It’s Time For Leaders to Embrace a “People-First” Approach In The Future of Work

In the early days of COVID-19, CEOs and other leaders of organizations told their employees to practice empathy and compassion in managing relationships with customers, partners, and employees. Software giant Salesforce called for no layoffs for 90 days while other CEOs emphasized leading with empathy and compassion, and encouraging their fellow employees to do the same. It became commonplace to wave to that child you saw pop on the zoom screen, or to ask your coworker what their pet’s name was when they started barking in the background.

The amount of empathy and humanity that was shown in those early days of March and April of 2020 was heartening. This new way of assuming positive intent, communicating with empathy and acting with compassion, and looking to listen to others first and nurturing relationships was a nice change from the traditional business as usual to a more human-first approach of conducting business. It almost makes you wonder, why did it take a massive global pandemic for us to finally realize that we have all been lacking empathy, understanding, and deeper communications with one another? Aren’t these things that we all should have been doing all along?

In Business, We Forget About The People