Do we need empathy or compassion in our political leaders? A case of Colombian political leaders

DOI

10.2991/icsbal-19.2019.44How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Political leadership, Colombia, compassion, empathy, armed conflict

Abstract

Nowadays, societies demand political leaders with the capacity to identify, recognize, and address other's suffering who can govern satisfactorily their nations. In that sense, empathy became not just a preferable quality, but also a prerequisite. However, academic discussions showed that empathy is not the most accurate term to appeal, neither the most appropriate. Empathy as the core of social engagement allows us to share others’ psychological experiences, but it does not entail necessary the need to take action toward specific community wellbeing. Compassion, on the other hand, drives action to relieve the discomfort of others. Due to the importance of the target in the definition of compassion, political leaders must choose which sector of his nation deserves their compassionate actions, even though empathy let him or her understand others national actors’ situation. Therefore, to identify the difference between empathy and compassion, this document will briefly exemplify the case of two former Colombian presidents who ended the armed conflict in Colombia. In the Colombian case, we can identify how empathetic leaders connect easily with the inhabitants of the nation, although their actions are not necessarily moral. While other leaders, without outstanding empathic characteristics, could intelligently choose empathic people for solving issues that demand being capable of understanding others’ emotions or perspective. In sum, we cannot deny empathy is a key feature of leadership. However, we must be aware that being empathetic does not entail moral action. As well as warn of compassionated which could lead leaders to focus on just one group necessities, ignoring other groups demands.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Laura Segovia-Nieto
AU  - Andrés Ramírez-Velandia
PY  - 2019/10
DA  - 2019/10
TI  - Do we need empathy or compassion in our political leaders? A case of Colombian political leaders
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social, Business, and Academic Leadership (ICSBAL 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 256
EP  - 260
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icsbal-19.2019.44
DO  - 10.2991/icsbal-19.2019.44
ID  - Segovia-Nieto2019/10
ER  -