17 Why Read Fiction as Leaders? Cultivating Empathy Through Literature Mary Nelson, Ph.D. Dr. Mary Nelson is Director of the Ph.D. in Leadership Studies and also serves as a professor of English at Dallas Baptist University. In 2021, Forbes magazine published an article entitled, “Empathy is the Most Important Leadership Skill.”1 This article, and the particular timing of its publication, strike me as especially meaningful. In 2021 we were mired in the COVID pandemic and collectively reeling from various consequences of the deadly disease. In that context, the Forbes article identified empathy, a quality that some psychologists viewed as being in short supply, as essential to effective leadership. “Compassion fatigue” was no doubt on the rise during the apex of the pandemic. Psychologist Charles Figley coined this term, defining it as “the negative effect that long-term caring for those in distress has on a person’s ability to feel compassion for others.” 2 This phenomenon was, understandably, especially prevalent in first responders and medical personnel. Many, however, in the general public demonstrated this fatigue as well due to the sheer scale, and extended length, of the pandemic. The scope of COVID-related deaths—over one million in America and over seven million globally—remains staggering in its breadth.3 Even years before the deadly pandemic, psychologist Paul Slovic performed studies of “psychic numbing.” He explains that “our sympathy for suffering and loss declines precipitously when we are presented with increasing number of victims.”4 He asserts that “‘compassion fade’ takes place when an incident involving a single person expands to as few as two people.”5
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