How Great Leaders Use Empathy to Create Shared Vision
When you see the world from another person’s perspective, you realize that opposing truths can both be right. When you allow for seeming contradictions to hold, you realize new possibilities. Great leaders work to bring people from their limited world on a journey to new possibilities by leading with empathy.
You Are Both Right
Take a moment to consider this image:
Who is right? Both.
Consider this Chinese Idiom - The Four Blind Men and the Elephant:
Once upon a time, there lived four blind people in a village. They were good friends and always lived together.
One day, while walking through the village, they came across a lot of noise from a certain direction. That noise made them very curious, and they walked in that direction. After walking for a bit, they found out that someone had brought an elephant to the village.
The blind men got excited as they had never come across an elephant. They requested the owner to let them touch and feel the elephant, as they could not see. The owner was kind enough to let them come closer and let them see and touch the elephant.
So, these four men began to feel the elephant. One man touched the elephant’s trunk, one stood near the leg, another one near the stomach, and another one touched the tail.
After taking their time to sense the shape and size of the elephant from their positions, they thanked the owner and began to talk to each other and describe the elephant.
The first man: Elephant is such a great animal, it seems exactly like a thick and flexible rod.
The second man: Oh really, I do not think so. It’s more like a giant pillar, and it does not move.
The third man: Come on! I don’t know what you touched, but the elephant is like a giant wall.
The fourth man: No no, you all are wrong. The elephant is like a rope, very thin and very hairy.
All four men kept arguing and fighting with each other till they reached home. They ended up being upset with each other and did not talk to each other for a long time.
Like the concave/convex example above, all four men were right from their perspective. They all defended their truth and their own lived experience. It is their reality.
At work, this often leads to negative interpretations of the other side:
“She is so clearly wrong and stubborn about it.”
“He just wants things done his way and is not adaptable.”
“I cannot trust this person’s judgment when it is so wrong.”
These statements and beliefs then lead to entrenched positions and bitter arguments.
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Please take a moment to watch this video:
Well, they were both right. The world is more complex than we thought.
So often, we get into heated debates from our very logical, grounded, right perspectives without considering the reality of the other person: their work context, their values, their priorities, their background, their current emotional state, or what they currently notice. We defend our perspective because it is so clearly right to us.
When there is disagreement, taking the time to truly understand and connect with another's perspective is one of the most powerful leadership actions. You do not have to agree with their actions. You may still reach a different conclusion. However, seeing from another’s perspective often creates new possibilities where there was only conflict.
Most of the world is not simply black or white. It is much more like a ball with both colors.
Great Leaders Created A Shared Reality
Let’s continue with the Idiom of the Four Blind Men and the Elephant.
The wise man took them back to the elephant, and he made them sit near it. The wise man then took some clay and built a small model of an elephant that resembled the real elephant.
He sat with the four blind men and explained the elephant and how it looked. He then handed over the clay model to each of the four blind men and explained how the real elephant looks, especially starting from the point of view they had.
He made the first man touch the trunk of the model and then the rest of the elephant, and with the second man, he started with the leg. He started with the stomach for the 3rd and with the tail for the fourth man. Each blind man was able to explore the entire elephant using the model to get some idea of how the elephant may look.
He then took each of the four blind men back to the real elephant and asked them to imagine the elephant again. This time starting from a different position than before.
Like the Wise Man in the Idiom or the professor in the video, great leaders focus on not just seeing the new possibilities themselves, but helping others see the full picture as well. They create space for seemingly opposite viewpoints and bring them together towards a shared vision. They spend their time bringing people from where they are to the truths of the other perspectives, and then to the shared vision.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
This is excellent! Thank you!
Yue, this is a brilliant and deeply insightful article.
Thank you for articulating the mechanics of empathetic leadership with such clarity.
Your use of the "blind men and the elephant" parable resonated profoundly.
I vividly remember hearing that story in primary school over two decades ago, and its lesson on the danger of fragmented perspectives has shaped my professional philosophy ever since.
So many organizations operate exactly like the blind men, with each department holding a different part of the truth—sales sees the "leg," marketing sees the "tusk," engineering sees the
"body."
They are all technically correct, but strategically, they are completely misaligned.
This lack of a shared vision is often the root of so much internal friction and marketplace confusion.
This is precisely the problem we work to solve as Cinematic Strategists. We see our role as the one who helps the entire team "see" the whole elephant.
Our process is to take those disparate, incomplete truths and architect a single, cohesive, cinematic narrative that everyone in the organization can see, feel, and rally behind.
You've perfectly captured the essence of the leader's greatest challenge: to build a shared reality.
A powerful and necessary piece of work. Thank you.