Our values & servant leadership - Empathy
by Jaya Uppal
When it comes to leadership, values matter. In our current political climate, it is vital that elected leaders clarify their values, and live and lead on a daily basis with the courage to stay committed to those values.
At New Politics Leadership Academy, we understand the importance of modeling this truth. We make the work of getting clear about values central to our approach to training and supporting servant leaders. Our team emerged from a long process of deliberation with a list of five core values that we believe are key to servant leadership and to the work that we do. You can learn about our five core values here.
Throughout this year, various members of our team will be writing about our organizational values and how you can apply them to your service. We hope you take the time to read our posts and do some reflection on how you are living out your own core values in 2020.
I never realized how hard it could be to truly embody my value of empathy until I served in the Peace Corps.
I always considered myself an open and accepting person, but what I saw upon arriving in Sierra Leone tore down my preconceptions and challenged me to reexamine the way I looked at the world. In the village of Fadugu, I was exposed to new and different cultural traditions like secret societies and female genital mutilation -- rituals that I’d heard of, but never imagined were still being practiced. While these traditions were scary and unfamiliar to me, all of my newfound friends freely partook in them. These were the same people who shared meals with me, welcomed me into their homes, and looked after me when I was sick. I had a hard time reconciling the fact that they were such good people with the reality that they actively participated in these violent and dangerous rituals. Despite my apprehensions, I realized that in order to achieve my goals as a teacher and community member, I would need to focus on the values I shared with them as opposed to those I didn’t.
My time in the Peace Corps taught me that empathy is more difficult than I had ever expected, and that sometimes, cultural barriers can be vast and seem insurmountable. Even more importantly, it taught me that people are people regardless of what they believe and that they have inherent worth and dignity simply because they’re human. Since our lived experiences were so different, I found ways to connect with my friends in the village based on our common humanity. Through my service, I learned that this is the true practice of empathy. It’s not accepting views that aren’t in line with my values, but rather engaging with people and not dehumanizing them because of the views they hold.
This powerful lesson is what led me to New Politics Leadership Academy. I was dismayed to see that while the cultural gap between me and my friends in Fadugu was vast, the gap between the right and the left in American politics was becoming increasingly more insurmountable than anything I experienced as a volunteer in a foreign country. I learned that progress can’t be made unless we’re willing to build relationships with people from diverse backgrounds and with different perspectives. It’s not about Republicans adapting Democratic policies or vice versa, but about making an effort to understand those with views different from our own, and seeing the value in all people.
I know that if I could fulfill my volunteer mission by learning to value my friends in Fadugu, listening to them without judgment and by connecting on our commonalities, then we can heal our broken political system and move our country forward with a large dose of that same empathy. At New Politics Leadership Academy, I am thrilled to support the training and development of leaders who put service over self in order to build a stronger community and country. Every day, I’m amazed to see so many of our NPLA alumni practice empathy as they enter politics, and I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of this movement to heal our country.