It surprises no one that the corporate world is far more accurately described as cutthroat than as compassionate. However, ask leaders at every rung of the corporate ladder who has made the most difference in their lives and they will invariably tell you a story with compassion at its core.
Compassion or Empathy?
Compassion is akin to empathy, yet discrete. An empathic person places themselves in the shoes of another and attempts to understand their actions and emotions from that perspective. Compassion is less intimate; the observer is emotionally invested in assisting the person they observe but their perspective remains their own.
This difference in perspective makes compassion better suited to corporate leadership than empathy. Compassion strikes the ideal balance between concern and nonchalance. It allows a leader to acknowledge the difficulties team members face without compelling them to invest too heavily in each one. On the other hand, empathy is far more draining emotionally. An empathetic individual is easily beset by an incessant barrage of distractions when dealing with large teams.
So, while the book definitions may seem to elevate empathy above compassion, their utility in the corporate world is reversed.
How Does it Work?
At its heart, compassion is a desire to improve the lives of others. You can awaken the compassionate leader within you by asking yourself some simple questions when dealing with your team:
- Have I set aside my opinions and conclusions and listened?
- Do I really believe this person is not doing the best they can?
- Whose interests do I have at heart? Am I upfront about that?
When you have the honest answers to those questions, you are on your way to being a compassionate leader.
Why Does it Work?
Essentially because we are emotional creatures ruled far more by our hearts than by our brains. When we look back at our lives, it is mostly teachers and coaches that stand out. You did not have to be brilliant at a subject or a sport for those individuals to have made an impression on you. Perhaps they weren’t the best teachers and coaches for that subject or sport, either.
However, it did not matter because they connected with us emotionally and strived to understand us. The same principle applies in the workplace. Compassionate leaders inspire fierce loyalty and, through it, teams that drive themselves to outperform others.
That is a formidable asset for any leader to have in their arsenal.
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