Leader Card Series - COMPASSIONATE
Summer, for me, requires some flexibility with my family because my husband and I work from home, work on our businesses, have the kids home, and have a lot going on. So today's leader card for the summer leader card series is COMPASSION. What does it look like to be a compassionate leader? So we're going to dive right in.
A leader is COMPASSIONATE. I care for the well-being of others and open myself up to their lived experiences by showing them tangibly that I empathize.
So, as you're thinking about your day and the way that we integrate this into daily practice, here are some start-of-day reflections. So just grab a journal, open a tab on your computer, whatever it is, and think about these three questions for reflection:
How am I embracing this intention of compassion or being a compassionate leader in my leadership or with my team right now, today?
How will I strive to make this word impact my day based on the plans, work, and conversations I have ahead of me?
As a leader, what would change if I truly embodied this word?
A leader is COMPASSIONATE. I care for the well-being of others and open myself up to their lived experiences by showing them tangibly that I empathize.
So, after you've gone through your day focusing on compassionate leadership, I want you to reflect and have a developmental check-in thinking about these three questions:
How did this leader card impact or influence the way I lead myself and or my team today?
Did it change how I approached a specific situation as a leader, or could I have done something differently?
How will I continue to integrate this intention more authentically into my daily leadership in the future?
There has been a call for more empathic or empathetic; however you say it, leadership and more empathic leaders across the board. It's like a level up from being an emotionally intelligent leader; we know that emotional intelligence is rooted in self-awareness and awareness of others. But when we look at how we do that even more, we need leaders who know how to empathize, and beyond that, we're now at tier three, where we realize that we need compassionate leaders.
There are some significant differences when we look at the definition and research behind compassion and empathy. There is what we call the empathy continuum, and this is essentially the scale of, on one side, you have apathy; on the other side, you have empathy. Apathy would be ‘’I don't care’’, ‘’I'm not interested, do not care’’. That would be the bottom end of the scale.
Then, you would move up to sympathy. Sympathy can be like feeling sorry for someone and saying, ‘’Oh, I'm sorry for you’’, or ‘’I'm sorry to you’’. But often, there's no connection to how that person is feeling truly right and authentically.
So then next up on the scale would be empathy. Empathy is where we're able to say, ‘’I could feel what you're feeling’’. We know empathic people or people who cry during those really good Superbowl commercials; they genuinely connect to the emotions of others. We could all consistently be working on our empathy and how we stand alongside others and their experiences and feel what they feel.
Compassion is the next step on that scale. Compassion is where we empathize and then also take action because we care. The more understanding and engagement we have with a person across from the table from us who might be having a difficult experience means that we move on that scale from ‘’I feel you’’ which would be sympathy, to ‘’I feel with you’’, which would be empathy, to ‘’I am moved by you’’, which would be compassion. There's an opportunity to really have an impact on that person sitting across the table from us when we are willing to be so in it with them, so aware of their scenario that we move from that line of empathy up into the quadrant of compassion.
I'm going to read this card one more time:
A leader is COMPASSIONATE. I care for the well-being of others and open myself up to their lived experiences by showing them tangibly that I empathize.
When I wrote this one, I was very specific to say I opened myself up to their lived experiences because we can't be standing on the sidelines looking in and saying, I feel what you're feeling, if we're not willing to be fully vulnerable and open ourselves up to their experiences with profound and genuine connection. When we begin to show others tangibly that we empathize, that's when we reach compassion, when we begin to put action to the emotion.
So, I hope you're able to think about compassionate leadership a little bit differently based on some of that background. I really would love it if we could all strive for this intention of compassionate leadership, especially where we are in relationships with teams, with colleagues, with friends even, because I think that we are always in hard seasons, and there's always those phrases about you don't know what the person across from you is dealing with or you don't know what's going on in that person's life, who you run into at the grocery store or sit next to on an airplane. I think when we frame our life that way, and when we can walk through every scenario thinking about that, but then also being open to the opportunity to learn more about others, we can invite more spaces where we can show up as compassionate leaders.
Good luck. Cheers!