The rallying call to action with the words our team of five million was used in March by the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ahern, as she garnered support for lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 crisis.

Miss Ahern has widely been regarded as a model of empathetic leadership, proving that there is space for political leaders to be both empathetic and strong and capable of empathising with the circumstances of others. Focusing on kindness above strength and assertiveness brings out the authenticity in all of us. Those around us would rather see an authentic version of us rather than an over-engineered one – someone who fails forward from time to time, someone who has stumbled and has failings but is honest about those moments.

A recent Forbes article suggests that our leaders of tomorrow are likely to need four rare skills: to be systems thinker, to show intellectual honesty and humility and to be empathetic and charitable in their thoughts and actions.

To be a systems thinker requires looking at the bigger picture and attempting to understand how all the problems we confront are interconnected. Globally we have never been more interconnected than we are now and empathy is the cornerstone of systems thinking. There are no isolated solutions, only interconnected ones. In order to enact change at any level, whether it be at school, within our local communities or in the wider world, we must first identify all the players that are contributing or who are affected by that problem. Secondly, we must work out how they relate to each other and thirdly – and most crucially of all – we need to understand, empathise and quantify the impact of those relationships on one another and on those that are outside the problem.

Whilst our OLA team is somewhat smaller than the team Miss Ahern refers to, those within our community this week have been looking into the value of empathy and the rewards it can bring during what has been Refugee Week. This comes hot on the heels of Empathy Day, which was on 9 June, and the Feast of the Sacred Heart, which is today and which focuses on the heart as the seat of the emotions and the outpouring of love that should animate all we do.

The theme of Refugee Week was Imagine; an invitation to imagine a kinder and more empathetic world and to put ourselves in others’ shoes, so we can build empathy and understanding. Pupils responded with some creative versions of Empathy Trees in which they viewed empathy as a seed from which a strong tree develops. The roots represent the kind things we can do to build empathy and understanding with others. The leaves are the positive effects that can come from understanding people, for the individual, for the other person, the community and the wider world. I have also included a selection of poems on the theme Imagine below.

By building the skills of a systems thinker we can learn to stand back from emerging problems, to look at the whole and bigger picture, before tackling the individual parts. By doing so, the interconnections of the parts reveal themselves and a greater level of empathy emerges. The tools of a systems thinker, often deployed by leaders such as Jacinda Ahern, involve working together to solve issues, building relationships rather than choosing isolation and considering the value of other viewpoints.

There are lessons for us all, I believe, in this approach.

W.O.R.L.D Awards

Full update on all of the awards coming next week!