"MENSCH!"

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You know you are in the presence of a Mensch. They have a calm presence, and they exude credibility. They earn respect without demanding it. Mensch is the greatest compliment one can give.

-Bruna Martinuzzi

The highest form of knowledge is empathy.

-Bill Bullard

A few years ago, I received an unusual email from a senior manager at Google: “Are you the son of Frances May?” “Yes.” I answered a bit perplexed. “I got your name from the obituary you wrote some years ago about your mother in the Daily Oklahoman. I want to send you some information about your mother’s father: Benno Jacobson. My mother had always spoken so highly of him. She idolized him. He spoke five languages, was the president of the Kansas City, Missouri Chamber of Commerce where they lived in the 1930’s and early ‘40’s, and he was the president and owner of a large laundry. He died before I was born, but my parents named me after him. “Your grandfather, Benno, sent a letter to, then, Senator Harry Truman, asking him to intercede for my relatives-Jews- living in Germany in 1939. I have the letter he sent, and the response from the American Embassy that they were able to get the entire family out, and into the United States. Had it not been for your grandfather, I am certain I would not have been born since my family would have been exterminated in the Holocaust.” Before I picked my jaw up off the table, he was quick to tell me: “I am sending you copies of the letters from the Truman Library.” True to his word he did just that. After reading the letters a few times, I sat at my desk alone for some time thinking about my grandfather: his sense of empathy and responsibility. I wish I had known him but thankful that I now knew a part of him, and a story of my family.

The “Rest” of the Story

And part of that story is incredibly sad. My mother saw her mother-my grandfather’s wife- jump to her death from the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Kansas City when my mother was only twelve. So, her father and her aunt raised her. By any judgment, people referred to my mother as a ‘character.’ She was educated as a concert pianist earning a master’s degree in music in 1920’s Kansas City-quite unusual for a woman in those days. After a gut-wrenching divorce from my father when I was six, she raised me with the help of a Black woman-Nina: my “other mother.” Mom would take me to synagogue on Friday nights in Oklahoma City, grabbing me under the arm after services, pushing me to introduce myself to a gaggle of older people standing in a corner with blue numbers tattooed on their arms: Holocaust survivors. “They’ve been to hell and back. Be nice, Benji.” President of any number of different civic and philanthropic organizations, she was one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever known. It was not unusual to see her literally pointing out someone she knew in public, recounting what a great person they were-sometimes embarrassing the object of her praise. She “insisted” that I attend one of the toughest and finest schools in the Southwest: Casady. My house was a refuge for my buddies from Casady, especially when they were having tough times with their own families. She was like a fraternal “house mother.” ?One of those buddies was one of the founders of Verifone: the global credit card verification company. He told me once when he was low on confidence in a particularly tough time there, when he had to give a speech to a group of international executives, he thought of my mother’s empathy and kind support of him as a kid to push him ahead. Who would’ve thought? Sadly, her emotional demons, the effects of the divorce and her loneliness caused her to have the first of several nervous breakdowns when I was sixteen. It was a gut-wrenching experience for me, but much worse for her. The one thing of which she was so fearful-that she was crazy-happened, and I was the one who had to put her in the hospital! She eventually did pull out of her depression and anxiety for another 30 years but found life so difficult. She died unexpectedly and alone before I could be with her at the end.

The” Soft Skill” that’s Hard

Many years ago, when I started out as a young executive in my thirties I would “inhale” books on management and leadership-from Peter Drucker to John Maxwell to Jim Collins, Sun Tzu, John Wooden and especially Warren Bennis. Then a bit later it was Steven Covey, Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek and, later in life: Brene Brown and Lee Cockerell-all interspersed with a constant flow of HBR articles on the subject. Empathy is one of those words that has only recently appeared. I wonder if empathy is something we can learn, or if it can come naturally, like from my mother. I wrote a piece one time for the Good Men Project: I Didn’t Know I was Lost: The Functionality of My Dysfunctional Family. I Didn’t Know I Was Lost - The Good Men Project . You don’t necessarily have to be “buttoned up” to learn to be empathetic, like my mother. Walking in somebody else’s shoes is not necessarily something you can fake in some structured interview with the people who report to you. I have found that, many times, it comes from remembering some of the hard times each of us had to endure, and then transferring those feelings to the person with whom we are trying to empathize. What must those people in the Holocaust have felt? Can you imagine? I recently saw a movie from Disney Plus: A Small light. It was about Anne Frank and the Dutch woman-Otto Frank’s secretary: Miep Gies-who helped hide the family for two years. Her empathy put her life at risk.

You Have to Experience the Bad to Embrace the Good

I remember elementary school in Oklahoma City in 1956. My teacher singled me out every year. “Which “wun” a yew keeuds don celbrate Chrismus? “Ah know Benji May don’t ‘cause he’s a Jew!” She would draw out the word Jew (joooo..) so everyone would get the full effect. “A Jew?!!” “We thought you were like us.” The kids would scream. I called it: “the annual ‘reveal.’ Some years I almost made it without revealing my cover..until I didn’t. So, I learned how to embrace and empathize with people who others left out because they were different. You know, diversity and inclusion are not necessarily current ideas, but they are more important than ever today for our bruised and battered society. We should all strive to be a Mensch. The word finds its origin in the Yiddish Language-speaking of Judaism. Yiddish is an offshoot of German, and the word means:” human.”?To be a Mensch is to be a human being. Think about that, whether you consider yourself a leader or not. If you are not empathetic, you won’t be an effective leader, and you may not be much of a human either.

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