Questions about bringing compassion to difficult situations are among the most common queries we receive at the Center for Compassionate Leadership. Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way, by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, encourages leaders to take a bigger picture perspective when “hard things” arise.
We are surrounded by fear-based motivation. Marketers create a fear of missing out. Politicians promise disaster if they don’t win. Many organizational leaders use this approach, too. But fear is not our only motivator. To promote flourishing, leaders need to create psychological safety, encourage creative exploration, and respond with an attitude that treats failure as a learning opportunity.
Leaders are doers by nature, which is helpful when it comes to compassion. Skillfully moving compassion into action is how we create safety, connection and belonging for ourselves and for others. Compassion is the path we follow to support us through the uncertainty and challenges of the moment. Read about these three approaches to weave more compassionate action into your path of thriving.
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.
