True Leadership Intelligence: How Do You Leverage Imagination and Empathy?

Einstein said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”As a Leader a key piece of your job is to clearly articulate your vision and get others excited about it and acting on it. If you don’t have followers, you aren’t a leader.

This task requires you to leverage imagination and empathy. First, you imagine a world that is different than what you currently see and experience. Second, you empathize with your constituents. Empathy requires that, if you don’t have their experience, as JK Rowling says, you use your imagination to empathize with them. This means you “feel with” them and/or create an idea of what you think their experience is. In doing so, you are best able to translate your vision and articulate why it should matter to them.

Rowling says Empathy is the rare gift we humans have that separates us from many other creatures of the world. We can “learn and understand without experience.”And we are all gifted in one way or another with our ability to refuse to know. When we don’t exercise our empathy muscle, “we become masters at colluding in apathy.”

When you don’t have empathy for your constituents, they feel it and you are disconnected. They are not onboard – don’t get it or don’t care. It is your ability to enter your constituents’ world that will truly allow you to understand what is required of you - and them - to achieve a different world together.