Many people believe that compassionate leadership means passive leadership. That compassion is about weakness and letting others be more active and dynamic. While it is understandable how others may view this in comparison to more aggressive, confrontational, and even penal-based techniques that emphasized punishment or retaliation for failure, this is actually not the case.
Compassionate leadership, by virtue of being a supportive style, is more active than many people suspect. Where it differs from other types of leadership styles is that it may not be more prominently visible “up front,” where people expect to see things happen.
Mixing Methods
Some skills are active, while some are passive. Empathy, for example, might very well be considered a passive skill. Empathy is not necessarily what you do, so much as what you are willing to perceive and understand, but it is the critical foundation skill from which compassionate leadership arises.
Empathy is the ability—and willingness—to understand the feelings that someone else is experiencing. It means being able to perceive that certain words or actions could have a negative or positive emotional reaction in someone else because you are willing to consider how they would affect your feelings if you were in a similar situation.
Empathy is, for the most part, an internal process, one where you take the time to listen to your feelings and inner voice. However, is it a passive skill; you don’t need to take any physical, affirmative action with it, it is a decision you make in your mind, with internal results.
Compassionate leadership, however, is what you need to give form and action to the insights of empathy. And this is why the two tools, when combined into a single practice, provide great synergy. Empathy, for example, can lead you to understand that one of your employees has great potential in a given area, but is feeling restricted over not having a chance to live up to that potential. Compassionate leadership comes in to make that happen.
Support Is Engagement
For some people in leadership positions, there is nothing more difficult than setting ego aside, and admitting that some people are better at a particular task or discipline than the leaders themselves. For others, however, some of the best results in work, and working relationships come not from trying to stay ahead of employees, but from making the deliberate choice to recognize their skills, and nurture those skills so that they are even more productive and talented than when they first arrived at the workplace.
Compassionate leadership can, in these situations, be about nurturing behind the scenes. The best results for a business don’t always require you, personally, to be in the spotlight. Sometimes that most dynamic, productive, and profitable results arise from letting the people you hired, because of their skills, grow into these positions, rather than worrying that they may someday upstage you.
Learning Never Stops
Compassionate leadership is also about understanding that everything—including you, and your perspective—has room to grow. You can learn new management techniques or even self-management techniques such as meditation. You can learn more about the latest trends in your business, remaining open to innovation, and you can learn from your own team.
When you allow your team to grow and realize the potential that lies within them, that kind of professional development can come back and benefit you. A willingness to learn new things, and remain open to new ideas and experiences is one of the biggest benefits of compassionate leadership.
Done right, compassion is not just kindness; it is also evolution. Compassion can mean growth, and growth can be a powerful fuel for innovation and profit in entrepreneurial activities.
Leave a Reply