To win support for compassionate leadership, start with what matters to leaders: results. Pair research on performance, retention, and innovation with real stories and your own example. Over time, consistent, authentic compassion proves that caring for people and driving results go hand in hand.

Do you want to lead with more compassion, but aren’t sure where to start? Wanting to show up for others means you are already on the right path. Opportunities to lead with compassion will arise naturally every single day. Compassionate leadership grows from how you choose to respond in your day-to-day moments. Learn where to start with these three pillars of compassionate leadership.

How do we change teams, organizations, and systems to exhibit greater compassion competence? Compassion flows from the inside out, so an important place to start is with self-compassion. In celebration of International Self-Compassion Day, four leading thinkers and practitioners of compassionate leadership share how they view self-compassion as important for leaders.

The fractures in our world are undeniable as we witness an era marked by division, isolation, and polarization. This sense of separation has seeped into our daily lives, and in this climate, it can be easy to lose hope. Still, the desire to live in supportive community remains as strong as ever. Compassionate leaders understand the path to building connection.

What guides you? Why are you doing the compassionate leadership work that you do? Purpose connects our actions to deeper meaning, at both a personal and collective level. Here are five books that will help you move more deeply into purpose at every level, from the individual to the systemic level, for your summer reading in the Northern Hemisphere or mid-winter reading in the Southern Hemisphere.

We all come into this world with the innate dignity shared by every human. Recognizing this truth changes how we relate to ourselves, to those we lead, and to the cultures we build. A foundational principle for all compassionate leaders is to foster environments where dignity is honored within and between every individual.

In a time when brute force is loudly heralded as effective leadership, and when a prominent billionaire can proclaim that “the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy,” to center a professional gathering around dignity, compassion, and human flourishing is a radical act.

Today’s wellbeing solutions often assume that the cause of stress is inside the person rather than in the system. Because of that, current approaches aren’t working. It’s time to acknowledge the foundational cause of workplace stress and build solutions that go to the root.

At every turn, it feels like we're at each other's throats. Headlines showcase another argument, another fight, another cycle of division. The temptation in these moments is to fight back – to defend our position with equal force, to escalate. But that only intensifies the violence. That only deepens the fractures. What we need instead is cooperation and collaboration.

These times challenge us at our core. What does it mean to be human? How do we create a world that supports the thriving of all people and the planet? What distinguishes how we weather the storm isn’t just our individual skill, adaptation, or resolve, but the strength of the communities we belong to.