Compassionate Leadership: taking a people-centric approach

Reflecting on this past year, life feels very different than the years before it. Many of us find ourselves working from home – often this means co-working on top of care-taking and schooling – and while this has not always been an easy transition, I’d like to think there has been some good. As we bring work home, more of ourselves are brought to work, giving our co-workers a peak behind the metaphorical curtain. And with this added perspective, I see a collective culture shift to one where professionalism does not mean the absence of humanity – and others feel this too. In a recent Microsoft study 39% percent of people said they are more likely to be their full, authentic selves at work, and 31% said they are less likely to feel embarrassed or ashamed when their home life shows up at work.

At the root of this behavior is one of our most deeply held needs – the need to be seen, to be heard, to feel connected. At LinkedIn and Glint, we’ve long talked about taking a People-Centric approach and the importance of putting people at the core of everything we do. My own work, focusing on mindfulness and compassionate leadership, echoes this sentiment. And while this has always been important, I believe we are in the dawn of a new era, where success will be not only about achievement and winning, but also compassion and connection. (These are both work-safe appropriate words for love, which maybe someday we’ll be more ready to talk about openly.)

?The Business of Compassion

Humans are wired to crave understanding and connection. Meeting these needs has proven to be difficult while social distancing, but when we are able to strengthen connections remotely, we see better overall well-being and higher productivity. Compassionate Leadership can also increase organizational commitment (Lilius et al., 2008) and reduce employee attrition (Lilius et al., 2011). Knowing this, it is no surprise that emotional intelligence emerged as a new Top 5 critical soft skill needed for the future. But operating from a place of deeper compassion is both a strategic advantage and simply the right thing to do.

Compassion = Empathy + Action

In every-day conversation, many use empathy and compassion interchangeably, but compassion in the context of Compassionate Leadership is not simply being empathetic. An empathetic response is about feeling the emotions of someone else. Compassion is about seeing the world through others’ lens and taking action to make lives better. Simplistically put, compassion is a combination of empathy and action.

Another way we think about this is a shift from the “me” to the “we”. At LinkedIn, we define compassion as the capacity of having awareness of others, a mindset of wishing the best for others, and the courage to take action. We’ve worked hard to embed this way of leading into every facet of how we run our organization – from internal policies, to how we work together, to how we build and sell products and how we show up for our global community.

One of our goals is to operationalize compassion. What does it actually mean? How do we do it? A good place to start is with our leaders.

When we think about Compassionate Leadership behaviors, these leaders:

●??????Demonstrate curiosity about others while respecting boundaries

●??????Approach situations with an open mind, even when emotions are high

●??????Listen to others with intent to understand

●??????Pay attention to how their actions impact others

●??????Seek feedback and use it to improve themselves

●??????Show care and concern for others, treating their colleagues as people first

●??????Seek to understand others’ needs prior to decision making

●??????Assume positive intent and avoid attributing blame

●??????Regularly express appreciation and gratitude to others

●??????Openly share their experiences, including failures

●??????Take action to do the right thing for others, even when it’s difficult

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Not only is Compassionate Leadership relational, it’s also dynamic. A daily, life-long practice (not an identity to achieve) that requires on-going self-reflection. To start our own journey toward being a more compassionate leader:

●??????Consider how we can be more present in our interactions – what distractions can we remove to ensure we are mindful enough to be aware of others’ needs?

?●??????Reflect on our own feelings about compassion in the workplace – are we comfortable expressing our needs at work? How do we react when others open up about painful experiences?

?●??????Identify Compassionate Leadership behaviors we can integrate into next week. Take one step at a time, perhaps use time during our next team meeting for a “get-to-know-you” question or take the extra step of sending a note when a thought of appreciation crosses our mind.

●??????As we hone our own Compassionate Leadership, we think about our responsibility as a leader to teach and role model for others. We help compassion grow by considering how we actively promote a culture in which people trust each other with their emotions. Do people know that if they talk about their problems, other team members will not judge them, and they will listen and try to help? If not, consider what we can do as a leader to change this and integrate the behaviors listed above.

?Compassionate Leadership is about relinquishing our “Me, Me, Me” attitude, and focusing on the whole, the “We”, including ourselves. Research, and my own experience, have shown that mindfulness can lower stress, help us better focus, reduce anxiety, and decrease psychological stress. It can increase others’ sense of purpose and self-efficacy (Grant, 2008) and has a multiplicative effect, with those who are on the receiving end of compassion being better at supporting others (Goetz et al. 2010).

As we look to the future with continued uncertainty in terms of exactly how the “new world of work” will look – it is safe to say it won’t look like it did before.?In Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index, 73% of workers say they want more flexible remote-work options to continue, but at the same time 67% are craving more connection through in-person time with their team. So, while this year has brought more humanity to our work, 2021 is ripe with opportunity to continue to connect with each other. And I’ll submit that to thrive -- and perhaps even survive -- in this new world, compassion needs to come to work with us.

?“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” – The Dalai Lama

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Scott Shute is the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion Programs at LinkedIn. Scott was previously the VP of Global Customer Operations at LinkedIn. He is the author of the book?The Full Body Yes.?