This month we feature a guest post from Tamsin Jones, Head of Mastery of Business and Empathy and Co-Director of Programs, Small Giants Academy. Tamsin is an impact entrepreneur and business strategist who has lived and worked in Africa, Europe and Australia. She has a background in government policy and business in fields such as inclusive innovation, gender balance, public health and conscious governance towards healthier societies and a thriving natural world.

For too long, business leadership has focused on top-down power and cognitive intelligence. These traits alone have not and cannot deliver the collective wisdom and action we need to elevate us with the shifting winds of ecological, social and technological change we are facing in the world today. Meanwhile, a more human-centred style has been subordinated.

Emotion and our ability to sense are essential to leadership today. Without empathy, we can’t connect beyond our own self-interest. We see this old play book in our political and business leadership every day – we are burning out, along with our planet. In the absence of that connection to the world around us, we do not listen or relate and lack the inner commitment that will drive the change our people and planet need for us to thrive.

We know the value of diverse stories, voices and experiences to innovate and create new futures. Yet, as leaders, are we cultivating an atmosphere of profound belonging in our organisations and communities for living diversity within and around us to flourish?

Small Giants Academy created the Mastery of Business and Empathy (MBE) to answer this deep need to integrate from the inside out, uniting head, heart and hands to rethink and redesign our own inner system of leadership. Although many people join the Academy to learn more about business, the MBE offers more than perception and knowledge (the head): it provides experiences and tools that expand how we relate with the world around us (the heart), empowering us with the ability to act (the hands).

Through this integration, established and emerging leaders are given the space, tools and guidance to chart their own unique course through increasingly complex and unprecedented global change. Working in this collaborative and immersive way, we are building the economy that will create our reimagined future: the next economy.

As one of our participants, Jo Brick, shared recently: ‘I came for the business and stayed for the empathy’.

Uniting head, heart and hands is the path to transforming ourselves, our organisations and the world around us. As Gayle Hardie, co-founder of the Global Leadership Foundation and a member of the MBE faculty, so often says, ‘When leaders can combine head, heart and hands, they are healthy and able to develop vertically – to expand their stories. With a growth mindset, we can change the way we think, becoming more adaptable, self-aware and collaborative.’

We have just closed applications for the 2023 MBE and are blown away by the level of global interest in educational experiences that integrate traditional and innovative business knowledge, creating embodied wisdom and powerful action. We have invited people from all backgrounds to reimagine. Historically, the MBE cohort has included people from across the world, spanning a variety of professional backgrounds: artists, activists, C-suite executives, bankers, doctors, teachers, First Nations leaders, farmers, law enforcement and government.

These engaged leaders are building the next economy from their unique perspectives and the MBE has no doubt allowed these perspectives to grow and evolve. The original thinking that emerges from sharing business and leadership challenges in this confidential, trusted network is profound. So much so that we will be shortly launching the Small Giants Fellowship program so we can provide the space to continually nourish, share triumphs and challenges and create the conditions for the next economy to thrive well beyond any specific one of our programs.

We need business skills to lead effectively, but in isolation, these skills won’t deliver the step-change we need for a more hopeful, regenerative future. We need to remember what it is to speak from the heart and cultivate organisations that can hold belonging and diversity and chart new paths beyond business as usual. Building skills in business and empathy is the key to this exciting future.

Tamsin Jones

Applications have now closed for the 2023 MBE intake, however Small Giants have a full calendar of transformative programs lined up over the next twelve months for you to continue your leadership journey. Sign up to their newsletter and explore their website to find out what’s next for you.