We Are Humans First: Empathy and International Teams. An Interview with Jorge Alejandro Vargas
/
“At the end of the day, work is important and it matters. But it is work. And we are humans and we are people. We are sadness and we are joy…and that has a huge influence on our work.”
Jorge Alejandro Vargas manages teams around the world for the Wikimedia Foundation. His success as a leader (and the raving support of his team) testify to the importance of bringing emotions into work.
In today’s episode, he shares about
Tips to effectively engage multi-national teams during the stressors of a global pandemic
What leaders must become more self-aware of their emotional world
Why apologizing and making repairs is the mark of a great leader
You can find the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And you can listen to the interview here:
Jorge Alejandro Vargas, Wikimedia Foundation
Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Jorge…
In order to fully engage in empathy and support, it is important to know how you are feeling in a given moment and interaction. Jorge described the process of pausing to really acknowledge his own emotions, his willingness to share his emotional moment with others, and the work of counseling and introspection that it took to get him to that point of self-awareness. How aware are you of your emotional state in the course of a given day?
Grief, sadness, joy, positivity. Jorge has experienced a range of emotions across cultures and, as he said, there is no “one-size fits all” solution to how people experience grief. This leads to the importance of radical attention, cultural attunement, and the importance of checking in with those that you work with and manage.
Good leaders go back to make repairs, they apologize, they interrogate their experience and develop the gut instinct that Jorge talked about, the one that reminds them to prioritize the person instead of their own ego. When was the last time you apologized? Has it been a while? It might not be that you are always acting excellently. If you haven’t apologized in a while, it could be an invitation to deeper self-awareness.