When we ask people at the start of our trainings about their curiosities around compassionate leadership, one of the most common questions is, “How can I be a compassionate leader and hold people accountable?” At the Center for Compassionate Leadership, compassion and accountability are completely aligned.
Innate Worthiness of Every Human
At the heart of compassionate leadership is the principle of common humanity – that every human has the right to be happy, to be safe, to live a flourishing life. What happens when someone’s actions bring harm, reducing the safety or happiness of others? The natural response is to turn our attention to repairing the damage in the community that has been caused by the harmful behaviors. This compassion seeks to relieve the suffering that has been created. Compassionate leadership calls for more. In addition to relieving the suffering itself, compassionate leaders seek to also remove the causes of the suffering. This is where accountability, and our compassionate approach to accountability, comes in.
What do we think about the one who has caused the harm? Are they a bad teammate who deserves to be punished? Or are they a complex human, just like me, whose bad actions arise from their own personal suffering? The answers to these questions shape our perspective on accountability.
Accountability – Punishment or Restoration?
Accountability is a synonym for responsibility. Holding people accountable means that they are responsible for the choices they make, for the actions they take, and for the work product they deliver. If we are unable to separate the person from the action, accountability devolves into punishment. How do I make them pay? Who do I blame? The trouble with this punitive approach is that it doesn’t address the root cause, which normally arises from a place of suffering in the one doing the harm. As the popular phrase expresses, “hurt people hurt people.” While punishment may bring about compliance in the short run, without addressing the root cause of the disruptive behavior, the trouble is likely to return again and again.
Compassionate leaders address the root cause by choosing to offer their care and concern to those who created the disruption. This offers an accountability of repair and restoration, rather than punishment. It offers the one being held accountable choices that give them a path toward more constructive actions, and agency over choosing that path. It recognizes the innate worthiness of everyone, including the one who has caused harm. To approach accountability in this way, try working with the five Cs of accountability – five contributors to holding people accountable while leading compassionately.
Clarity
The first C of accountability is clarity. Often, when we think someone needs to be held accountable, we discover that they think they did what they were supposed to do. Leadership is the motivation of others towards shared goals. If the goals are not clear, then they aren’t shared. Without clarity, team members can be working their hearts out pointing in a different direction than the one you would like them to point to.
Clarity is valuable for more than just goals. Deliverables, timelines, specific responsibilities, and other intermediate contributions to reaching a shared goal benefit from clarity, too. We need to be as clear as possible before setting off on a project to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
On the path of restoration, clarity enhances the agency of the team member through explicit boundaries and clear consequences. Negative consequences such as demotion, pay reduction, or termination are stated as a clear result of further negative behaviors, not as a threat. Above all, compassionate leaders strive to create the conditions where everyone can reach their full potential.
Communication
The second C is communications. Communicate early and communicate often, especially when things start to deviate from expectations. Often when there is disruptive behavior, we're a little hesitant to intervene quickly. We might think: It’s awkward. It’s not that big of a deal. Maybe it will just go away. (It never just goes away.) Instead, our frustration, or even anger, builds up like water behind a dam until it reaches the breaking point. By this time, it becomes extremely difficult to communicate with compassion, without shaming or blaming.
The other important part of communicating about bad behavior is the first C: clarity. Communicate in ways that are unequivocal about what has gone wrong. Giving developmental feedback hidden in two compliments – the proverbial compliment sandwich – is not helpful. It’s confusing. You can leave your team member getting mixed messages that you are both satisfied, and you are unsatisfied. Be crystal clear with your developmental feedback so there is no margin for misunderstanding.
Curiosity
The third C is curiosity. When disruptive behavior arises, it's easy to see the suffering that is being caused by the disruptive actor. We can see the harm being caused to the organization, but it is often harder to recognize the harm to the actor as well. That makes it easy to go straight to blame. Research is clear, however, that blame is not an effective motivator.
To motivate effective behavior change requires seeing what is underneath – seeing the suffering that is behind the disruptive behavior. Be curious about what is causing negative actions. If you can get beneath the actions to the root cause, you will be able to connect to the disruptive actor as a fellow human who is seeking to go through life being safe and valued. Ask questions, be curious, and make a sincere effort to understand what is going on. Often when team members feel the authenticity of your care and concern, they will be more open to work collaboratively to address the issues.
Community
The fourth C is community. Holding people accountable can be very hard. We burn ourselves out if we try to do hard things alone. First find community to support, nurture, and regenerate yourself. Don’t hesitate to ask yourself the essential self-compassion question, “What support do I need?” Find your support team – friends, family, mentors, colleagues – who will allow you to process and talk through your frustration so that it doesn't get directed at the other.
No person is an island. We are all participants in deeply interconnected systems. There's no single bad actor. Their actions come from deeper systems, such as the history of their family or the structure of the organization in which they work. Take a look at the full picture, including your place and responsibility in that picture, and then you can courageously address the negative action itself. Sometimes the hardest – and the most helpful – action to take is the change we make to ourselves.
Compassion
The final C is, of course, compassion. Within the four-step definition of compassion: awareness, connection, empathy and action, the critical element for holding people accountable is connection. Can you, as a leader, connect to the one who needs to be held accountable in a way that you believe they are worthy of your caring attention? Because when you can connect that way, then you can move on to the next two steps – empathic resonance with their feelings and action to help restore things to a state of greater flourishing.
If you cannot connect in a kind way; if it does devolve into blame; or if you turn the disruptor into a scapegoat, then it becomes impossible to resonate with their feelings, which then makes it impossible to move into compassionate action. The only available action at that point is power and control over the other, to the detriment of all.
Compassionate leadership is different. Its approach offers respectful collaboration and support to everyone, including those who may have created difficulties.
In Closing…
We all deserve the opportunity to flourish and thrive. As leaders, it can be harder to support the growth and well-being of someone who has failed. But that is exactly what it means to be a compassionate leader. Using the 5 Cs of accountability shows us how to offer caring attention to everyone.