Compassionate leadership has had a growing focus in business, management and leadership spheres over the last 20 years. An increasing amount of research has found that compassionate leaders:
improve organisational culture through reducing the toxicity of unacknowledged stressors or emotions at work (Frost, 2003)
boost employee retention and commitment to the organisation through fostering employees feeling trusted, valued and connected at work (Shuck et al., 2019, see: https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21369)
and foster more creative employee problem solving and engagement in work through focusing on genuine human connection (Mayer & Oosthuizen, 2020, see: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17082829).
As a business owner, manager or leader, understanding and developing compassionate leadership behaviours and qualities is crucial.
The business case that compassionate leadership promotes productive, engaged and happy work forces may be clear, but what exactly compassionate leadership is and how to begin building it is much less clear.
In this blog, we break down the foundational concepts of compassionate leadership; look at how academic research has defined it; and offer three practical exercises from a clinical psychologist to help you develop as a compassionate leader.
Defining Compassion in Leadership
Before considering compassionate leadership, we first need to introduce the foundational concept of compassion. Defined by Gilbert (2009, see: https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.bp.107.005264), compassion is the sensitive understanding of one’s own and others’ distress, and an intrinsic motivation to alleviate it through care and action. It includes a range of indicative traits or qualities, such as the courage to embrace and move towards difficulties and make uncomfortable moves to alleviate it, care for suffering, and an openness to one’s own and others’ experiences.
Modern academics and clinicians using compassion as a therapeutic approach consider there to be bi-polar three domains to compassion (Neff, 2003, see: https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032), detailed in our infographic below:
Research suggests that developing knowledge, awareness and skills to reduce the negative side and increase the positive domains altogether builds compassion.
We also have three flows of compassion: compassion to self; compassion to others; and compassion from others.
In its simplest form, we may or may not have learned how to treat ourselves or others with compassion, nor might we have learned how to receive and accept compassion from others. We may therefore have blocks to compassion, such as negative beliefs about what compassion is, limited experiences of it, or an investment in ways of being that are not self-compassionate, such as those focused solely on self-improvement which neglect emotions.
These are the key concepts of Compassion-focused therapy (CFT), which is a modern approach to psychological therapy and coaching. A lack of self-compassion and elevated self-criticism have been found to be a common factor in most types of mental health problems ((Wilson et al., 2019, see: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-1037-6). CFT has been found to be effective at reducing a wide-range of common and severe mental health difficulties through its ability to develop self-compassion, the lack of which being a common factor found in various mental health problems (Kirby et al., 2017, see: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2017.06.003).
What is compassionate leadership?
Compassionate leadership first emerged in academic literature in 1999, when Peter Frost (1999, see: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/105649269982004) published an article arguing for its importance in the Journal of Management Inquiry. It has since been written about in healthcare, business and management spheres across various disciplines. A systematic review by Ramachandran and colleagues (2009, see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10072040/) found nine published articles up to 2021 which attempted to clearly define what compassionate leadership actually is. Two of those came closest to an operational definition.
One paper by Shuck and colleagues (2019 https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21369) included six behaviours central to compassionate leadership: integrity; empathy; accountability; authenticity; presence; and dignity. Their research found that these six behaviours are closely linked to promoting individual and organisational outcomes though they did not quantify their impact on productivity, culture or overall firm performance.
A second article, a conference presentation by Tzortzaki (2019), argued that managers need to be able to be self-compassionate in order to demonstrate compassion for others.
Although they call for on-going work to better define compassionate leadership, Ramachandran et al. (2023) opted for the broad definition of:
“compassionate leadership can be conceived as a personality encompassing the traits and behaviours of compassionate love, care, selflessness, wisdom, integrity, empathy, accountability, authenticity, presence, dignity, self-compassion and self-cultivation as a matter of inducing, motivating, influencing, persuading people to achieve their personal and organizations growth”
Further work is needed on conceptualising exactly what makes compassionate leadership, but this is a solid start. We argue that compassionate leadership calls for a solid understanding of ourselves in order to show up as present, empathetic and genuinely caring for our staff.
