By Nomathemba Pearl Dzinotyiwei

“Oh I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York.” This is the chorus from one of my favourite songs by Sting, Englishman in New York. It sums up how I feel sometimes, working in a corporate environment. As an empath, an intuitive and a highly sensitive person, I struggled for years until I came to an understanding of who I am, my unique gifts and my capabilities. It always baffled me why I would get worked up over incident that left a lot of people well ‘unbothered’. Is that even a word? After spending hours over the years in reading, learning, counseling, professional coaching and on my journey as a Methodist lay preacher, I’m beginning to understand why I’m still in corporate and why I need to be there.

It’s not easy, but I’m beginning to understand that as an empath and an activist, I’m here to teach, to heal and to bring hope. There are people who will think that I am being arrogant and presumptuous. The thing is we are spiritual beings having a human experience and to honour the spark of the divine at our core, we have to acknowledge our true nature, honour its gifts and use them to fulfill our purpose. All of this sounds ethereal, surreal and other-worldly, right? But for me acknowledging the unseen, unconscious and the spiritual essence of who I am has given me a clarity and peace, no amount of self-help or ‘tough it out’ type of advice could ever do.

Does Empathy Have A Place at Work

So why do you need empathy in corporate environments? Well the works has become more stressful with the pressure to perform, job uncertainty because of economic crises and rapid advancement of technology. The skills that made us successful in the Industrial Age are of limited use in the Information Age. People are depressed, anxious and burnt out and contrary to popular belief, they don’t leave those problems at home, they bring them to work. Their issues seep into the workplace and affect everyone else, who has their own issues. When you add external pressure in the form of targets, deadlines, and inflexible process and procedure, you create a perfect storm of discontent within a person, that creates ripples that builds up to a tidal wave within a team and an organization.

Empathy is now the recommended tool of effective leaders to calm the storm within and prevent a tsunami. It requires effective listening by leaders in order to coach employees to make sustainable choices to improve their state of mind and their performance. Empathy puts people ahead of profit, with the understanding that you cannot have a great customer experience which is essential for sustainable business performance if you have a terrible employee experience.

Personally, the best work experiences I ever had in my over 20 years in banking were with empathetic leaders who inspired us to give of our best. They are often so successful that they are either quickly snapped up by other companies that recognize quality leadership; or relegated, frustrated and sent packing by more senior bullies who knew that they couldn’t compare. I never forgot those experiences and I strive to create them in my own teams.

Bad Bossology

I am constantly bewildered by leaders who despite being fully human themselves, want to believe that we as employees can and must switch off our human nature, leave it at the door and become little robots without any emotions, on whom they can take out their frustrations, which often have nothing to do with us. As an empath, I am extremely sensitive to tone of voice, I pick up micro-expressions that most people miss and can discern the things people don’t say. I can perceive someone’s emotional state from email. Don’t ask me how. It’s complicated. Negative interactions with people raising their voices, manipulating and threatening me or other people would leave me unsettled for days. I was often a target of workplace bullies and while I fought back as best as I could, leaving the job was often the best solution for my peace because company policy is woefully inadequate when it comes to dealing with workplace bullies and the culture encourages bullying by rewarding and protecting the perpetrators in positions of power while punishing defenseless victims.

One day, hopefully soon, I’ll share my experiences and knowledge of what is known as Bad Bossology, which a colleague beautifully described as forged in the fire. Going through the fire though painful brought me tremendous mental and spiritual growth, toughness, perseverance and gave me unshakeable resolve and I always rise regardless.

Why I Care

This is why I care and why I will always speak out against workplace bullying. If I could name and shame individual perpetrators, their victims and companies that have aided and abetted this abhorrent behaviour, it would be a long list indeed. I have counseled and assisted victims of bullying, even representing them in grievance hearings, because no one else is willing to take the risk. However I have also observed executive careers either stagnate or crash and burn inexplicably and realised that karma or divine retribution has everyone’s address without exception. It is therefore important to treat people as you would like to be treated. That’s a basic Sunday School lesson, but you’ll be astounded at how easily grown men and women with children of their own seem to forget that lesson. No one is above the basic universal law spiritual law of sowing and reaping regardless of race or creed.

Battle-Scarred Warriors for Humanity

I was inspired by Liz Ryan, who created the Human Workplace, where she helps people to make their way out of toxic workplaces. I also follow and work with Sihle Bolani, author of We Are The Ones We Need: The War on Black Professionals in Corporate South Africa, founder of WorkingWhileBlack and KonnektedWomen where she works with black and women professionals to have the tools to survive and thrive in toxic corporate environments.

The Corporate Humanitarian is my way of creating a safe space where people can read about workplace issues, know that they aren’t crazy or being over-sensitive and can find ways of coping with the painful reality of working with un-evolved and uninvolved leadership. Share your experiences in the comments and know that you are not alone.