When you are laser-focused on your goals, it can be challenging to focus on the needs and feelings of other people. But in education, leading with your heart is essential. You need to be aware of how your actions affect people and what you need to do to show sympathy and empathy for others.

Empathy and sympathy are essential

For most of us, displaying sympathy and empathy is easy. It is natural for us to place ourselves in other people’s shoes and imagine how we would feel in that situation. We, in turn, treat them the way that we would like to be treated in that situation, so we respond with kindness and compassion. Sometimes this means bending the rules, sometimes this just means bending over backward. In the end, it is worth it because we get to lessen the suffering of another human being.

For others, being sympathetic and empathetic is not second nature to them. They just don’t have the capacity to put themselves in other people’s shoes and treat them as they would like to be treated. They just see everything as being business and not personal. Unfortunately, this type of attitude will get you in trouble in the field of education. Essentially, you will end looking like Scrooge.

Becoming more compassion

So how can someone who is not naturally empathetic, learn to be? Well, as I eluded to earlier, if you are an education leader, you don’t have a choice. You will be dealing with children who are vulnerable and impacted negatively by adults with a lack of empathy or sympathy. I assume that there is someone in your life that you love. How would you want them to be treated? I assume you would want others to treat them with compassion, right? Well, how can you want this for them, and be unwilling to do it for others?

Hopefully, from this perspective, you can begin to see that leading with compassion is not a difficult thing to do; you just need to approach it from a place of selflessness. It may seem unnatural to put others first, but try it out for a while, and over time it will become second nature.