Three Skills to Develop Compassionate Leadership
So, given those definitions, how do we begin to foster compassionate leadership as a business owner or manager? Based on the above research and experiences, we argue it starts from within: fostering self-compassion is the best way to build compassionate leadership. Having a sensitive, non-judgemental understanding of our own internal world is the first step to leading others with the same mentality and qualities.
Here are our top three practical tips, drawn from compassion-focused therapy, for fostering self-compassion as a leader:
1) Identify your beliefs about compassion and self-compassion
We all have beliefs about all sorts of things, which ultimately guide our behaviour. If, for example, we believe that for our company to be productive and successful we "must work hard, brush over or squash any struggles, and not be vulnerable", we will act as such: we might work to excess, ignore any signs of internal emotions or struggle, and view vulnerability as a weakness or a problem. This might lead to burnout, staff turnover and exhaustion if taken to an extreme.
If we believe that compassion does not equate to productivity, we would not bother engaging with it. So this first tool is to reflect on your own beliefs about compassion, to see whether it actually aligns with your perceptions or not.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What do I think about compassion?
What words or phrases do I associate with it?
Do I think it’s a helpful thing?
Do I have any negative associations with it?
Where do these come from?
How would I define compassion?
What are the core qualities of it?
Do I think I engage in self-compassion currently?
How do I talk to myself?
How do I treat myself when I’m in distress or suffering?
If I don’t treat myself with self-compassion, what seems to be in the way?
What would it take to foster more self-compassion?
Is how I treat myself different to how I treat others in distress?
Why is that?
2) Define your barriers to compassion
From your beliefs about compassion, you may have identified some barriers to compassion: reasons or blockers to engaging with it. We need to know what those are so that we can begin to address them.
List your top three barriers to self-compassion at the moment. These could be negative beliefs about compassion, such as “compassion is airy fairy; a waste of time; won’t help us get the job done”. They could also be positive beliefs about other ways of being, such as self-critical, for example “being hard on myself motivates me; if I don’t focus on my mistakes and shortcomings I’ll never improve”. They can also be behaviours, such as not making time for oneself, or avoiding or blocking out difficult emotions.
3) Generate compassionate statements and actions
Sometimes, it is easier to give or receive compassion from others than to give it to ourselves. We can begin to get around this through imagery, such as imagining an external person giving compassion to us; or through imagining what we would say when offering compassion to someone else.
Think of someone who you think really embodies the qualities of compassion. They could be a real figure, alive or dead, or a fictional character. Someone who is the epitome of kindness, care, courage and emotional support. Someone who would really understand what you are going through and would be motivated to improve your emotional well-being. If they were here, what would they say to you when you are in distress or suffering? What would they do to help to alleviate it?
Think of someone close to you who you are really motivated to support; who you really understand what they are going through. If they were in distress or suffering, similar to your own experiences, what would you say to them?
Write down at least two compassionate statements generated from the above examples, and make a commitment to say them to yourself the next time you are experiencing stress or difficulty.
Summary
In this blog, we have covered:
Defining compassion, as a way of being involving efforts to understand and alleviate distress by fostering self-kindness; a sense of common humanity; and mindful awareness
Understanding the three flows of compassion (to self; to others; from others) and how we may have beliefs that block any one of these flows, such as compassion being a waste of time or counter-intuitive to productivity
Looked at how research defines compassionate leadership, notably as requiring self-compassion
Looked at three skills to begin to develop self-compassion as a leader, including identifying our beliefs about compassion and generating compassionate statements
Let us know your thoughts in the comments - what is your next step towards building compassionate leadership?
If you are interested in developing compassionate leadership, you can reach out to us today as info@unlockpsychology.co.uk - we provide consultation, coaching and specialist training in compassionate leadership in businesses, all delivered by a clinical psychologist with expertise in compassion-focused therapy. We would be happy to help you on your journey.
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