Bryan Zandi – MBA
Master’s in leadership (OBLD 641)
Resonant Leadership: Leading Change
Oct. 2022
Introduction
Compassionate Leadership is engaging love to influence and inspire individuals so they also can motivate and affect others with love. In the cycle of compassion and love, the two elements act on each other reciprocally, energizing the other element for further progress from which the self can benefit. Compassion yields positive changes profiting leaders and their organizations. The relationship between love and compassion is intertwined since love fuels compassion, and compassion strengths love.
Great leaders' ability to lead with compassion makes them distinct and unique. Compassionate Leaders form secure environments where their followers are prompted to rehearse self-compassion and vulnerability as well as learn about compassion and apply it to others. The approach of leading with compassion improves productivity, employee morale, and retention (Donnellan, 2022). Based on Greater Good Science Center's report (2019). It is believed that empathy, as the ability to comprehend and share others' feelings, can lead to fatigue and a decline in the leaders' capacity to spread love and lead with kindness. Compassionate leadership, on the other hand, can improve leaders' resilience and enhance their approach to stressful situations.
Leadership is always associated with a certain level of power and authority. Incorporating love and compassion in the leadership, blinding them with the possessed power, and utilizing the product in leading individuals yields further productivity than merely using power to derive desired results. The most important outcome of compassion as power is the continuity of positive production - often with minimal supervision - while constant overseeing is required to produce the same results in the command-and-order leadership style, which only integrates power to advance. When used as power, compassion generates various advantages that can be introduced as the seven C's; Contemplation, Curiosity, Confidence, Compassion, Collaboration, Civilization, and courage.
So, how can we fulfill compassion leadership's criteria?
Compassion leadership is multifaceted and takes tremendous effort to be accomplished. Making people feel valuable is the first step. Compassion leaders pay attention to their teams, value them, and make individuals feel that they are at heart and that they are the ones who make things happen. Compassionate leaders take the time to connect with their people. They spend time getting to know every individual who works in their departments because they know that the connection can lead to more efficient communication, a critical element of success. Honesty and integrity are spread upon kindness. Being a compassionate leader teaches managers to be honest and straightforward at all times, even if the news is not in their favor. Compassion leaders always speak truthfully and with candor showing that they are not fearful of expressing the facts in any situation.
Leadership is about determination and making decisions; not every decision return positive results. There will be some times when things will head south due to the wrong conclusion, and it is the time that compassionate leaders can be distinguished from regular managers. Leaders with compassion take the heat. They admit their mistakes and unsuccessful strategies leading to failure in their leadership and accept the blame instead of making excuses or throwing someone else (often their employees) under the bus. Leaders with compassion are cognizant that adequately sharing the credits is vital to increase their teams' morals and productivity. Virtuous leaders know they cannot accomplish what they currently have without their teams' efforts. Thus, leaders should give each team member proper credit for their success.
Dawes (2017) stated that "change can be created without using force and by simply using compassion." Individuals often need to be encouraged and propelled in order to achieve change. One of the best techniques to motivate people is giving praise, which is ideal to be done frequently. Leaders willing to utilize compassion as their power - or along with their authority - ensure those they lead receive the attention, affirmation, and appreciation they deserve.
Another subject that perfectly fits the "Compassion as Powe" topic is empowering followers. This unique approach demands delicacy. Most leaders unwittingly commit the mistake of overcontrolling. Leaders need to delegate tasks and responsibilities without micromanagement. The reason for this shortcoming could be misunderstanding the meaning of delegating duties. Delegation does not mean ignoring individuals or setting them up for failure. The delegation procedure encompasses support, guidance, and coaching. Appreciating employees for their accomplishments and celebrating their strengths and skills are great ways to increase employees' confidence and efficiency. Conducting employee appreciation is a part of staff support and coaching. While practicing empowerment and task delegation, it is also ideal for leaders to challenge the status quo in order to reduce mediocrity.
