Compassionate leadership is a process of regular learning, growth, and practice. Leaders draw on wisdom from a diverse range of perspectives and voices. Here are five book recommendations that will strengthen your own journey of compassionate leadership.
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life
by Dacher Keltner
Twenty years ago, Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt laid the academic foundation for understanding awe with their article, “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Aesthetic, and Spiritual Emotion.” Since then, Keltner has written extensively in both books and academic journals on happiness, compassion, and awe, including The Power Paradox, his 2017 book all compassionate leaders should read.
Now, with Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life, Keltner brings to life in book form his global research of awe, distilling the results of 2,600 individual narratives of awe into “eight wonders of life.” From witnessing moral beauty such as kindness through the miracle of life and death, Keltner shows how each of these eight wonders lead us to a deeper connection to the vastness of the world.
Awe strengthens compassionate leadership skills. It helps us realize how much we don’t know, don’t understand, and can’t control. Awe also connects us to something much bigger than ourselves. These realizations help us situate ourselves in the world exactly as it is and focus our energy on what we can control. In so doing we are also more readily able to access positive emotions which help us to thrive more richly in our everyday life. And, at the heart, all of this makes us stronger, more connected leaders creating cultures of safety, connection, and belonging.
A Journey to Compassion: Learning to Stand Firm in the Face of Pain
by Felipe Mercado, Ed. D.
Felipe Mercado’s personal journey is remarkable – from becoming homeless at fourteen due to abusive parents who tossed him out of the house, drug dealing, addiction, juvenile hall, and the murder of both his best friend and his brother, to college, a doctoral degree, and now a professor of social work at California State University, Fresno. In A Journey to Compassion: Learning to Stand Firm in the Face of Pain, Mercado, an alumnus of our Compassionate Leadership Certification Program, shares his life story in a compelling narrative and highlights the important role compassion played in the arc of his transformation.
If Mercado can overcome the adversity and challenges he faced in his life, it gives hope to each of us that we too can overcome our obstacles. We can all learn from his courage, self-compassion, release of anger toward those who have wronged you, connection to supportive community, and the recognition that small acts of kindness can have life-changing impacts.
A Journey to Compassion is the story of a resilient and compassionate individual, and it illuminates the path of every human’s journey toward flourishing.
Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein
Communication is the glue that holds compassionate culture together. In Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein offer a framework for leaders who would like to move their leadership style from an older power-over style to a more modern collaborative style.
While Humble Inquiry is a book focused on communication, leaders who use this approach can have a positive effect on a broad range of elements of compassionate culture: the creation of psychologically safe environments, creating belonging for all, deepening connection with team members, and connecting everyone to the deeper purpose of their work.
The art of humble inquiry is rooted in the everyday practice of curiosity, and through the willingness of leaders to act vulnerably, serves to humanize relationships within organizations. The book is a practical guide through its illustrating stories, case studies, exercises, and discussion guide.
Humble Inquiry provides an ideal complement to Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD, the foundational compassionate communication book for every compassionate leader’s library.
Poverty, By America
by Matthew Desmond
If A Journey to Compassion tells the searing story of the impact of growing up in poverty in Central California, Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond indicts all of us in complicity in contributing to the conditions that permit such poverty to exist. Desmond, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Evicted, pulls no punches in answering why there is so much poverty in a country as wealthy as the USA.
In Poverty, By America, Desmond lays out – in the persuasive manner of the Princeton University sociology professor that he is – the deep harm inflicted on the poor and the perpetuation of disadvantage that such harm creates. Desmond goes further to illustrate how little of government support actually benefits the poor. He closes by laying out his solution to the problem.
There is nothing complicated or sleight of hand required to understand the solution Desmond advocates to address the problem: those who have benefitted from the system must be willing to give up some of their advantage. Importantly, the solution isn’t just about wealth redistribution through higher taxes. As Desmond writes “Rather than throwing money over the wall, let’s tear the wall down.” As long as we create a bifurcated society of haves and have-nots where mobility between the categories is rare, it is unrealistic to expect effective government intervention.
If you care about creating more compassionate systems and social justice, then take the courageous leap to read Poverty, By America.
Paradoxical Leadership: How to Make Complexity an Advantage
by Ivo Brughmans
Whether it is in politics, religion, or business, or even medicine, the world’s polarization has increased significantly over the last decade. This comes during a time when our intertwined global society’s complexity has continued to increase. In Paradoxical Leadership: How to Make Complexity an Advantage, Ivo Brughmans shows how, by learning to handle polarities effectively, leaders will be better equipped to deal with the complexity of their lives, their organizations, and the world.
Polarities are opposing forces that naturally self-regulate. If a system moves too far toward one pole, natural forces move it back toward the other, much like a pendulum. In organizations these might take the form of tradition vs. innovation or engineering vs. marketing. Paradoxical leadership brings the conflicting forces together in an integrated way where both sides not only co-exist, but actually enhance each other through generative tension.
Brughmans offers seven different ways to deal with polarities, from either/or thinking through full synthesis. Each of these approaches, including either/or thinking, can be appropriate depending on the specific context in which it needs to apply, and Paradoxical Leadership shows how and when to use the different ways at the level of strategy, in periods of change, and at the human level.
Compassionate leadership is especially necessary and effective in organizations where polarities arise: control vs. freedom, for example. Paradoxical Leadership helps frame these tensions in ways that leaders can capture the best of each of the opposites.
We hope that one or some of these books whet your appetite for a deeper exploration. Happy reading!