That doesn’t just mean different ways to celebrate the holidays, the languages your employees speak or the way they dress. The very nature of having a strong, diverse team means learning to embrace, respect and celebrate your team’s cultural identities. Sign up here to get top career advice delivered straight to your inbox every week. Subscribe To The Forbes Careers Newsletter “That email, along with hundreds of others, brought home the immediacy of how deeply this situation is affecting PwC employees and how much they wanted to connect with others to process what was unfolding.” “I sent a firm-wide email checking in on our 47,000 partners and staff,” Ryan recalls. When a leader shows empathy, it builds trust that strengthens both the relationship and performance of the entire team. A leader has to think beyond their personal worldview and look at the world through the eyes of their team. Ryan recognized that his team was made up of real people who had real feelings outside of work and understood that people's emotions can affect their performance in the workplace. Not knowing exactly what to say, he reached out and asked them how the company could support them. He couldn’t help but wonder what his African American colleagues must be feeling like.
Shortly after Ryan was appointed to his new position, a string of racially charged police shootings dominated the news.