Social-psychological interventions for cognitive empathy as leadership ability development in business students

Abstract

To be a transformational leader, one has to possess cognitive empathy. Based on findings from psychology and promising results from our pilot study conducted with undergraduate management students, we have designed a novel methodology which develops students’ cognitive empathy through the use of a social-psychological intervention. In order to enhance their cognitive empathy, this intervention exposes students to design thinking methodologies which emphasises the use of one’s empathy. Furthermore, the intervention is adequate enough not to disrupt the precious class time that has been dedicated to content teaching. The goal of this project is to provide a model for developing non-content based learning outcomes, relevant activities, and the measures that connect those activities to the outcomes. The project has been pilot-tested on about 80 students in two course sections of the focal course. We will expand the study to all 400 students in the course and eventually to other programmes.