Why I Have A Passion For Compassionate Leadership

The past few weeks I spent reading this book; Compassionate Leadership, How to do Hard things in a Human Way. I was blown away. I honestly believe this is the future (if not yet present...) leadership style we should all learn. No matter background, level, culture or gender.

In the book the authors Jacqueline Carter and Rasmus Hougaard list 10 mantra's to read, understand and practice, practice, practice. It's the way to Wise Compassionate Leadership.

Why I personally enjoy reading this is because I fully agree, align and resonate with the statements they make. In my role in HR, we have an important responsibility to maintain 'the human way' of many difficult changes and decisions made in the organisation. The way Carter and Hougaard phrase it; CEOs are responsible for the most difficult decisions in an organization, and CHROs are the ones often tasked with executing them in a human way. The balance between these two is the intersection of being able to do hard things in a human way (page3).

Wisdom in leadership is about having the courage to be candid and transparent with other people and do the things that need to be done - even when it’s uncomfortable.

Everyone is a leader, no matter you actually lead a team, one person, a full department, a project or just your own agenda. Being (more) compassionate in your daily life, will not just improve the way you deal with others but simply improve the relationship with yourself and also improve your self-compassionate behavior.

Wisdom is to see clearly that if you don’t do the hard things today, they will become even harder tomorrow.

The book is designed with the following 10 chapters, which all give practical explanation and tips how to leverage in your daily job;

1. Unlearn Management, Relearn Being Human
2. Great Power comes with Great Responsibility 
3. Connect with Empathy, Lead with Compassion 
4. Your Oxygen Mask First
5. Busyness Kills Your Heart
6. Be Here Now
7. Courage over Comfort
8. Direct is Faster
9. Clarity is Kindness
10. The Only Way Out is Through

Compassion is the intention to be of benefit to others. Compassion is not about pleasing others and giving them what they want. Rather, compassion can be tough and direct, such as addressing another person’s behavior if it’s out of line. But it is done with the intention that helping them change will ultimately lead to better outcomes for everyone.

The 10 chapters walk us through the Wise Compassionate Flywheel and teaches us how to follow the 4 steps and make the wheel turn.

1. Caring presence (be here now)
2. Caring courage (courage over comfort)
3. Caring candor (direct is faster)
4. Caring transparency (clarity is kindness)

If you are interested in the topic, but not (yet) in the occasion to read the full book, I have made this 'summary' below. It's a copy of the words in the book and not summarized in my own perspective (approx 30 min read). Enjoy!

1-Unlearn Management, Relearn Being Human

Management is about managing others. Leadership is about seeing and hearing others, setting a direction, and then letting go of managing what happens next. If you want to be a good leader, there are a few things you need to understand: 1) nobody wants to be managed 2) WHO you are is more important than how smart you are 3) leadership is all about developing and enabling meaningful and trusting relationships 

Strategies for unleashing management and relearning being human;

• Strategy 1: Remember the Golden Rule; Treat others as you would want to be treated (page 27)
• Strategy 2: Put Yourself In Their Shoes; but, avoid assuming you know what the other person is feeling or experiencing 
• Strategy 3: Listen Intensively; 2 ears 1 mouth, listen more than speak. Listen genuinely. Listen with curiosity. Listen to understand. 
• Strategy 4: Always Give More Than You Take; we become happier when we do good things that affect other people. This can be as simple as being present and giving your time to focus on others.
• Strategy 5: Ask Yourself, How Can I Be of benefit? Asking how you can be of benefit to others is a way to compassion. Take a moment to reflect and think; how can I be of benefit? What support my might they need in their struggle? What word if comfort do they need? What budget do they need to be more self aware?
• Strategy 6; Stretch People to Make Them See Their Greater Potential: Leadership is not about trying to please people and make them feel content and at ease. Leadership is about supporting people in their development by holding a mirror and shining lights in things they may not want to face. This is hard. They might not want to see it. But that’s where there’s potential to grow. “I am hard on you, because I care. I believe in you. I challenge you so you can realize your potential”
• Strategy 7; Help People to See What They Really Need to Be Happy: There is a difference between Happiness and Pleasure: Happiness comes from fulfillment and lasting well-being (doing purposeful with, care for others, being generous, making authentic connections). Pleasure is a short term shot of dopamine (pay rise, new car, or one off praise) (page 31)

