Southwestern Union Education Superintendents’ Retreat
BURLESON, TEX. – Educational leadership in the Southwestern Union is focused on building collaborative school cultures. This focus requires a critical skill set to create the conditions for meaningful collaboration. Empathy often tops the list of skills that leaders need in order to build positive cultures.
Forbes states that leaders who empathize are those who demonstrate the ability to identify and share in the feelings that others experience. In terms of a collaborative culture, empathetic leadership sees and supports the individual within the group.
Each spring the Southwestern Union Office of Education organizes a superintendents’ retreat. Typically, the locations for the retreats rotate among the conferences. However, this year the group met in Altamonte Springs, Fla., in order to have access to the professional development services made available on the AdventHealth corporate campus.
One day of the retreat was spent in empathetic training by the AdventHealth Leadership Institute and the Design Center. The Leadership Institute provided an overview of the training they offer AdventHealth employees, focused on identifying, nurturing and developing leaders for AdventHealth. One session was focused on “Emotional Intelligence for Leaders,” during which superintendents developed the skill of reading body language in order to be more understanding and empathetic of those they serve.
The Design Center applies the concept of design thinking to the development and implementation of collaborative, solutions-oriented approaches to complex problems. Design thinking also incorporates empathy research to better understand and improve the consumer/patient experience. Superintendents were involved in an empathy exercise in which teams donned glasses that simulated visual loss before sorting a variety of pills into corresponding containers.
Everyone left with a more empathetic mindset to add to their leadership toolbox of skills.
By Carol Campbell, Ph.D.
Vice President for Education
