There are always going to be people who really push our buttons. We see them coming, and we can feel our bodies tense up with discomfort. When they are part of a team we work on or lead, it becomes particularly challenging. Maybe there’s someone who isn’t pulling their weight. Or perhaps someone who undermines other team members, yet they deny their actions. And we all know someone who doesn’t communicate transparently and uses gossip channels.
Our natural, conditioned reaction to someone pushing in the wrong direction is to push back harder in the opposite direction. As leaders with greater power, this is usually a battle that we can win, but is it really the path we want to choose knowing it won’t be of benefit in the long run? What’s needed is counterintuitive. Using compassion as the response to difficult behaviors has the power to neutralize the unproductive energy while opening up a clear route toward collaborative growth.
Redirect, Don’t Push Back
Our automatic response to negative behaviors is quite naturally anger or a desire to fight back with resistance, blame or shame. Other than in cases of immediate danger, however, it is best to find a way to integrate your emotional response with wise discernment. Fighting back rarely leads to a shared solution. It often leads to further escalation, which only exacerbates the problem. It can also lead to passive submission accompanied by resentment and other negative feelings on the part of the disruptive team member. In this scenario, they perceive themselves as the victim, which also moves everyone further from a solution.
So, how might a leader deal with someone’s unproductive behaviors? Perhaps unexpectedly, the productive course is the way of compassion – meeting the person causing trouble with warmth and kindness. Many people recoil at the thought of meeting troublesome actions with kindness, feeling it goes against their sense of fairness and justice. It is important to understand that compassion toward an individual is NOT approval of their negative behavior. Responding with compassion in challenging circumstances requires the ability to hold the tension that exists between caring for the person as a fellow human being while simultaneously opposing their behavior.
Sometimes this is easiest to achieve with a simple question, “Is everything ok?” or “How are you feeling?” You might be surprised how often people who have walled themselves off will respond to a little dose of sincere warmth. Imagine what their actions would look like if they truly felt safe. If they felt connected to others. If they felt that they belonged. Checking in with warmth won’t reverse significant trauma or eliminate underlying issues, but it can create a softening that allows for collaborative conversation around required behavior change.
Strength and Courage
Warmth and kindness represent only part of compassion – nurturing compassion. Many people think that this aspect of compassion is all there is. Courageous compassion complements its nurturing counterpart by empowering us to take actions that eliminate the causes of suffering. Courageous compassion declares the boundaries of acceptable behavior and ensures that those boundaries are respected by all. By starting with warmth and kindness, we create an opportunity to gain clarity and agreement around those boundaries. Collaborating toward solutions for changed behavior is the most enduring path to sustained success.
This journey, however, is still often fraught with resistance, conflict, anger, or denial on the part of the one creating the challenge. No matter how direct your focus is on the behavior, it is only natural that the team member may feel this as an assault on their personal dignity. This is why starting with warmth and kindness is so important. As a leader, you will need to invoke courageous compassion and patiently bring the conversation back to the need for a change in behavior while continuing to offer a caring, respectful presence to the individual.
Practicing Compassion in the Real World
This is all a wonderful theory, but sometimes the compassionate solution requires stronger sanctions – reassignment, structured coaching or counseling with targeted results, or termination. Can there be compassion in the extreme case of these examples? Yes, firing someone can be done compassionately. It requires one to respectfully affirm the innate humanity of the individual while also naming that there is a specific relationship that needs to be dissolved. The painful change is not only for the benefit of the team, but it is also for the benefit of the one who has created the challenge. By separating the individual’s human value from specific behaviors, it is possible to name what is broken without judgment.
Overcoming the idea that we can’t care for someone and dismiss them from a job is one of the hardest things for compassionate leaders to learn. Compassionate leaders create cultures of learning and growth. It takes a very mature leader to be able to shepherd someone through a termination process in a way that includes constructive learning. Yes, it’s hard, and it’s possible.
In Closing…
Our instincts often cause us to fight back against negative behaviors that make it harder to find sustainable, collaborative solutions. Compassionate leadership offers the greatest chance to bring positive behavior change by respecting the humanity of those involved while simultaneously setting boundaries for acceptable behavior. It takes courage to lead with this amount of compassion.