Train Students to Use Empathy as Well as Facts, Speaker Tells College Leaders

By AUDREY WILLIAMS JUNE

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Lawyers, accountants, engineers, and other employees traditionally treasured for their strictly "left brain" outlook on the world can no longer rely on that fact-focused mentality as a ticket to success, said Daniel H. Pink, best-selling author of A Whole New Mind, on Sunday.

Mr. Pink, the opening speaker at The Chronicle Executive Leadership Forum here, said that although employers in the past were overwhelmingly attracted to employees with such a mind-set, the people who get ahead in the future will bring much more to the table. The logical, linear, and analytical skills that employees have long valued are "absolutely 100 percent necessary, but they're no longer sufficient," Mr. Pink said.

Employees who also have empathy, a knowledge of design, and an ability to pull together disparate ideas, or "symphony," Mr. Pink said, will be the ones who play a critical role in the economy of the future. The remainder of the six "right brain" abilities advocated by Mr. Pink are story (putting facts in context), play (the ability to bring humor to serious tasks), and meaning.

Colleges and universities, Mr. Pink said, need to focus on educating students so they are able to develop such abilities.

"The purpose of college and university education is not to deliver employees to employers," Mr. Pink told the audience of more than 250 college presidents and other senior administrators.

Mr. Pink spoke of certain types of law and financial services that were once thought of as work that would "get you into the middle class." But a task like filing for an uncontested divorce, he said, is fairly routine in some places and mostly involves filing paperwork in a timely fashion—meaning it's a prime candidate for automation or outsourcing.

"One word that will obliterate careers is 'routine,'" Mr. Pink said. Meanwhile, having the skills to "toggle back and forth" between the right brain and the left is key, he said.

Mr. Pink is also the author of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, a book of career advice for young people presented in a comic-book format that is popular in Japan.

The leadership forum brings together college and university presidents, chancellors, and other senior administrators to examine the key management challenges facing higher education over the next four years. The forum ends today.