Compassion: #5 Leadership Trait

Compassion?comes from the word "com" (Latin for?with or together) and "passio" (Late-Latin for?to suffer). The meaning of compassion is literally to suffer with or alongside another. Without compassion and empathy, we as leaders are incomplete. Outstanding leadership requires a compassionate posture toward others, especially those led.

Compassion is our fifth leadership trait in this series. If you want to jump into the primer first, check out "A Leader's Journey" before diving into the rest of the series.

@Gabe Smith here - I first realized the significance of compassion when I was a young Army officer. The military experience begins and ends with suffering. We used to have a saying, "embrace the suck!" This oft-repeated phrase meant that the more physically, emotionally, and mentally painful a mission was, the more you should want to be part of it. Suffering is central in a Soldier's life.?

Some of the worst suffering I have endured occurred during Ranger School. I had survived high school football, West Point, and Airborne training. None of that prepared me for the suffering I faced in the Georgia woods. This grueling 62-day leadership development course is designed to push students beyond their physical, mental, and emotional limits through extreme food and sleep deprivation. I thought I understood suffering when I arrived on day one. By day ten, I was so hungry that I could only think about eating. I was so tired that I fell asleep while walking with a hundred-pound rucksack on my back. My hands were shredded by the thick thorns and brush we had to wade through in the dense Georgia forests. At night the temperatures dropped below freezing. I was dizzy with fatigue, cold, and bloodied.

On a particularly miserable night, I was in a foxhole waiting for the "enemy" to attack with my Ranger Buddy Paul. We were both tired, hungry, and cold. I'll never forget that Paul pulled out his poncho liner (the Army's version of a blanket), handed it to me, and said, "get some sleep, man." "What about you?" I replied. "Don't worry about me, brother. You get some sleep first. Then we can switch." He never woke me up. I was suffering. Paul saw my pain, understood it, and gave me a master class on compassion.?

After that, I would have followed Paul anywhere. He was our honor graduate and died in Afghanistan some years later. When I think of a compassionate leader, one with "concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others," I think of Paul. At Pangea, we want to recruit and train compassionate leaders like Paul.?

@Aeron Sullivan here - I, too, have some memories etched into my mind from military training at the Marine Corps Officer Basic School. I remember conducting a dangerously long fire and maneuver exercise (basically coordinated shooting and running with live ammunition) in 15-degree weather... and it was raining. Our clothes were stiff with ice; it was the coldest I've ever been. How it was raining and well-below freezing at the same time is still a mystery to me. These moments in training gave me a well to draw upon to remind me just how difficult, scary and intimidating the military could be to my young Marines.

Most of my Marines had just barely graduated high school. Most would step into their first combat unit before voting in their first presidential election. No matter how young or inexperienced they may have been, we asked a lot of them. I found myself having to relate to them in their fear first to help them overcome their perceived limitations. This wasn't mere sympathy; I had been in their shoes before. I had suffered like them, and now I can suffer with them.?

The military doesn't have a monopoly on suffering. Suffering is a central part of every person's story. We have all had and will have seasons marked by pain, loss, and difficulty. While our pain can be as simple as a stressful day on the job or as extreme as a family tragedy, this is a universal aspect of the human experience. The universality of suffering also provides the context for some of the most meaningful connections we have with other people. There is a word for this deep identification with one another in suffering.?That word is compassion.

Compassion & Emotional Intelligence

Building this kind of compassionate people-first leadership culture requires a holistic approach to development. We believe that people are integrated beings, and that maturity requires investment in every area of personhood - head, heart, and hands. One way to think about heart development is growth in emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence begins with self-awareness, which is why our first leadership trait is self-awareness. It represents our ability to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others and use this awareness to manage our behavior and relationships. However, while self-awareness is the beginning of emotional intelligence, one of the first indicators of high emotional intelligence is a corresponding high capacity for compassion. This is true because compassion results from "recognizing and understanding" suffering in others and using this awareness to behave and relate in a positive and empathetic way.?

