Compassion and Performance: the misconception of an inverse relationship

Practitioners agree that effective leaders create strategies that align and integrate people’s energy and interests with business goals. This means breaking down silos, gaining commitment to the organization’s purpose, and guiding people’s energy toward activities that advance business goals.

As a coach and former senior executive, I’ve frequently observed people leaders who choose strategies based on false assumptions. One of these assumptions is this:

Leading teams with compassion will result in underperformance and threaten the achievement of business goals and personal advancement.

In my view, this assumption—that compassion and great performance are negatively correlated— is deeply flawed.

In fact, I believe that organizations that value and embody compassionate behavior will outperform those that don’t.

I would argue that this misconception is in part a rationalization that enables leaders to avoid behaviors that appear to be more difficult.

We Are Our Experiences

Neuroscientists will tell you that debate over what drives behavior—genes versus the environment— is flawed. When it comes to explaining people’s behavior, genetic makeups have different effects in different environments. So genes don’t determine anything on their own. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscientist put it this way: “adolescence shows us that the most interesting part of the brain evolved to be shaped minimally by genes and maximally by experience.”

The nature of brain plasticity and the varied experiences of each individual means that everybody shows up for work with distinct belief systems and values. Some experienced considerable childhood adversity, others were inculcated with the essential virtues of hard work, self-reliance and discipline (individualistic cultures), while still others were brought up in cultures that emphasize community (collective cultures).

Bottom line: every leader shows up with a distinct style, an authentic belief system and a unique set of values. Differences in these will inherently lead to different behaviors driven by automaticity, which among other things, regulates morality.

Understanding Compassion

If you ask a random group of people what the word “compassion” means to them, you’re bound to hear many different responses. Often, people confuse empathy with compassion. Empathy is certainly more desirable than indifference to people’s struggles and pain. However, compassionate behavior takes that trait one step further, as described in Psychology Today:

“Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.”

So compassion goes beyond putting yourself in another person’s shoes: you actually take some action to relieve the pain or struggle the other person is having. This includes self-compassion, which many highly compassionate people often ignore.

Just as leaders show up with a distinct style, they also respond differently to identical situations. For some, acting when a person needs help is an automatic response. Maybe in childhood acting on behalf of a struggling person was a learned moral imperative. When this happens, acts of compassion are done without “thinking.” They are behaviors driven by automaticity.

For others who grew up in environments that did not “automate” this response, exposure to somebody in difficulty can create distress and anxiety because it makes them feel overwhelmingly bad. And when they feel bad, they are more inclined to focus on their own issues, leading them to look the other way .

Personal Rewards From Compassion

For those with compassionate behavioral habits, reaping the personal benefits of compassion is nearly a free lunch. For those lucky people, without any cognitive load and therefore consumption of finite energy, compassionate behavior leads to:

• Reciprocal altruism: the other person feels they owe you something
• Reputation as a kind, caring person in the community
• Perception of self as a good person

All of these benefits activate the mesolimbic dopamine system leading to really positive feelings.

For those of a more self-oriented nature, behaving with compassion and garnering the rewards is more of a challenge and requires more effort. Studies have shown that compassion training can alter how individuals deal with others in difficulty, enabling them to feel more positive emotions, leading to more prosocial, compassionate behavior without the negative emotions and stress.

Rationalizing Compassion Away

Now that we’ve explored the trait, let’s connect compassion to leadership and performance. Many perceive compassion in the work place as anathema to driving great team performance. They believe that a choice must be made between meeting goals and behaving in a compassionate way. There’s a strong argument that this perspective is a rationalization because behaving compassionately carries with it potential discomfort and heavy cognitive load since it’s not automatic. It can be exhausting.

This belief—that compassion and performance are adversaries— brings to mind a question Machiavelli posed in his seminal book The Prince. He wrote: “Is it better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both?”

Now, it’s worth noting that this was Machiavelli’s advice to the ruler of Florence in the 16th century. But there is a loose analogy here: that supporting people when they are suffering or having difficulty — earning their trust and even affection—undermines or diminishes their performance because they no longer have fear as a motivation.

Putting people in a state of fear, however can be costly—unless of course, you’re a prince and you have an army to protect you.

As somebody accountable for empowering a team to perform their best, fostering an environment of fear can trigger sustained stress leading to burnout. Burn out diminishes cognitive abilities, causes moodiness, and eventually leads to apathy.

Compassion Touches Everything

Further developing “compassion muscles” will positively impact many areas of a leader’s accountability:

• It builds trust, which encourages participation and openness
• It leads to a culture of reciprocal altruism, within and across silos, empowering collaboration
• It supports the removal of obstacles that block solutions
• It leads people to take more calculated risks and invest more creative energy

Leading with compassion does not, however, mean that any of these change:

• Engaging in difficult conversations that move the business forward
• Holding people accountable for meeting goals
• Creating soft boundaries through self-compassion
• Uniting the team around a vision, strategies and goals

Adding Compassion to Your Leadership

Building a culture where compassion is a foundational principal advances the accountabilities of every leader. With too little compassion, organizations will underperform. With too much compassion, individuals will suffer from a lack of self-compassion. Dialing the right level of compassion is both art and science for everybody.

Leading with compassion can be magical: people collaborate better, trust each other more, and spend more energy on the work and less on dealing with the stress caused by fear or frustration.

ABOUT ME

After a 30+ year career as a marketing executive and CEO, in the US and Europe, I now coach many clients interested in growing their leadership effectiveness and advancing their career. Visit mach10career.com for more on me and my company, Mach10 Career and Leadership Coaching.

Please email me at [email protected] or give me a ring at 617-529-8795 if you want to talk.