Compassionate leadership invests in their people and ensures that they feel important. In the long run, any investment in employee growth, whether financial or time and energy, will be less than the company's steep expenditure of no development and no learning. Power, when used with compassion, generates encouragement and inspires employees. Compassion as power motivates followers to reach higher levels and improve their potential. Compassion as power further builds team spirit and encourages inclusiveness by placing a higher value on the team's morale than its accomplishments. This type of achievement will remain long-term as long as the concentration stays on the spirit.
The level of power or authority is not the factor that distinguishes leaders. What determines a leader is different is the way they utilize their power. For instance, virtuous and authentic leaders intend to blend their authority with compassion and use it to empower their followers and win their employees' hearts by continuously assisting, developing, encouraging, and praising them.
To become a different leader, an authentic leader who uses compassion as power, one needs to develop techniques by which one can empower others, especially by considering their emotions and activating their feeling. Genuine compassion allows us to trust wisely. Compassion also helps us understand people's pain and the defenses they employ against their discomfort. "With compassion, we can better discern manipulation and deceit as coping mechanisms" (Stosny, 2020). Compassion is a powerful thing acting line the workhorse of emotional health. The Dalai Lama, a Buddhist teacher, expressed that individual acts of compassion, empathy, and kindness have the capability to spread harmony in the entire world (Chowdhury, 2019). At the organizational level, compassion is evident in assessments of and responses to perceived potential suffering. (Clegg & van Iterson, 2009; van Iterson & Clegg, 2008). The lack of compassion in leadership leads to adverse circumstances, such as dishonesty, frustration, manipulation, denigration, and fear, which eventually cause high turnover due to an absence of motivation, productivity, and the presence of negative attitudes.
Conclusion
When it comes to selecting a compassionate leader, we need to consider the 7C's, or seven core attributes of leaders with compassion. Laurel Donnellan (2021), a Forbes contributor who mainly writes about compassionate leadership, asserts that all seven C's must be incorporated into the leadership style to be entitled to a compassionate leader. These C's are compassionate, confident, collaborative, contemplative, civil, curios, and courageous. We have had many individuals who well-fit the compassionate leadership criteria. However, Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi are the first names that come to mind when discussing this topic. Compassionate on the 7 C's list refers to using influence to prevent and alleviate the suffering of others. The second C, confidence, is about believing in others' visions and themselves. Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi have a vision of a just and peaceful world where every person can live peacefully. Both leaders acknowledge that making change at the individual level can yield effective results and change the world into a place where everyone can thrive. Both leaders firmly believe that the change that occurs with empathy and compassion can last longer and returns more significant outcome. The basic foundation of Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi rests on non-violence. They further believed that empowering all followers can leverage their strengths and construct new leaders (3rd C, collaboration) who can lead the world and make it a better place to live. When considering authentic leaders' behavioral patterns, we often encounter a common aspect, the civil attribute of the 7 C's table. Civil trait suggests that leaders should demonstrate respect when confronted with the different opinions of others. To become a resonant leader, we must understand how critical caring about others' points of view is. Indeed, being civil is the gate to relationships, and compassion is the key to opening that gate. Gandhi says: "compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use." Thus, by using compassion in leadership, leaders can strengthen their ability to influence their people and differentiate themselves from regular leaders.
References
Chowdhury, M. R. (2019, June 19). Compassion at Work: Using Compassionate Leadership in the Workplace. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/compassion-at-work-leadership/
Dawes, T. (2017). Reimagining compassion as power | Tim Dawes | TEDxSeattle. Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_guy-i2BTE&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Donnellan, L. (2022). What Is Compassionate Leadership? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laureldonnellan/2022/09/28/what-is-compassionate-leadership/?sh=7a4618cf440f
Donnellan, L. (2021). Be Inspired By These Eight Compassionate Leader Honorees From 2021. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laureldonnellan/2021/12/09/be-inspired-by-the-eight-compassionate-leader-honorees-from-2021/?sh=775fcac65054
Stosny. (2020). Compassion Is Power | Psychology Today. Www.psychologytoday.com. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/202011/compassion-is-power
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