At the Center for Compassionate Leadership, we believe that compassion and leadership not only support each other, but also amplify their respective impacts on teams and organizations. There is no doubt that compassion is vitally needed in the world today, and we see leaders as accelerators to grow compassion to address what ails the world today.
In order to define compassionate leadership, we should start with its component parts. Compassion simply defined is the awareness of the suffering of another combined with the desire to take action to relieve that suffering. Leadership is the process by which clear direction and goals for an organization or team are set combined with the ability to influence team members to make progress toward the goals.
In our work around the research and implementation of compassionate leadership throughout the world, our findings have led us to the following definition:
Compassionate leadership consists of treating those you lead with compassion in all situations and creating a culture of compassion that supports the flourishing of everyone within that culture.
There are three important things to highlight in this definition.
Compassion is primary in the relationship between compassion and leadership.
One aspect that distinguishes compassionate leadership from other leadership approaches is that compassion is the primary goal while leadership is the means to accomplish the goal. In the many different forms of leadership – and the lists can be quite long – leadership is normally the primary goal. For example, in facilitative leadership, facilitation is the means that a leader uses to express their leadership, while in visionary leadership, the leader’s vision is the primary means for leading.
The primacy of compassion can present a challenge for traditional leaders, who like to start with the goals and then move toward them. Compassionate leadership requires starting with compassion as the primary goal. Organizational goals will follow naturally on that. Confident compassionate leadership requires trusting that the organizational outcomes leaders seek will be successfully achieved.
Compassionate leadership leads to strong performance of organizational goals.
For some leaders, it can be scary to start with compassion and then move to organizational goals instead of the other way around. This concern usually arises from the fear that there is a tradeoff between organizational goals and compassion. In reality, compassion supports performance. Research shows that compassionate leaders are viewed by their teams as stronger leaders, and that compassion leads to better outcomes in customer satisfaction, employee engagement and financial returns. That certainly makes sense. Who do you think will be more productive, creative, and effective? Workers who are always seen, acknowledged and supported or workers who are treated as replaceable cogs in an organizational output machine?
Compassionate leadership both responds to and prevents suffering and leads to flourishing.
A compassion that only relieves suffering as it arises, but does not ask about the suffering’s origin will lead to serial pain from the same source. Compassionate leaders must create cultures that respond to the suffering of team members, and also address the root cause of that suffering.
If you give a worker some extra time off because their work schedule has been extremely stressful, that is an act of compassion. Asking whether the excessive stress is avoidable and putting steps in place to moderate the stress in the future is an even more encompassing act of compassion. Compassionate leaders seek to alleviate suffering as well as the root of suffering.
Compassionate cultures get in front of suffering by creating the conditions for individual and organizational flourishing. The culture of collective wellbeing reduces the amount of suffering, and when challenges arise, the positive environment helps everyone work through the difficulties much more easefully.
The foundations of compassionate leadership are the foundations of leadership: goal setting, psychological safety, trust, effective communications, and more. Beyond these basics, compassionate leadership embraces the humanity of each individual and creates culture that supports their wellbeing. The global reset now underway demands compassionate leadership.
Photo Credit: Kelly Bork on Unsplash.