Human empathy in a business leader

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life. If one finds himself a leader at one point of his life, he must bear in mind that he cannot be just unless he is kind."

This is a quotation from Adlai Stevenson, an American statesman who was known as "the great man who never made it to the presidency of the United States." After almost 19 years in government, I find myself firmly agreeing with Stevenson.

We are all familiar with the Western-peddled truism that in a democracy, every citizen is regarded as equal, and we know that, within the political systems of different democracies, this cannot be true. Take a look at the food on the table of the affluent, and another look at the dirt floors of the poverty-stricken, where food taken from waste bins is placed, and you cannot help but cry out against the inequality of it all.

2007 is an election year and I cannot help but remember another of Adlai Stevenson’s statements: "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."

His words gain currency in the manner we Filipinos have handled the political system we find ourselves in right now. But my article today is not about the failures and successes of democracies like the Philippines and the US. It is about how a business leader – or any leader, for that matter – can lead with kindness, strength, and a lot of heart.

Just before I joined the government, a dear friend gave me a copy of a speech delivered by Dan Rather, a well-known broadcaster and news anchor. I remember having been struck by Rather’s compassion as he quoted from author James Agee, who recounted meeting an old lady he had talked to while writing his Great Depression novel, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Agee found her in the hollows of the Appalachia, in a little dark shack with dirt floors, no heat, and no plumbing. Agee asked the woman, "What would you do if someone came along and gave you some money to help you out?" As Rather said it in his speech, the old lady rocks in her chair and shakes her head… she’s thinking. Finally she nods and says, "I guess I’d give it to the poor."

As I read it then, nothing could have been more magnificent than the kindness and compassion displayed by this old lady in the rocking chair. Nothing could surpass her level of selflessness. That’s the reason the story has remained in my memory after all these years. And I have since told my friend, the one who gave me the photocopy of Dan Rather’s speech, the kind of effect it had on me.

What Adlai Stevenson said about kindness being essential in the business of life – whether the life you are pursuing has a business, social, or political dimension – is so true. Business leaders with some of the longest time horizons are those who are kind and fair, kind and firm, kind and demanding as regards a subordinate’s work output, and kind and rigid about the performance of assigned tasks.

Across the personnel spectrum of his corporate or agency organization, he has to have heart. He has to have compassion when this is called for, but always within the bounds of the moral code that he has imbedded within the fiber of his being.

An experience I cannot forget is one that happened within the organization I once headed. It had to do with two women vying for the position of division chief. One was an unmarried lady lawyer and the other was the next-in-line bureaucrat who had been my classmate in convent school. There was talk that the lady lawyer was pregnant out of wedlock. Whispers centered on the fact that she had been feeling troubled but determined to continue working.

One day, my classmate-bureaucrat asked to have an appointment with me and told me that her competitor was "immoral, being pregnant outside marriage" and should not merit promotion. Being a former classmate of mine, she must have felt close enough to narrate some ugly and malicious data until I prevented her from continuing further.

I told the bureaucrat that there was one memorable piece of advice my father gave me when I first joined the government: that, aside from being kind to your co-workers, you must not "kick (figuratively speaking) a person when he is down… try kicking a person when he is up."

The lady lawyer got the promotion. The bureaucrat, I guess, learned a lesson that she has not forgotten, and when she retired, she thanked me for it.

Indeed, the hardest thing to do is to kick a person when he is up. Try doing that to your boss who is flying high but has done something disgraceful in your eyes. If you do so, you stand a good chance of being fired. And the easiest thing to do is to kick a person when he is down. This is one of the most horrid things we can do. When a person is down, it should evoke the strongest possible feelings of compassion.

In any business organization, there is an entire hierarchy of superiors or bosses that we kowtow to, pay tribute to, and sing hallelujahs to. When the boss is down because he has just lost a beloved relative, we do not forget to commiserate with him and extend our condolences as soon as possible. But what about the lowly clerk in our office whose relative, just as loved, has passed away?

In a business organization, or any agency, for that matter, a kind leader is essential.

Traditional management used to teach us that leaders ought to be cool, distant, aloof and analytical, separating emotion from work, yet when real-life leaders talk about what they are proudest of in their respective professions, they describe feelings of kindness and compassion, and of inspiration and challenge – all very strong emotions.

Iknow for certain that staying aloof and cool is impossible. Almost two decades of what I would like to think was a successful stint in such a big organization as the Department of Transportation and Communications attests to this.

And while a leader is up there and flying high, it is good for him to remember that money won’t save his soul, build a decent family, or help him sleep at night. There is no way we must confuse wealth, success, or fame with character; no way we must tolerate or condone moral corruption, whether in high or low places, and regardless of color or class, power or the absence of it.

I believe very strongly that we get to think globally by being kind, which is engaging in that special exercise called human empathy. Not sympathy but empathy. It is human empathy that allows us to know what it is like to be a street child looking for a thicker carton or softer patch of earth to sleep on, while the hunger he feels gnaws cruelly. It is human empathy that will allow us to know the injustice of removing one decent civil servant from his job and putting someone else in his place simply because political expediency dictated it. And it is human empathy that will allow us to know the sorrow and utter hopelessness of a parent whose young son or daughter, passionately wanting to reform the political system, was mercilessly killed by a hoodlum on a motorcycle.

I have found out with the greatest conviction in my heart that we’ve got to do this world one small favor: Be kind; give back. Remember the people struggling alongside you and below you – the people who haven’t had the same opportunities, the same blessings, the same education.

Whatever our ideology, in 2007, we have to reach down and see if there isn’t someone we can pull up a rung or two – someone sick, someone weak, someone lonely, someone defenseless. Give them a hand. Give them a chance. Give them their dignity.

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