This is the second post in our series about Overcoming Obstacles. You can catch up to the first post here.
As we explore overcoming the obstacles to compassionate leadership, we turn our attention in this installment of the series to the issue of excessive demands on our time. This issue consistently arises as a glaring challenge for leaders in the survey work we do with participants in our compassionate leadership training programs. It arises both as a personal challenge in terms of overcommitting and having a hard time saying no, and as an organizational challenge in terms of overload and overwork.
This obstacle to compassion has been known for decades. In a well-known 1973 study at Princeton Theological Seminary, the single most important factor impacting whether individuals showed helping behavior to someone in need was whether the individual was in a hurry or not.
What is a compassionate leader to do? We start by changing our relationship with time, with ourselves, and with the culture. Be realistic about the fixed nature of time. Practice self-compassion. Be courageous – name when the system is broken and collaborate to create more human solutions.
There are only 24 hours in a day.
How many times have you thought, “If only I had more time?” It is certainly understandable that we would wish for more time. But it isn’t particularly helpful to support us in resolving tension that arises from the clash between the things that we would like to do and the finite time available to do them.
Compassionate leaders recognize the cost of overreaching, neatly summed up in the proverb that “Someone who reaches for everything, grasps nothing.” While our motivation to do as much good as possible is certainly admirable, it can backfire. Our faculty colleague David Addiss, writing in the Journal of Medical Humanities, describes this phenomenon in global health as a “compulsion to save the world.” We can remember to responsibly do all that we can, and then let go of any wishful thinking that we are able to do more.
When we recognize that every choice is a renunciation, it reminds us to be intentional about the choices we make. One way to increase clarity around your intentions is to narrate your choices as you make them: “I am going to tackle this part of the project for the next hour. I am choosing to look at my mobile notifications. I am going to focus on today’s email inbox. I am going to play a game for ten minutes…” Having a running dialog with your inner observer can be a wonderfully supportive practice to grow your capacity to choose with intention.
Face your fears with self-compassion.
Search for “time-management systems,” and you will find plenty to choose from, with names like Pomodoro, Iceberg, and Eisenhower. While this may help tweak how much gets achieved, going to the root of our procrastination or inefficient time practices offers the potential for dramatic change.
For example, self-compassion is correlated with less worry and procrastination. Our fear of failure can cause us to avoid completing work when we are afraid whether we will be able to do it well or not. Those who are more self-compassionate have been shown to be less afraid of failure, and when they do fail, they have a greater desire to learn from the failure and to avoid repeating the mistake in the future.
Simple self-compassion practices give us tools to shift our relationship with ourselves and our perspective with external situations. Practice offering yourself more self-kindness while going about your daily activities or chatting with your inner critic. Perhaps noting your feelings of difficulty through the lens of self-compassion – writing in a journal or talking to yourself out loud – may help ease the root causes of fear, procrastination, and worry.
Establish boundaries.
Even when we do well in recognizing the fixed 24 hours in a day, and using self-compassion to keep ourselves motivated, we can still find ourselves in challenging settings based on the practices or culture of our organizational setting. In these situations, we need to exhibit courageous compassion through the expression of our own needs and the establishment of boundaries.
Our devices have “do not disturb” functionality. We need to use it. If colleagues are regularly reaching out to discuss work matters outside the regular work time, that needs to be named. Courageous compassion must be both wise and kind. You need to be able to recognize the harm that is being caused by overly demanding situations, be able to name that harm in productive, non-judgmental ways, and offer alternative approaches that will allow work objectives to be accomplished without threatening the health of the organizational community.
Often, when you are feeling certain stressors, others will be feeling them, too. Taking the lead in naming them may be a relief to others. Naming them in “gripe sessions” with each other, however, won’t work. That is simply shaming and blaming, which is counterproductive to developing solutions. Compassionate leaders go first, opening the possibility for connection and conversation that will lead to new solutions.
In closing.
We will continue our exploration of the obstacles to compassionate leadership with a more in-depth exploration of some of the issues contributing to our excess time demands: lack of self-compassion, perfectionism, and poor boundaries.
The time pressures we experience are part of our organizational structures and systems, and the societal expectations to overwork are deeply ingrained. Be kind to yourself if you’re overcommitted or haven’t said “no” as much as you would like. As you bring more awareness and intention to the challenges, you will create a new relationship with time that supports your own thriving and changes the status quo for the benefit of all.
This is the second post in our series about Overcoming Obstacles. For the next post in this series, click here.