What is empathy?

The readings and the book  "Leading at the Edge" mentions that empathy plays important role in leadership. As Ken said in class, Shackleton, who is one of the great leaders, was surrounded by women and developed his EQ(emotional intelligence). I also found some interesting quotes from other leaders.

"Those who can influence people are the ones who understand people's feelings. On the other hand, those who understand people's feelings suffer. Nobody will be moved by those who never suffered."ーSoichiro Honda

 "Successful leaders lead with the heart, not just the head. They possess qualities like empathy, compassion and courage. They also have the ability to establish deep, long-term and genuine relationships where others trust them."ーBill George

From the quotes above and our readings, it is no doubt that there's a connection between empathy and EQ, but what do you think empathy is? How does it work on real situations? Is it something that we can achieve from our efforts? Or is it something we are born with? What is the difference between empathy and sympathy? 

Today I'll try to get my answer for these questions. In my opinion, empathy and sympathy are a little bit different. Sympathy will come out when people around you were sad, or in tough situation. Empathy, on the other hand, is to share the feelings with others. If someone is happy you'll feel the same. It is difficult to explain because I myself don't have a clear answer... However, I found a video that helped my understanding. This video told me the meaning of Soichiro Honda's words. In the video, it said that you'll never going to understand others unless you feel your own pain and joy.

After watching this video, I thought that leaders should try to think about others, even "feeling actually the same" is quite hard. If you take time to think about others, you might be able to see the person from another aspect, and you might understand their needs. Understanding their needs, you can develop deeper relationship with people around you, which will surely have a positive impact to the group's performance!

Lastly, I want to mention here that you can learn empathy by your efforts. It is true that some people have high EQ by nature. But why don't we try to develop ours as well :)?
 
 "Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal." —Vince Lombardi

Strike a Powerful Pose

Reading this article, I learned several things, but I'll focus on two of them in this blog.

One is that getting some feedback from other people is very useful to improve our performance. Like Katy Keim, who realized for the first time that "her posture was slightly standoffish" by watching herself on video, many people may be doing low-power posture unconsciously. When I did my presentation last term, Dave told me that I was pointing my slides too many times. I was actually nervous at that time, so maybe my stress came out in that way. Having received this feedback, I looked back at myself and noticed that I also pointed my slides in the previous presentations. Although I had known that how I look influences my presentation and I did tried to appear confident, my posture was telling to the audience, "I'm nervous right now!" I was doing this unconsciously. But I think I won't do it again because now I know I tend to do this when doing presentation(the situation I feel nervous.) In our leadership classes, we have practiced power posing several times and we always get some feedback. I think we're lucky to be in the situation that our friedns give us feedback, so I hope we can help each other to improve ourselves.

The other thing is that not only avoiding low-power postures such as "hunching over a Smartphone before a meeting or presentation" but also making power postures purposely have a positive impact to our performance. I was happy to know this because if we master the power pose by practicing it, it will be one of the strengths for us.

Writing a Blog for the First Time (in my life!?) I just noticed that I published my draft of the blog by MISTAKE yesterday... :'(

Hello fellow leaders,

 On Wednesday, we had our third class, and I'm happy that we're becoming to know each other little by little.

I'll breifly introduce myself here.
I am Sayaka and I'm from 2B. Though my parents' house is in Yokohama, I live in Gingko House at the moment. I belong to ICU Yearbook Committee and Sustainable Campus Committee. Since I'm shy, I always feel nervous when meeting new people or standing in front of people. But I think cheerful and kind atmosphere of this RW class made me feel more comfortable than I ususally feel in these situations :)

Today, I've been to Eco-Products 2013(took place at Tokyo BigSight, Odaiba), which is the largest Environmental Exhibition in Japan.

 In the Exhibition, not only many companies but also universities and NPOs that are taking leardership to publicize eco-products and to realize evironmentally friendly society have their own booths to present what they have done to achieve sustinable society. I've been there to introduce our efforts to visitors as one of the members of Sustainable Campus Committee.

 Looking around and listening to other booth's presentations, I found that there are so many types of approach even though our goal is the same: to contribute to the evnironment. Similar thing can pe said for our topic, Leadership. Although there are several tips to take the leadership and we can learn much from them, it is important to be yourself when you peform it in the real situation.

I'm looking forward to be introduced to many leaders from all over the world in our coming classes!

P.S. I saw professors exchanging Meishi :) Meishi exchange was indeed an essential part of Japanese way of self-introduction.

Photo and Video are from the webpage of Eco-Products 2013.
http://eco-pro.com/eco2013/english/index.html