The importance of empathy allowed us to engage in an emotionally and intellectually challenging day at the Century House. In the morning, Mike Saccocio and his team from the City Mission of Schenectady (Gary, Robin and Chris) shared their perspectives on leadership from a trauma-informed perspective. We explored some of the challenges associated with seeing others from their perspective rather than our own perspective, we discussed how to better engage and connect with the people we are serving, and we explored how to take care of ourselves as we serve those experiencing trauma. Many thanks to Mike and his team for sharing their experience with the group.

In the afternoon, Tracy Solarek dug deeper into the exceptionally important concept of emotional intelligence (EI). We saw how much better high EI leaders performed and we explored way to build our own individual and team EI. There was a tremendous amount of information provided in our individual Leadership Reports – way to much to digest in the few hours we had to explore this topic – and we committed to more fully reviewing the reports and making progress on our team and individual goals over the next six weeks. By developing greater emotional intelligence, we will be better prepared to lead in our organization and serve our community.