Page 39 - Demo

Empathy is now being demanded of our leaders. We now want our leaders to have the ability (and humility) to value each and every person’s experience. For those who receive empathy from their leaders, they get the sense that they are not facing the future alone. They feel supported and understood. This makes for happier and more productive employees and creates a culture at the workplace that is ripe for collaboration and open communication.
For those who give empathy, it’s more than an opportunity to learn about someone else’s experience. It is also an opportunity to stop obsessing about our own stress-inducing problems and gain some perspective. The act of giving empathy is a generous act of acknowledgment to someone else that they are not alone. Deep down, the giver would like that same act of generosity to come back to them
– karmically – when they need to feel supported. Empathy begets empathy. It’s a cycle of understanding and humanity.
: Can you share examples of empathy that have stood out to you in recent months?
: The pandemic has left the Broadway industry devastated. Our future job prospects, financial stability, and health insurance are all on shaky ground. And yet, members of the theatrical community are the first to jump up and volunteer or lend a voice to charitable causes – even when they themselves are faced with uncertainty. I’ve found these acts of selflessness truly inspiring. This is a scary time to call oneself a professional theater artist, but I’ve also never felt prouder of that job title.
: Can you share examples of how you have shown empathy to others?
: I consider our EMPATHY events we produce together to be acts of empathy. Actors are storytellers and hearing other people’s stories is how we get others to empathize. The theater is an agent of empathy. Theater artists use fictional characters, songs, music, dance, etc. as storytelling techniques to stoke an emotional response from the audience. My goal, as both a theater artist and teacher, is that we all leave the theater (or the classroom) seeing and engaging the world differently.
: Has empathy become more important in this time of crises like the pandemic, increased awareness of racial injustice, the U.S. election, etc.?
: The act of wearing a mask is the most visible act of empathy in our daily lives now. Yes, a mask protects us from getting infected, but its other main function is to protect other people from getting sick. It has forced all of us (well, most of us) to consider the health and well-being of someone else when we put on a mask to leave the house.
The summer of 2020 and the Black Lives Matters movement laid bare the social and racial injustice that pervades all parts of our society. Our discussions about empathy in relation to COVID in the spring primed us to have a hard and difficult
38