Compassion and Performance Aren’t Mutually Exclusive
“91% (of leaders) said compassion is very important for leadership, and
80% would like to enhance their compassion but do not know how.”
— Power Can Corrupt Leaders. Compassion Can Save Them, Harvard Business Review
I’m sitting here reflecting on my work with leaders and teams in the past few years. With the global pandemic, ‘me too’, political polarity, black lives matter and so many other isms, leaders have become more and more aware of the need to demonstrate compassion.
But I wonder if the word, for many, has come to mean that as a leader, they need to allow room for ineffectiveness and poor performance. I have been asked that question many times in recent years. This little piece is by no means conclusive nor complete and I shall dive into the various aspects I muse on here in the future, but for now, I’ll share what’s coming up from recent work projects.
Being compassionate is to be human. And as in other dimensions of our lives, in our work life, we must do difficult things in a more human way. We can lead effectively and achieve high performance and effectiveness while being a caring person. I have defended that position for over 30 years – for I believe, a leader obtains more engagement, higher performance, increased loyalty, and a more cohesive team when they are ‘more human’.
The last few years of volatility, uncertainty and complexity have simply put the idea of heart-centered/compassionate/human-centered leadership on the forefront and more leaders are interesting in moving in that direction.
It’s not easy if much of what you have been taught about leadership has been about logic, judgment, dollars and cents, and an attitude to do anything to get the results you need.
With the current complexities, leaders need to make hard decisions, hold difficult conversations, lay people off, provide critical feedback and create cross-cultural cohesive teams. And leaders must do this with care and compassion while meeting objectives.
What does that look like? I believe it means more than ever to have coherency between your mind (thinking), heart (emotions) and body (felt sense). Leaders need to lean into their wisdom, knowledge, skills, and experience while also listening to their heart and their intuitive knowing. And then bring in their judgment to make sense of all of the ‘knowing’ to make whatever decision they need to make.
The idea with human-centered leadership is to have a genuine curiosity and interest in what’s happening for the other while also ensuring performance objectives and overall team effectiveness and excellence are met.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it was a nail.
(Old saying often quoted by Abraham Maslow)
Too often, what I see happening is that empathy is a barrier to effective action. Usually this includes the avoidance of difficult conversations, lack of critical feedback on performance, ignoring intuition about things that have been seen and heard, and messy/vague communication and directions.
The extreme opposite of the overly empathetic leader is one who doesn’t have any interest or concern about his peers, subordinates or executive leaders. In such scenarios, I’m seeing things such as results being driven at the cost of human well-being, lack of curiosity about what’s actually going on, insensitivity to the various lens and narratives that affect the way a person works, very little skill at relational intelligence, micro-management, and a lot of ‘talking at’ people.
At both extremes and many points in between the two, what’s missing is trust and safety, as well as the ability to have conversations that need to be had. Making the invisible visible is needed within so many teams and organizations.
Learning to hold both compassion/care for your team while driving excellent outcomes is an art form that can be learned. Leading is an art. More and more research shows that the leader who can do both will be more successful. One of the most important practices to develop in the quest to be a more heart-centered leader is to build rituals that support you in becoming more self-aware. The more you are functioning from a well-resourced, grounded place will support you in becoming more aware of others’ emotions and behaviours while also diving into your own behaviours, responses, and emotions.
Some ideas for developing compassion, wise judgment, and relational intelligence:
Begin your day with an intention. Furthermore, begin each interaction with intention. Are you engaging with curiosity, optimism, hope and pragmatic reality? Are you engaging with pessimism, resignation or armour? Have you already made up your mind and you are going through the motions? What assumptions do you need to release?
Engage in a daily mindful practice. I find a morning practice really helps to set the day with intention. Whether this is sitting quietly with a cup of tea, meditation, a breath exercise, or walking or gentle stretch meditation…whatever it is, it’s a time you are not consuming media, but being with yourself.
Become more observant of yourself – your thoughts, emotions and somatic experience. The more I work with embodied leadership, the more I see that many leaders are out of touch with their ‘other’ ways of knowing. The body is often providing messages that we aren’t listening to.
Practice transparency and vulnerability. Clarity in communicating what you notice, how that affects you, the team and the organization, and what you value becomes a pathway for building effective teams. Clear, clean, and concise communication is far more compassionate than vague, misleading and supposedly kind language.
Have more self-compassion. Compassion for others only comes once you begin to practice compassion for yourself.
Practice having an open heart, open mind and open will. If you are closed to new perspectives, experiences, or ideas, it will be very difficult to be present to anyone or anything. Developing boundaries without suiting up in an armour is no easy task, but one that evolves and promotes independence and freedom within a cohesive team.
There is no silver bullet that will make the art of leading simple or easy. And there is no one path that will work in all situations. Having genuine compassion, curiosity, and generosity towards yourself and others is a more human, kind and gentle, but powerful way to lead cohesive, empowered and creative teams. Excellence and compassion are not mutually exclusive.
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
(Henry Ford)