2-Great Power comes with Great Responsibility 

• Leaders have an immense and lasting impact on the wellbeing of their employees (page 34)
• Being a good compassionate leader is not only beneficial for employees but also favorable for the business
• A crisis brings leaders’ humanness to the forefront. The best and worst. The best when we face other people suffering, showing compassion and care. The worst when ego takes over that forces us to make decisions narrowly focused on our own gain. (Page35)
• How you lead through hard times defines what people will remember about you and your leadership (page 37)
• For every difficult decision, ask yourself; will this have a positive impact on my colleagues genuine happiness and well-being? Will this inspire others in a positive way? Will I be proud of this in ten years?
• Are you clear on what your purpose is as a leader? Reflect on the ‘why’ and not just what. What do you want to be remembered for?
• A necessary evil is a decision made or action taken, that negatively impacts others but will lead to a better result in the long term (page 38)
• Properly handling the necessary evil of leadership requires skill
• Manipulation is the exact opposite of skillful means. Manipulation is when you do something seemingly kind to another to get good results for yourself. (Page 40)
• Evaluating skillful means (3 Qs);

1. Is it selfish or selfless?
2. Is it aligned with my company’s purpose?
3. Is it benefiting the greater good for the long term?

• When giving feedback, it’s not about you… it’s about the person who needs to receive it (page 48)
• Leadership requires you to think about who you are leading and your impact on them
• Leadership requires trust and trust comes when people see you have their best interest at heart and are being authentic

3-Connect with Empathy, Lead with Compassion

• Empathy is the ability to feel with another being. As a leader, this ability is obviously important. You can lead others more effectively if you can understand what they might be experiencing emotionally. (Page 52)

Pity = I feel sorry for you

Sympathy = I feel for you

Empathy = I feel with you

Compassion = I am here to help

• I you lead with empathy, you can never make a decision, because you will mirror the emotions of others which makes it impossible to consider the greater good. You need to have empathy on a human level but run a business with compassion (page 54)

Empathy + Action = Compassion 

Overcoming the Empathic Hijack;

• Take a mental and emotional step away
• Ask what they need
• Establish emotional resonance 
• Coach the person to find their own solution 
• Remember the power of non-action

4 - Own Oxygen Mask First

• Loneliness (p72)- Being successful and performing well in one’s life or profession isn’t a lone wolf thing. It takes a tribe around you to build your strength and motivation to pursue future successes. But often when leading others, and specifically making tough decisions, we are in our own.
• Sadness (p74) - although sadness is tough, sadness is a good teacher. The imprint of sadness ensures that we don’t lose sight of the impact of our decisions on other people. Feeling miserable means we are still connected with our humanity
• Doubt (p75) - doubt keeps us connected and enables us to bring natural humility to the reality of the task at hand. The key is to allow doubt you arise, but not let it fester. Successful leaders are the ones who can use insights from their doubting minds and move forward.
• Befriend the inner critic (p76); self-Criticism asks “am I good enough?” Self-compassion asks “what’s good for me?”. The harsh critic can help us learn from an experience; “next time I will try to do this differently”
• Beware the second arrow (p79) - mental resilience, especially in challenging times, means managing our minds in a way that increases our ability to face the first arrow, and break the second before it strikes us. The path to inner peace is acceptance. Acceptance is the skill of noticing our own thoughts, unhooking from the constructive ones and rebalancing quickly. It is recognizing that being a leader means doing hard things and doing hard things requires letting go. 
• Recharge your batteries (page81) - time management is not about wishing you had more time. Instead, it’s about making tough choices about how to use the precious time you do have. If something is truly important to you, make time for it.

Hurt people hurt people. This means that people who have been harmed have a greater tendency to do harm to others. When we are not caring for ourselves, we’re not able to care for others. And when we don’t fully respect ourselves, we will lack the full respect of others. The path to strong leadership is not to be self-critical of ourselves, but rather to care for ourselves and respect ourselves.. so we can do the same to the people we lead.

5-Busyness Kills Your Heart

• When we feel we don’t have enough time, when we feel under pressure, we are at risk of losing our compassion. When we are in this state of busyness , we are not as caring or attentive to people around us. We are more prone to default to our habits and operate in ways based on biases. In essence, being busy means we are more likely to be at risk of being indifferent and ineffective as leaders
• Busyness feels productive, and is seductive because we confuse an active mind with a productive mind.
• Busyness kills our compassion by cluttering our mind and closing ourselves to the wisdom and insight that comes when we have more mental space
• Busyness is addictive (=dopamine shot each time you complete a task), which means we intent to chase quick wins and easy fixes. Activity is not productivity.

Busyness is a choice.

