Healing leadership
According to the Oxford Dictionary, compassion is defined as “a strong feeling of sympathy for people or animals who are suffering and a desire to help them.” But what if being a compassionate leader goes beyond a feeling? What if it’s more than just helping those in distress? As a counsellor, empathy and sympathy are the greatest tools I use to connect with my patients and to put myself in their shoes. But as a human being, these tools have their limitations. Sometimes, my patients' situations go beyond what I can comprehend, or I simply don’t have the capacity to carry their emotional burdens. This can leave me feeling unequipped to help them—or worse, feeling merely sorry for them. And that’s a hard pill to swallow. But over time, and with practice, I have learned to see my patients beyond their issues. Through consistent counselling experience, I have come to understand how to develop treatment plans that align with what they might be going through. The end goal is to hel...