We’ve seen that a compassionate culture in a business brings many gains, but there are challenges too. Perceptions tend to get skewed under pressure. We start to base our decisions and actions on the here and now trying to make things simpler. Over time, those perceptions become fixed and habits form that affect management style. Often the soft skills suffer first, and compassion first of all. Plus, it is possible (easy?) to overdo it. So, where might the negatives of compassion exist/be perceived?
Professional boundaries could feel blurred. Compassion might be misconstrued as favouritism or a lack of objectivity, especially in people-related decisions.
Compassionate leaders may find it challenging to make the difficult decisions. Balancing compassion with the hard realities is tough - perhaps you fear a backlash or the emotional burden of such decisions. Striving for a consensus must not slow down the business. Some might view compassion as a hindrance to drive and quick decision-making, potentially impacting the competitive edge.
In a highly compassionate culture, there’s a risk that some employees exploit the culture for personal gain, seeing kindness as a shield to slack off, manipulate situations, or shirk responsibilities.
Can we afford being nice? Maintaining a compassionate culture requires an investment in terms of time and resources. Training, regular feedback, and support systems are resource intensive.
In management roles, where there are significant numbers of staff to manage, there's a risk of compassion fatigue. Leaders can become emotionally depleted from feeling that they are constantly providing support and understanding, or having their ability to hit targets hampered by “wasting time on HR”.
Different people can have varying expectations of what constitutes compassion, leading to misunderstandings or perceptions of inequality. This is especially true generationally.
Compassion can be misinterpreted as a weakness. In fact, this is nearly always a leader’s perception rather than the reality. However, the concern is real that in certain business contexts, compassion might come across as a lack of firmness or decisiveness and may impact leadership credibility.
Issues in enforcing discipline or driving productivity could be framed by a compassionate culture. More cynical bosses might believe that compassion interferes with the ability to enforce discipline effectively, worrying that it could lead to a lax work environment where rules are flouted, and productivity stalls.
Ruinous Empathy is a really interesting angle in this topic. It is an illustration of how to be compassionate badly. I suggest you look into the work of Kim Scott and her Radical Candour principles.
Next week I will go into some statistics around the use of compassion in the workplace. Have your views on compassion changed at all as you’ve read these posts, I wonder?
I try to meet with, virtually or in person, lots of my business and coaching contacts, and I find this an effective way of keeping up to date with the latest relevant issues. It also helps to ‘ground’ me and encourage me to check in with my own work and approach. Along the way I have lots of discussions about leadership which inevitably entails wildly differing views and opinions.
Out of the proliferation of remote work during and after COVID, a new challenge for organisations has emerged: many important skills are not easily, or cannot be, nurtured through screens. In the traditional office environment, the subtle yet powerful process of learning osmotically plays a critical role. Leaders model behaviours, and employees, often subconsciously, absorb crucial skills such as adaptability, emotional intelligence, and intuitive decision-making. Even resilience can be enhanced through witnessing other people’s coping mechanisms.
Reflecting on what I feel makes a leader truly great, I realise that leadership is generally misunderstood. It should not be about rank or authority;