Ms. Sivakami S
Ex -Delivery Head/Program Director- Verizon Data Services India
(Udemy Instructor, with 7 Online Courses and 5700 students worldwide).
The BMI session held on 9th January 2019 at LIBA was happy to host Ms. Sivakami S (Ex-Delivery Head/Program Director- Verizon Data Services India) who graced the occasion with her thought provoking interaction on the topic “ Be Intelligent about your Emotions : EMPATHY”.
The session started with a video which showed people from different parts of the world dancing freely, thus showcasing their uninhibited emotions. The entire point of the video was to prove that emotions are required for human functioning, no matter which country, caste or race a person belongs to. This is where “EMPATHY” plays a key role. Empathy is a feeling where you imagine yourself walking a mile in the shoes of someone. This is mostly done by us in two ways – imitation & emulation. Imitation is when you mirror someone’s actions or attitude, whereas emulation is done when you look upto someone, say your idol or someone who you respect a lot.
Ms Sivakami was very efficiently able to incorporate this thought in the corporate world so as to educate the various future managers present in the room. She highlighted certain benefits of being empathetic such as the ease in which a manager can understand his/her employees or customer’s expectations, the need for an equal status for everyone in the society and hence the realization that no particular individual deserves a special status. She also cautioned the students on some negative aspects of empathy such as the spotlight effect which tends to give extra attention to the sufferings of a particular individual, thereby not effectively bringing out the sufferings of several others in distress. To conclude, Ms Sivakami mentioned the various implications of empathy in the workplace which would be of immense importance if one is striving to be a leader in the corporate world.