Leaders are often described as strong, knowledgeable, experienced and dedicated, and while all can be true, often important attributes, such as compassion are left out of the conversation. Arguably, it should be considered one of the most important skills when looking at management attributes across all levels, from middle management to executives.
Compassion is often described as “empathy in action.” In fact, compassion is something that you demonstrate through authentic actions derived from feelings empathy, care and love.
So why is compassion so important when it comes to leadership? Compassion is a strong sign of integrity; it’s showing a genuine concern for others. When you lead with compassion you build trust, strong connections and loyalty, the perfect foundation for thriving teams.
Recent studies have shown that compassionate leaders consistently improved employee morale, productivity and company bottom line.
A_CompassionateWorkCultureCanReallyBenefitTheBottomLine.pdf (upenn.edu)
Additionally, mid-level management, as opposed to a CEO had a bigger impact on employees. So why is this? If you conducted a survey, most employees would favour leaders that demonstrate compassion. Often these employees are willing to go the extra mile for such leaders because there is a strong connection there, a mutual understanding of expectations and a team mentality.
Within a work environment, a vastly experienced and knowledgeable professional will be limited in their career success unless they can demonstrate compassion, remember this is an action. We already know teams perform better with a compassionate leader, so the flip side of that is teams will be unhappy and underperform for a less compassionate leader, thus limiting the leader’s success.
The benefits of work-place compassion are vast, it demonstrates the importance of employee well-being, ensuring company success, but here are three of my favourite benefits.
1) Stress-reduction: Listening and understanding are active components of compassion, therefore creating an environment whereby colleagues and employees feel comfortable to communicate issues, resulting in open communication and less stress.
2) Physical well-being: A compassionate work environment often caters to an improved work-life balance, with leaders understanding the importance of family and providing a degree of flexibility by way of demonstrating that understanding. In return, the employee is grateful, happy and productive. This results in a greater level of physical well-being, additionally, according to a 2008 study, those that enjoyed interacting and mixing with colleagues reported a steadier blood pressure and heart rate. (Heaphy & Dutton, 2008)
3) Employee retention: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that unhappy employees are unproductive and look to leave to find employment elsewhere, they are often products of a poor work environment. Therefore, employees that are happy, that feel understood and appreciated and receive compassion from superiors and colleagues are more likely to stay within the company, be productive and take pride in their role.
How do you incorporate compassionate leadership in your company then? I have been looking at the approach of Thupten Jinpa, who leads the compassionate institute. Jinpa calls it The Three Pillars of Compassionate Leadership, and details these pillars as:
- Cognitive Understanding: Demonstrate a full understanding of the challenges employees face.
- Affective (emotional) Understanding: Taking your factual based understanding of employee challenges to a more empathic level and understanding their emotions too. It is important to be aware and be reactive to employee emotions, such as stress.
- Motivational Connection: Your team want to know that you have their best interests at heart, that you want them to succeed and will do your part to facilitate that success.
In taking this three-pillar approach you will be creating a sense of unity amongst yourself and your team, ensuring team well-being, longevity, and success.
We are consistently seeing the companies voted as the best to work for, are the ones that hold employee well-being high on their list of values. Their staff retention is good, and they demonstrate compassion across their business. This way of operating has a higher, powerful affect, wider than just the company. It positively influences existing and new clients, other companies and the wider circle of each employee.
Compassion puts people first, and people are the heart of business. So compassion too must be the heart of your business.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help you and your team, head to https://yvetteankrah.com/leadingwithclarity/ and book a meeting.
