedule and grading and challenges with the learning management system and annoyance with assigned duties and, well, you get the idea, have lost a critical piece of their credibility. Teachers need to know that their leaders not only understand the daily struggle but that they empathize with it.
Further, leaders who are empathetic with the challenges their staff faces outside of the classroom and the school are better suited to the mantle of leadership. Empathy is a tool in the box of a leader. It is also a tool of those who want to be good people. We could use more of it in our American culture. We need more of it in our schools.