After a year of unprecedented challenges and stress, pausing to consider how to construct the next phase of life may feel more burdensome than liberating. As you explore how you intend life to feel and be, remember to bring a deeper quality of attention to each moment you experience. Resolve to be in alignment with your deepest values, and each choice point will emerge with more ease and clarity.
We present our top five books on compassionate leadership for 2021! This has been a stellar year for books supporting the movement towards compassionate leadership, making the selection of the top five quite challenging. Whether for yourself, your team, or as a gift for an admired or aspiring compassionate leader in your life, any of these five books offer a wonderful way to launch into 2022.
In Boundless Leadership: The Breakthrough Method to Realize Your Vision, Empower Others & Ignite Positive Change, Joe Loizzo and Elazar Aslan show us a path to move from the default survival mode of our distant ancestors to the thriving mind required of compassionate leaders to cultivate a more equitable, sustainable, and healthy world.
November 13, 2021 is World Kindness Day. Every kind act we take has a powerful effect, rippling out and generating impacts beyond the benefit to the recipient of kindness. Kindness has the power to support all the elements of compassionate culture. When compassionate leaders practice kindness, it will be felt through the entire organization or team.
No one is an island. In our competitive world, the temptation is to limit our dependence on others. Organizational and team success requires cooperation and collaboration, and compassionate leaders need to create safe environments that support sharing and co-creation. Recognizing that each person brings unique perspective and gifts to building solutions is at the heart of compassionate culture.
The crises the world is facing – climate change, substantial healthcare and income inequities, ongoing regional conflict and war – are substantial, and call for decisive responses. When we explore compassion, our own intentions, and our power to lead real systems change, we see that compassion offers the power and strength that are necessary to confront the biggest challenges in the world today.
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.
Our drive to achieve and accumulate comes from a place of wanting to create safety. It also comes with a terrible cost. The more we succeed at setting ourselves apart, the lonelier it becomes. The good news is that we are also wired to care for each other. Recognizing our interconnectedness supports us in leading in order to thrive individually, in communities, and in organizations.
In the midst of the turmoil and chaos of these times, setting or resetting boundaries is one of the most important compassionate leadership moves to create a thriving organization. Good boundaries connect us to each other, focus us, and support our wellbeing. Boundaries also protect us. When you map out clear boundaries, especially in collaboration with your team, you set up everyone for success.
