Are you curious about how to give compassion in your workplace? Compassionate leadership improves performance and relieves pressures in ways that may surprise you.
Let’s define compassion: it is sympathetic consciousness, an awareness and empathy toward someone else's state of mind or distress regarding a situation or another person(s). Compassion is a desire to openly communicate and offer help to alleviate a person’s suffering.
I bet a person or a situation popped into your mind just now—maybe it was even yourself—you may feel a need for self-compassion!
Challenge, chaos and multiple stages of developing a vision into a profitable business reality is daunting. What I find is a predictable problem with entrepreneurial leaders, (because we’re all human) is that we experience plenty of personal distress. And all too often leaders don't recognize or even consider their need for self-compassion—it plays a big part in eliminating ongoing stress and distress.
Is this you?
Is your lens of yourself, and the responsibilities you carry for your company causing you to judge yourself too harshly? Trust me, it’s part of the journey. Early on, an awareness of your own human need for self-compassion becomes an essential part of becoming a leader who survives the setbacks, mistakes and hard times. If not, all too often, you will find yourself functioning in an overly stressed state of solitude, fear, and self-criticism, which does not lead to sustaining a satisfying and profitable business.
First and foremost, I encourage you to recognize your own need for self-compassion to achieve your highest performance potential. Be patient with your own performance ups and downs, and make self-care a priority. These promote a confident place within that allows you to lead your team with greater kindness and compassion. Allowing vulnerability reveals your own self-acceptance. It also shows your need for the understanding and camaraderie of others when the going is tough. Cultivate the habit of seeking support and solutions from your team or other business leaders. This releases fresh optimism and clearer perspective, which leads to no longer feeling alone in the challenges you face!
Next, what about your team?
In turn, the positive effects of your self-compassion transfers to a sincere desire to demonstrate compassion towards people. Your willingness to see and understand their needs, feelings and frustrations, lead to your team feeling you are a safe leader with whom they can openly share their current distress or challenge—then moving forward together, you can problem solve and find new solutions and opportunities. Learn more about “Compassionate Leadership Authority”.
TO DEMONSTRATE COMPASSION, HOLD ONTO THESE TRUTHS
- As a leader, self-compassion is acknowledging “business is hard” for everyone. You aren’t alone in the challenges. There's no amount of doing it differently that saves you from outside influences. No, all of us are human and all of us live in a world of external impacts on business.
- High performers like you are used to getting results. You rely on your ambition to give you the drive for developing goals and achieving results. And that's awesome. Don’t give up your ambition. However, when the results are not what you aimed for, compassion supports you and your team. Understand the importance of compassion, because the more you develop it, you’ll see it plays an integral part in sustaining success.
- As you (and your team) deal with pressure and stress, apply compassion. The practice of compassion is your way of receiving rest and relief. This makes you able to handle stress so that you can consistently show up strong.
- Sincere compassion releases conflicts and challenges within teams. It moves people forward from fractured to aligned, giving them the ability to regain trust and deliver results.
- Compassion connects people in caring relationships, and acknowledges people are the most valuable asset in every business.
- Compassion builds emotional endurance on the individual level as well as influences team trust and alignment. This aids in the retention of valued employees, which benefits efficiency and profitability.
- Compassion blends with leadership authority and high performance to form your optimal reputation as a leader.
Take Action
This brief look at the purpose of compassion has a huge payoff when you choose to demonstrate compassionate leadership.
Today, seek to recognize distress or concern in others; communicate and respond; cultivate mutual respect, show genuine interest and compassion. It’s wonderfully contagious!
At Leading Edge Teams, we are here for you.
We welcome your questions, concerns and comments!
This is Leadership!
Annie
