50: Workplace leaders must step up with empathy to conversations about race and racial injustice, with author Alain Hunkins

The role of empathy as a starting point to address racial injustice in the workplace is a central focus of today’s episode with Alain Hunkins, a passionate leadership consultant, coach, facilitator, and most recently, author of Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders. (HINT: the secrets involve acting on the interconnected elements of Connection, Communication, and Collaboration). Instead of merely discussing some of the book’s concepts in generalities, we contextualized them in an off-the-cuff discussion of how leaders can employ familiar leadership tools in open conversations with POC on their team and about topics of race with their team as a whole. Among many factors that hold people back from leading with empathy are fear, impatience, power dynamics, and lack of practice