For close to two years, leaders have been thrust into the role of Counselor in Chief, helping teams recover from the grief and loss of the pandemic, buoying the declining mental health of their employees, being sensitive to people’s anxieties and often publicly sharing their own vulnerabilities along the way. In short, they have been shouldering a big emotional burden.
Connect with Empathy, But Lead with Compassion
The distinction is significant.
December 23, 2021
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Summary.
For the past two years, leaders have been shouldering a big emotional burden: helping teams recover from the grief and loss of the pandemic, buoying the declining mental health of their employees, and being sensitive to people’s anxieties. The empathy this requires is important to good leadership, but too much empathy can weigh you down and lead to burnout and poor decisions. This can be avoided by moving beyond empathy to the uplifting experience of compassion. “Sympathy,” “empathy,” and “compassion” are often used interchangeably, but whereas sympathy and empathy are emotions felt for and with other people, compassion goes beyond mere emotion to include the active intention to help others. The authors offer six strategies for leading with compassion: take a mental and emotional step away; ask “What do you need?”; remember the power of non-action; coach the person rather than doing something for them; practice self-care.