Compassion is a key competency for leadership effectiveness and personal wellbeing
Leadership is less technical and more relational. However, we do not traditionally learn relational skills through formal or academic training. In the absence of this training, managers struggle to understand how to work effectively with others, especially with increasing pressure to perform. While organizations have experimented with incentive structures, 40% of employees are still burned out due to feeling that their managers are not developing or appreciating them.
Research shows that the most powerful way leaders can improve employee well-being is not through programs and initiatives but through day-to-day actions (Harvard Business Review). Now, as scientists begin to study and research contemplative traditions that emphasize mind training, and how this training can improve how we relate to and care for others, we have innovative strategies to transform how we work and lead. In particular, recent neuroscience, psychology, and organizational research studies are proving the case that compassion can be a key competency to transform leadership effectiveness and organizational performance (source). When compassion is demystified and translated into workplace practices and behaviors for leaders, organizations improve wellbeing, retention, and performance.
Compassion benefits leaders and drives organizational performance
Compassionate leadership is understanding where you and others are coming from, feeling concern for yourself and them in a genuine way, and acting to help yourself and them be successful.
Leader resilience:
People who practice compassion produce 23% less cortisol, which is the hormone associated with stress.(source)
People who feel compassion demonstrate less depression, reduced moodiness, and less mental illness (source).
Cultivating compassion leads to more calm and less emotional distress in the face of suffering (source).
Cultivating self-compassion results in greater ability to empathize with others, greater ability to own up to one’s own mistakes and learn from them, and greater ability to bounce back from negative events (source).
Team dynamics:
People who feel compassion demonstrate higher levels of helping behavior, moral reasoning, connectedness, and stronger interpersonal relationships (source).
Researchers found high levels of compassion inspired higher levels of trust between team members, who were then more likely to share important information with peers both on and off their team. (source)
In a survey of over 1,000 business leaders across more than 800 organizations, leaders who exhibited (or were perceived by the team to exhibit) high levels of compassion had teams who scored higher on critical performance dynamics within their organizations.(source)
Organizational performance and retention:
Teams led by compassionate leaders exhibited better intra-team collaboration, stronger commitment to the company, and far lower turnover rates than those led by less-compassionate leaders. (source)
Studies show that workers who feel compassion from their employers are likely to work harder, to the tune of 30% longer on difficult tasks. (source)
Research on employee tenure and loyalty shows that when leaders are perceived to have high levels of compassion, their teams are 15 percent more likely to stay with the company. For a 50 employee company, a 15 percent improvement in employee retention can translate to nearly $400,000 in additional profit per year. (source)
Yet, bringing compassion into leadership is difficult for two main reasons:
1. Compassion is misunderstood
80% of leaders we surveyed believed that compassion is about "being nice or soft," or "loving everyone." In fact, one leader recommended we avoid the word altogether and think about empathy instead. This misunderstanding is creating an aversion towards and an under-utilization of compassion in leadership.
2. Few TOOLS and PRACTICES exist for leading with compassion
In a survey of over 1,000 leaders from 800 organizations, 91% said compassion is very important for their leadership and 80% said they would like to enhance their compassion but do not know how (source). Many leaders believe that it's hard to balance results with compassion. Yet, in interviews, when compassion was accurately defined, almost all leaders said it reflected what it looked like when they were leading at their best.
We demystify and redefine compassion for leaders and provide tools to apply it at work
Mindfulness and compassion-focused practices help to cultivate the capacity for genuinely caring for others, making it easier to access compassion in the moment. Building on these tools and incorporating best practices from behavioral psychology and neuroscience research, Leading Through Connection helps people develop a Connective Mindset™ and provides practices and techniques to bring mindfulness and compassion into daily interactions. By using existing relationships and daily behaviors as a practice space, leaders develop the experience and skills to translate compassion from an aspiration into constructive action.
In training leaders and teams across a diverse range of industries, including technology, health care, social justice and even automotive, we discovered that the practices, tools and applications we use in our compassion training are universally applicable. Compassionate Leadership training helps us to deal with universal human challenges, such as:
How do I care for myself when others are depending on me?
How do I tell the truth with kindness?
How do I develop more authentic and meaningful relationships at work?
How do I mediate effectively when there are strong emotions and differences of opinion?
How do I communicate in a way that the other person is able to receive?
How do I care for others while still getting things done?
There are no prescriptive or formulaic 5-step guides for how to act with compassion. The context and conditions are always changing and unique. However, when leaders learn how to apply compassion at work, compassion becomes emergent and more possible. Leading Through Connection provides experiences, practices, and tools for leaders to develop Compassionate Leadership.