Dr Amina Aitsi-Selmi MD PhD

Recently, I’ve been struck by how much misunderstanding arises in leadership and communication because of a lack of clarity about empathy. Most self-aware leaders would consider empathy a positive attribute, albeit in moderation. Many work overtime from guilty feelings when others are disappointed. Yet excessive empathy raises fears of lacking objectivity and compromised decision-making - after all, leadership entails hard choices, and you can’t satisfy everyone all the time

I was in a relational leadership session and made a light comment about “snail energy” to describe how I was feeling. I thought we’d move on, but the whole group began to resonate. Something softened. People felt more alive. When we use animal metaphors for humans, we often refer to more powerful species: we feel ourself ‘soar like an eagle’ or be ‘strong like a lion’ to face the ‘wolf in the boardroom’ and so on. But this time, it was the snail - a distant relative of ours

Last year, I was in a liberational leadership meeting where a man in Tehran was on the call while the city was being bombed. His calm clarity struck us all. His focus was to not fall into hate and to care for the people around him. He’d done everything he could to protect himself and his family. He was in total acceptance. He just wanted to be in a space with other people who wouldn’t require him to perform anger and hate, or feel victimised. His way of being stood in sharp c