I have recently attended the Compassionate Leadership conference in Birmingham. The day was full of inspirational participants, speakers, provocateurs and facilitators guiding us towards a greater understanding of how to develop compassionate leadership in ourselves and in the organisations we work for and lead.
There are so many reflections from the day, but my key takeaway will be the importance of self-compassion as a foundation of being able to show compassion to others. Speaker after speaker quoted research showing that self-compassion is a fundamental part of developing a compassionate organisation and yet participant after participant confirmed that they find this the most difficult aspect of compassion giving.
So why do leaders, particularly those in education, find self-compassion such a difficult concept?
Before the event we had been sent a video by Michael West identifying the components of compassion as: attending, understanding, empathising and showing an intention to help. He demonstrated the impact of leading with compassion in the health service showing that those who are shown compassion in palliative care have a 30% longer life than those who don’t. He felt that demonstrating compassion was the single most effective intervention that leaders can make. There was universal agreement that leading with compassion is worthwhile, effective and likely to improve any organisation and headteachers present shared evidence of how they show compassion to others and how they have developed well-being systems for their staff and communities as an outward expression of that compassion.
Is compassion the soft option?
Professor Alma Harris reiterated the idea that leading with compassion is not a soft option – doing the hard things in a human way requires humility, vulnerability and deep humanity. Again, this was met with universal agreement, participants were genuinely demonstrating the lengths they go to to ensure that their staff, parents and communities were incredibly well looked after, treated with kindness and respect and as valued partners in the endeavour of education.
The most thought-provoking part of the day for me was when Frances Maratos talked about the flow of compassion and the inter-related nature of compassion for self, compassion for others and compassion from others. She talked about compassion requiring courage as it often involved doing the right thing even if it is difficult. The idea that all three aspects of compassion are inter-related and essential for truly compassionate leadership made me reflect on my experience working with headteachers both as an advisor and more recently as a supervisor.
In my experience, headteachers are incredibly reticent to engage with the idea of self-compassion, seeing it as something they may benefit from but can’t do as they would appear weak or ineffective. There seems to be a silent agreement that taking time for themselves, buying time to help make informed decisions or just checking in with their own mental health will in some way diminish their effectiveness and diminish their standing with their staff and parents.
This thinking completely undermines the efficacy of compassionate leadership as it disregards the fundamental bedrock on which the development of a compassionate organisation can be built. Unless we as a profession start to engage, systemise and embed self-compassion within our leadership behaviours our intentions for compassion to others will be built on sand.
Key takeaways
In order to lead the compassionate organisations that we strive to create we must be willing to prioritise our own well-being and be willing to accept compassion from others. This is not self-serving or indulgent, rather an essential and intrinsic part of topping up our compassion tanks so that we can more effectively attend, understand, empathise and help others.
Author – Phil Hickey