• It is not actual busyness, but perceived busyness
• It takes discipline experience and practice to be able to realistically assess time and priorities 
• Ruthless prioritization = focus isn’t focus unless it hurts (we all have more things that we want to do than we have time for. Real focus requires making painful decisions)
• Clear mental clutter - practice mindfulness so you can make difficult decisions with a clear mind
• Assess priorities - what is urgent vs what is important. 
• Manage your time - block time in your agenda for your tasks, focus time, breaks and unexpected events 
• Put people first - you can never be too busy to focus on supporting and developing others 
• Prioritize people in you calendar - evaluate how much of your scheduled time in your agenda is devoted to supporting and developing others
• Leverage development opportunities- can you delegate a tasks which can be a development area for someone else (might be slower short term, but a win win long term)
• Create a To-Be list versus a To-Do list - what kind of leader do you want to be? Be a human ‘being’ (not a human ‘doing’) - how do you want to inspire, impact, support or show up to others?
• Value busyLESSness (p97) - place more value on not being busy , allow yourself to ga e more moments if not doing but just being
• Doing nothing is the mother of creativity and well being
• There is always time for caring for people
• People don’t remember what you said, but they will always remember how you make them feel
• Show you care
• When we open our hearts to each other, we give ourselves more space to connect as compassionate beings. And this allows us to feel better about being part of a caring team that has more strength to face difficulties 
• If we focus of what we can and should do in the moment, we can focus on the task at hand or the person we are with. This means we can make people feel seen and heard and show them respect by being in the moment. By being in the moment, we can meet people where they are and open our arms to their suffering with wide and compassionate presence

6 - Be Here Now 

• Be aware to be present (page 106) - when your mind is clear and sharp , you know instinctively , moment yo moment, what is important to you and what is the right thing to do 
• Mindful Awareness is the starting point to become a wise leader. It helps you to clear mental clutter, understand more if the inner workings of your internal landscape, and be more objective in how you manage your mind
• You and your thoughts are not the same: having bad thoughts, doesn’t make you a bad person. 
• We don’t need to react to our thoughts. We can simply let them be.
• When you are caught up in your own ego, you cannot be wise. Instead, you are doomed to see things from your limited self-referential point of view. Then it will be more difficult to control how to react
• Your reaction is a choice: mindfulness and increased awareness permit us to create a space between stimulus and response 
• When engaging in hard things, it is easy to focus on yourself. If you are having a tough conversation with someone, don’t think about yourself and what you are going to say. Focus in them. They are the ones to suffer
• Be curious and don’t make assumptions- try to see the person and the situation with fresh eyes instead of assuming you know what they will say or feel
• Being attentive to the diversity of the group and creating space for diverse voices is key to creating a more wise, compassionate and inclusive culture
• Let go of expectations (eg how you hope the conversation will go) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider potential scenarios 
• Be in the moment and adjust accordingly to what is happening 
• Use the power of pausing; be aware, stop and chose how you want to respond 
• The pause button is good to keep close at hand when doing hard things. It gives you space to choose your response and tap into your inner wisdom

7 - Courage over Comfort

• The pull to stay in our comfort zone limits our leadership potential because we avoid doing hard things and miss opportunities for growth and development 
• To be wise leaders, we must learn to find comfort in the discomfort of challenging situations in which we are inflicting some form of pain or difficulty on others

Facing our own imperfections is part of the path to finding our true powers as leaders

• If you have the courage to be vulnerable, you open a door to truly human connection 
• Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you (Brene Brown, p129)
• Recognizing and embracing your own emotions is critical to developing compassionate leadership 
• Having confidence in who we are and embracing our limitations allow us to be more vulnerable, which creates the potential for wise and compassionate interactions 
• Confrontations are positive: they are vital to increasing understanding, enhancing innovation, and implementing cultural change 
• Confrontation should be seen as an opportunity: opposing views create new thinking, which leads to progress
• As leaders you can demonstrate courage and reward others for courageous acts and create a culture that values courageous confrontations and accountability

Six strategies for developing courage (p134);

1. Have at least one courageous confrontation a day (could be as small as giving feedback)
2. Explore the impact of your courageous confrontation by following up x-time later about the conversation 
3. Deal with things, never let them fester. Don’t leave people in suspense. Make decisions, take action, move forward.
4. Trust your intuition. If you feel something is wrong, something likely is wrong. Trust yourself.
5. Get peer support. 
6. Find the courage to endure the discomfort of creating time and space for others to come onboard. Change takes time 

8 - Direct is Faster

• With caring candor, you deliver the message in the most kind and direct way, which allows for the other person to receive it quickly and for the real conversation to begin
• The opposite of directness is indirectness or beating around the bush. When we beat around the bush, we make the conversation much more difficult for the people we communicate with 
• Caring candor is like having a hardback and a soft front. The back is our strength, confidence, decisiveness, and conviction. It’s about knowing our values and showing our people and team the opportunity for improvement. The soft front is our openness to other peoples perspectives and care for their emotions and wellbeing 
• Start the conversation by saying: “we need to talk about some things that are going to be hard to hear, and I want you to listen. I want you to know that I’m telling you about these because I care about you and I want you to be successful.”

