Is your boss overly demanding? Does it seem that they don’t ever consider how their decisions and directions impact you? While this can be a no-win situation in certain highly toxic environments, in many cases this is an opportunity for you to practice and elevate your own compassionate leadership skills. One of the most common questions we are asked at the Center for Compassionate Leadership is, “What do I do if my boss is not compassionate?” Navigating a compassionate path with an uncompassionate boss or other person is never easy. Let’s explore how to courageously take on this challenge, and in so doing, perhaps discover a new level of mastery in compassionate leadership.
Start with Compassion
How can we summon the courage and strength it takes to offer a compassionate response when you are subjected to unkind, rude, or hostile treatment from a superior? In our world that hungers for healing, compassion is just what is needed. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.”
The suffering that your boss is inflicting upon you is likely arising from a place of suffering that they themselves are experiencing. Understanding that doesn’t make the nasty behavior any more pleasant, but it can make it easier to process the negative impacts of your boss’s actions. By asking non-judgmentally, “What is making them act like this?”, you may be able to increase your awareness of the root of what they are inflicting upon you. That understanding can then help you move to a more effective response to your boss.
Perhaps you approach this question with kindness and curiosity, but there is no explanation that fits your logical mind. In that case know that we all hold wounds and suffer from them. We can still cultivate a compassionate response with the simple appreciation that as humans, we all suffer.
Your boss is not the only person in this dynamic who needs compassion. You do, too. By recognizing that your boss’s actions are more about their issues than about you, it can support a healthy dose of self-compassion. Let go of blaming yourself, and see if this new awareness allows you to feel kindness toward yourself for the suffering you are experiencing in this relationship. Lastly, it can also be so helpful to recognize that the suffering you are experiencing is widely shared. When we look at the suffering from a higher perspective of common humanity, it takes a lot of the shame off our own shoulders.
Starting from a place of compassion, both for yourself and for your boss, can help you then move to the all-important part of compassionate leadership – moving into action.
Offer Solutions, Not Blame
It is easier and more effective to respond to a specific action (your boss giving you work assignments at 5:00 pm on Friday) than it is to a pattern of behavior (consistently not considering your needs). So, experiment with a single incident that you would like to remedy and ask your boss if you could find time to discuss it. See if you can bravely ask for the conversation as the situation is unfolding, instead of talking about something that happened last week or last month.
Begin your conversation with a positive affirmation of your shared goals, for example, “I want to find an effective way that I can get you the work assignments you need in a timely manner.” Then share ideas you have about actions your boss could take that would support achievement of the shared goal. While it may be helpful to name the hurdles to achieving the goal created by your boss’s choices, be skillful in how you express that. Shame and blame don’t work for bosses any better than the boss’s shaming and blaming work for their team.
Listen, Listen, Listen
The first two steps listed above – becoming aware of your boss’s own challenges and trying to offer responsive solutions – can get things going in a good direction. But even with the best instincts and insights, there are likely parts of the story that are still missing. Therefore, when you enter into the conversation about uncompassionate actions by your boss, it is also critically important to be prepared to listen with openness and curiosity, and learn even more about your boss’s perspective or issues.
Having started with compassion, you can approach this conversation with a non-judgmental attitude. Simply listening, without needing to jump to judgment or to find a fix for everything your boss says, is a very powerful approach. It can give you the space to deeply process all that is being said, which in turn will lead to healthier and more productive responses.
Set Boundaries and Acknowledge Limits
Part of any solution will usually include a mutual agreement about what the realistic limits for any given circumstance are. Courageous compassion is needed to be clear and direct about what you believe is fair. This is not a time for vagueness, and it is valuable to have as clear and explicit of an agreement as possible. Putting your understanding into an email is the strongest way to be sure that your understanding of expectations is the same as your boss.
Sometimes, it is not possible to find that “meeting of the minds.” Although we wish it would be otherwise, some people and some situations are so toxic that the choice we face is to leave the toxic situation or stay and accept the situation as it is. Acknowledging the truth of the situation is certainly better than banging your head against the wall of an unchangeable setting. If you must carry on in a toxic environment, be sure to keep coming back to practices of self-compassion, including extra kindness towards yourself. Remember the gift of speaking to yourself as if you were speaking to a dear friend to get them through a difficult time or circumstance.
In closing…
We all show up with the full breadth of our life experience, including wounds. Many organizational environments have traditionally not welcomed the full range of our emotions. As compassionate leaders, developing more understanding ways with our bosses, peers, and teams, can be an important step to building new cultures that appreciates each individual.