Balancing Compassion and Accountability as a Trauma-Informed Leader

When I was a young leader, I was determined to be the very best leader possible. I had a fantasy that I was going to make everyone happy AND incredibly productive.? In this fantasy, everyone would like me all the time and it would be a consistently pleasant work environment. I was never going to have “hard conversations” because we wouldn’t need them. We would all simply be consistently professional and discuss any mild concerns that came up before they became larger conflicts.

That worked out. Without a single hitch. I promise.?

It turns out, I fell into the common trap of most young leaders – believing that simply being kind and supportive to my team would be enough to prevent conflict before it arose. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.? While caring and support will go a long way in pleasing your top performers, turning the other cheek to those struggling to perform can cause stress, anxiety, and resentment from staff who feel they must carry the slack of others. A trauma-informed leader needs to balance both compassion and accountability.

On the one hand, we have accountability.? Accountability is defined as, “an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others.”? For example, “George needs to be accountable to his work and ensure it gets done.” When we think about accountability, we are essentially thinking about someone being responsible for their actions. When we translate that into the workplace, holding a team member accountable means that we are ensuring that they are doing their job to a certain minimum standard. This can range from setting clear expectations and guidance for a task all the way to providing structured coaching or even discipline when someone is not meeting the identified expectations.

On the other hand, we have compassion.? Compassion is defined as, “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.” In the context of the workplace, being compassionate is often considered caring about our team members’ wellbeing and being sensitive to their personal and professional needs. Examples may include ensuring your team member takes needed time off, or that they have workloads appropriate to their current capacities. While compassion is indeed a critical aspect of successful, healthy workplace, compassion unchecked can create its own set of challenges. I had a leader who valued compassion so much that her team members completely selected the hours that they worked based on their personal needs, even when those hours didn’t align with the needs of the organization or their clients. Over time, this caused significant challenges with providing services and something had to change.

The true issue with this leader’s approach was that they weren’t succeeding in compassion or accountability.? Compassion requires concern for the needs of others. In this scenario, some customers’ needs weren’t being met.? Moreover, some team members who were particularly sensitive to the needs of those customers, or who feel a sense of anxiety when business needs weren’t fully accounted for, went out of their way to fill the gaps that other employees left.?? This not only caused resentment, but also the very stress, fatigue, and burnout that the compassion-only approach was attempting to alleviate.?

Let’s take a moment to reflect on our own leadership style.? Do you lean towards being a compassionate leader, but sometimes feel like your kindness is being taken advantage of?? Do you lean more towards being an accountable leader, but find your staff frequently frustrated, stressed, or unable to consistently “meet your standards?”

As a trauma-informed leader, I’m here to tell you that those two concepts are not different at all. In fact, I would argue that you are not being a truly compassionate leader unless you are holding people accountable. When we focus on compassion at the expense of accountability, there are no guard rails or expectations for performance. This can stress some people out while making others resentful. This applies even when a team member is going through a difficult time personally. As compassionate leaders, our first instinct is to take things off their plate and give them infinite flexibility so they “don’t have to worry.” While this sounds good in theory, this lack of structure can make someone feel unsafe.? If they have no expectations for their job, does their contribution matter? Are they ultimately expendable?

On the other side of the continuum, you are not being a truly accountable leader if you are not being compassionate. When we focus on accountability without compassion, we tend to focus on performance and holding team members accountable for their mistakes. When all we focus on is mistakes or making sure that staff members have perfect performance, we create a stressful environment where staff members are MORE likely to make mistakes, get burnt out, and then make even more mistakes. The cycle continues.

Accountability and compassion are a single concept, each incapable of existing without the other. I would argue that this distinction is the single most important thing that you can do to be a trauma-informed leader.?

Let’s imagine Maria and Kendrick. Maria is Kendrick’s supervisor. Recently Kendrick has been experiencing serious difficulties in his personal life that have begun to affect his work. His wife was pregnant and quite far along when they lost the baby.? He has needed to take a lot of time off from work to support both his wife and to tend to his own grief regarding the loss. When he is at work, he is checked out, not following through on commitments, and his relationships with his customers are struggling. As a leader, Maria is a bit torn. On the one hand, she is compassionate towards his loss and is tempted to take everything off Kendrick’s plate.? ?On the other hand, she’s a bit frustrated about his inconsistent attendance and poor work performance and she wants to set limits. She also knows that other team members (who may not know about what is happening in Kendrick’s life) are frustrated about Kendrick’s performance and don’t see him as being part of the “team.”?

When a loved one experiences trauma or grief, we are tempted to take things off their plate. Parents often tell kids that they don’t have to go to school until they feel like it. We tell our friends that they don’t need to come to a certain party or event. We think that it’s kind to let them off the hook. And in the immediate aftermath, maybe it is. However, what we are forgetting is that trauma and grief fundamentally impact our sense of connection to others. We feel alone and isolated. And if we are alone and isolated for too long, many of us will create a narrative that the world is lonely and isolating and we will forget all the connections that we have.

This is why, as a trauma therapist, one of the first things that you do is work with the client (or parents of the child client) to try to resume daily activities that contribute to a sense of normalcy. Having clear expectations helps us feel safe.? Connecting with others reminds us that we are not alone. In the situation with Maria and Kendrick described above, the compassionate and accountable thing to do would be for Maria to sit down with Kendrick and have an honest conversation with him where she states how she cares about him and his loss, but also recognizes that he’s having a hard time meeting his work expectations right now. They can have a conversation together about what he truly needs, what he can manage, the minimum standards that need to be met, and how that will be formally adjusted in his work. They can also discuss an ongoing timeline for revisiting this conversation. Having a conversation like this does the following:

·???????? Builds trust. Marie lets Kendrick know that she supports him and is willing to work with him.

·???????? Builds connection.? It lets Kendrick know that his contribution is important to the organization and that it doesn’t just “move on without him”.

·???????? Supports Kendrick’s autonomy. He understands the challenge and is part of the solution that can be both beneficial to him and to the organization.

·???????? Creates boundaries or parameters about what’s okay and not okay.

·???????? Kendrick feels safe because he knows the minimum standards that need to be met to not be in danger of losing his job. He also knows that his company won’t shuffle his whole portfolio to other people and not need him anymore.

Ultimately, compassion and accountability are the same thing. If we want to truly hold someone accountable in a way that support them in enhancing their performance and in meeting expectations, we must do it with compassion. If we want to be truly compassionate with someone, we must be clear about our expectations and hold them to a minimum standard. In a trauma-informed leadership approach, you cannot have one without another.

True compassion includes accountability.

True accountability must be compassionate.

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Suggested Reading:

·???????? Compassionate Accountability

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Can you think of a time when providing accountability was the compassionate thing to do? Or a time when being compassionate helped a person better meet a specific expectation? Comment below.

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Lisa Conradi is a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma expert and former Executive Director of a large non-profit that provides trauma-focused treatment and training and technical assistance to organizations across the US on becoming trauma-informed. She is an author, speaker, trainer and leadership consultant with more than 20 years in the field of child trauma and trauma-informed care.? She does not currently provide any clinical or treatment services to clients.

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