‘A good leader calls out to be the hero in everyone. Good leadership is to see people’s potential and be direct in challenging them with care’

• Consider the tough feedback you have received throughout your career. Where would you be today without the people who were kind enough to muster the courage to candidly share their perspective on your performance with you?
• Issues are like untreated infections; the longer you leave them, the more the infection spreads, and the more painful it becomes. In leadership, we must deal with issues as they arise. Problems don’t get better because you try to convince yourself they don’t exist. They fester. Deal with things- and do it quicker and decisively. If you don’t, everyone loses.
• ‘Let the good news take the stairs, but ensure bad news always take the elevator‘

Strategies for cultivating caring candor 

1. Be mindful of the setting and context. Means you consider when, where and how you are going the share a candid  message (also public vs private)
2. Say it now and do it quickly. Being quick to act serves to keep the context relevant for both you and the other person
3. Bottom line it first. Means you start with the conclusion/ key message, and then provide context. 
4. Be firm and decisive. You are not opening a negotiation, even firing someone. It is compassionate to make that clear from the beginning 
5. Avoid the popularity game. Leadership is not about being liked. It’s abuts being respected dit doing the right things that serve the greater good.
6. Have zero tolerance for value breakers. If you are not rock solid about in directly addressing breaches of cultural and value norms in the company, people will lose respect for you and engagement in their work

9 - Clarity is Kindness

• When you are transparent, people know what’s in your mind. When you are add caring to transparency, people also know what’s in your heart
• Transparency is the fairest and most humane approach to leadership, yet it is not easy because it often includes sharing things people don’t want to hear

3 core elements of building and maintaining trusting relationships.

• 1) connection, which means being present.
• 2) compassion; I believe you care about me.
• 3) credibility; ethical behavior of doing what you say you are going to do

When people do speak up, it should be celebrated. Cause it is not easy to do so

Strategies for enhancing caring transparency 

1. Strive for clarity as a state of mind. Have your mind clear, and take a break, before sending a message or responding, is a way to ensure your message is as clear as possible. Clarity is simplification; the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak
2. Treat people as adults. With transparency and clarity and care. So they know exactly where they stand and can plan their lives based on reality.
3. Seek clarity to enhance clarity. Don’t make assumptions and ask questions. The willingness to make time for clarity creates space for richer and deeper conversations 
4. Make time for connection. Make moments of human connection; we are social beings, and we work better together and enjoy work more together when we feel connected 
5. Encourage dissent. Create a safe space for people to disagree and have the confidence that when they raise objectives, they will be celebrated instead of rejected.
6. Demonstrate Humility. Be humble about your mistakes and use them as an opportunity to learn, so you can grow as a leader and as human being. Being vulnerable about what we don’t know is hard, ultimately it is a gift because it enables us to show more of our true self
7. Show your true self. Allow people to see you as a caring human being- not as boss or leader. In our desire to treat others as human beings, we can never forget our own humanity. When we allow other people to see our true, authentic self, it creates space for greater connection, builds trust, and improves teamwork.

10 - The only way is through

• We become more skillful at doing hard things by stepping into a difficult situation and coming out on the other side with a little more wisdom and a little more compassion
• Over time, it will become easier. Every time you go into the territory of doing hard things, if you take time to reflect on what went well and what you will do differently next time, you become wiser.

5 strategies to do hard conversations in a good way (eg termination)

1. Be prepared. What will i say, how will i say it, what Qs might come up, how will I respond to these Qs, consider what if.. scenarios. Plan the day well. Set intentions. Think about the impact on others. Script the first and the last sentence.
2. See others as human beings. Separate the action from the person. Wider your lens by consider what the other person might be experiencing and who they are outside of work. Don’t be cruel; tell them the message and then let them process the information. Avoid getting into a discussion.
3. Give people options. Give them alternative roles, or even the choice how to communicate the news in the team. Although options will not make the message any easier, it sends a message that you care and want to work together through this process. Providing options gives people a sense of control, even if small.
4. Respond, don’t react. Be able to pause, notice what you think or feel and process without reacting.
5. Give time. Provide space for people to process what they just heard. Give an opportunity to come back with questions. Be present in the moment and plan a follow up.

5 strategies to do feedback conversations in a good way

1. Don’t put it off. Keep it simple and focus; it’s easier to give and yo receive the message. Keep it informal and part of a conversation.
2. Reframe feedback as a gift. Share because you care. “If I am giving you tough feedback, it’s because I believe in you and want to help you improve. If I didn’t believe in you, we would be ga  if a different conversation “. Focus on the development opportunity.
3. Focus on the positive. Be able to see what went well. Don’t assume people know they did well. Don’t use positive feedback only during the ‘feedback sandwich’
4. Be objective, not subjective. Give feedback to the behavior, not the person. Name the situation, the observed behavior and the observed outcomes 
5. Create a feedback culture. Ask for feedback about you. Seek other peoples perspective so you can view the situation from another person. Be curious and ask if they agree with the feedback or have another perspective.