Heart characteristics, like compassion, are often thought of as a leader's natural talent. The reality is that skills like compassion can be sharpened... or dulled.?This is where the challenge lies.?No one likes suffering, and this is especially true when it's us, but even when it's not, it's uncomfortable. When we sit in the uncomfortable space of pain with someone, we want to escape, and because it isn't our pain, we have that option. It is an intentional decision to stick with someone in those moments. Every encounter with a struggling person is an invitation to growth because we must decide to enter their story intentionally.

This is especially difficult as a leader when you have to make decisions that will impact people in a way that causes suffering. Yes, as a leader, you will cause suffering. You might have some tough feedback to give someone. Maybe they have had a poor performance review and will miss that promotion you know they were seeking. If you serve in leadership long enough, you will even have to let someone, or multiple people, go. These are the true tests of compassion when you can make a proper judgment call that will inevitably "hurt" someone,?yet you can sit in that "hurt" with them.?This is compassion in practice.?

Compassion in Practice

Let's look at another way compassion plays out in the real world we should all be familiar with: conflict. Those that have been in management for any meaningful amount of time know that conflict management is a significant aspect of leadership. If you work with people, you will inevitably have to navigate relational tension regularly. Managing conflict at an expert level largely depends on your?capacity for compassion. Why?

As a leader, conflict comes in two flavors: conflict involving you and conflict between those in your charge. Either way, they both require compassion, and if you're good at it, you can be a difference-maker on any team, whether you explicitly lead the team or not. No one likes conflict. While some are more acutely affected by it, relational tension affects all of us negatively. When we are in it, we experience discomfort, suffering, and pain on some level. No one wakes up and thinks, "I wonder how I can bring about discord with the people I work with today?" Equally, no one wakes up and goes, "I hope I get into some conflict with the explosive potential for relational fallout today."?

Yet, discord will come. Disagreements will happen. You will find yourself in conflict, and you will find yourself exhausted by it. However, compassionate leaders can navigate these moments elegantly because they can genuinely identify with everyone involved in the conflict. Whether they are exhausted or even opposed to the other on the issue, they leverage compassion to step into the other person's shoes to understand their perspective better, even if it's frustrating or uncomfortable. This is part of compassionate leadership.

Compassion in Leadership

Compassionate leaders have significant advantages in the marketplace. Two areas in which increased levels of compassion yield increased results: with customers and teammates.?

One of the key skills of great leaders is the ability to zoom in and zoom out on people and problems at the right moment. Mature leaders understand that every circumstance is multi-dimensional and complex. Compassion is a force multiplier that allows leaders to exercise this zoom-in and out agility to view decisions with a deeper field of vision. Leaders who see others in-depth with clarity have a significant advantage over those who limit their perspective to single dimensions like profits or usability.?

The compassionate leader has the acumen to read customers' needs more precisely because they can quickly and accurately assess the origin of the customer's frustration and respond accordingly.?

A compassionate, relational posture is the secret to building trust, the foundation of all other leader tasks. People follow leaders who see and care about them. When leaders exercise compassion, they simultaneously increase vulnerability, and vulnerability begets trust.?

The compassionate leader also has an advantage when it comes to leading teams. We will all encounter folks with varying levels of emotional intelligence. Some people are candid but lack tact. Some are so meek they are never candid. You are responsible as the leader to help elevate the entire conversation despite varying levels of EQ. You can look beyond a teammate's quirks to see the person. You can separate the message from the delivery. Highly compassionate leaders adeptly see the story behind the person that may be driving behavior they could easily chock up as annoying, but instead, they choose compassion.

At Pangea, compassion is not a "nice to have" quality. We believe it is one of the foundational leadership characteristics necessary to build a truly outstanding company.?

Compassionate leaders are emotionally mature and able to navigate conflict with grace; they build solid relationships with teammates and clients and produce results that are second to none. They eliminate confusion and emotional escalation and simultaneously increase the speed of clarity and resolution. They see below the waterline to the real underlying issue at hand.?

Principle Lesson: Compassion is a leadership multiplier that grows every time you intentionally process your suffering or journey with someone else through theirs. We believe that leaders can grow in their capacity for compassion and that we are obligated to create the framework for such growth.?

Our next blog is on the initiative, but until then, check out how compassion maps to the other leadership traits and the fruit they produce! Let's all work to build leaders of character who model compassion. Our world will be better for it.