Chapter 1 The case for compassionate leadership

I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. (Albert Camus)

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Human suffering

We all suffer. Our suffering occurs in different ways and to varying extents, but none of us are immune. Compassion is a considered and powerful response to suffering. When correctly understood and applied, compassion can be a formidable force for positive change. This book tackles the very human experience of suffering, and shows what compassionate leadership is, the impacts it has and why it is needed now more than ever before.

Suffering may initially sound like a strange word to use with reference to organisational life. That said, have you ever experienced any of the following:

If your answer to any of these is yes, then you have experienced suffering. Consciously or not, each of us is carrying a load. The size, nature and weight of the load will vary by individual. Indeed, the same event can affect us all in very distinctive ways, and what derails one person might be barely noticed by another.

Consider the last time you experienced suffering at work. Did anyone notice or respond? Perhaps someone took the time to listen and find out what would best support you. Maybe you suffered in silence. If someone acted to support you, did you feel the response was authentic or a tick-the-box exercise? The response you received may have impacted the quality of your work. It likely even had a direct bearing on your feelings about the organisation more widely. Such considerations reveal why our response to suffering at work matters. It concerns us all, impacting how we feel, how we approach our work and how we engage with the people and organisations we interact with. In addition to individual, personal impact, suffering has an immense productivity and financial cost to organisations. Compassion at work matters.

Humanising the workplace

To say that there is human pain in organisations is a colossal understatement. Factories of the industrial revolution and modern-day sweat shops are extreme examples of the workplace as a cause of suffering. Indeed, the very word ‘sweater’ was used in the late 1800s to describe an employer who paid very little for repetitive work done in miserable conditions. Contemporary settings might have changed for the better in some respects, but workplaces are still too often significant sources of employee discontent and distress.

Nor is human misery confined to the working week. Newsfeeds relentlessly update us about the gruesome impacts of political intolerance, war and environmental disaster. The World Bank estimates that approximately 160 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of natural disasters, conflicts and other crises. In addition, they estimate that around 1 billion people worldwide are thought to have some form of mental disorder and only around 25% of those suffering receive any treatment at all in low-income countries. In middle- and high-income countries, more than half of the population will suffer from at least one mental disorder at some point in their lives. Children are particularly vulnerable; almost half of mental health disorders globally start by the time a child reaches their 14th birthday. World Health Organisation data (WHO 2001) suggests that at least one in four people globally suffer from mental health issues. In short, it certainly seems that to be human is indeed to suffer.

We are struggling to keep pace with this global mental health tsunami. The WHO (2022) report that the pandemic either significantly adversely impacted or completely stopped mental health services in 93% of countries globally. That this happened at precisely the moment where the need for such services was increasing rubs handfuls of salt into an already festering wound. In addition to the individual, decidedly human impact of such mental health trends, the subsequent effects on economies worldwide is also significant. The WHO estimate that over the next decade depression will put more of a humanitarian and economic burden on nations than any other illness. The financial cost of mental health on the world economy pre-pandemic was estimated to be between USD$2.5–$16 trillion; that this figure will be revised upwards now seems inevitable.

In a trend exacerbated by the COVID-19 involuntary global social experiment, increasing numbers of people are reassessing their work priorities, opting to work more flexibly than before, and willing to move jobs in order to have their needs and aspirations met. So, alongside discussions on employee wellbeing at work and stress management, humanising the workplace is now a mainstream management topic. Long overdue, this development is not entirely surprising. Humans are, after all, social beings. No matter how perplexing or frustrating we find other people to be, it is almost impossible for us to live without each other. And, if we need to work together, the contexts in which we do so can be designed for compassion.

The snowballing of evidence about the detrimental impacts of organisational life has been gathering momentum for many years. Voices from across many disciplines encourage a more humane, people-centred voice to be heard in the boardroom. Lead with empathy. The power of altruism. Be kind. Although well intentioned, some confusion has arisen about what these different terms mean and the impacts they have. Such concepts as empathy, sympathy, kindness and compassion remain subtly yet crucially different, and not just semantically. Recent research has demonstrated that there are critical differences between them from a physiological and neuroscientific perspective. As this book will show, these varied responses to suffering are different in both their motivations and consequences. Our leadership intentions may be positive, yet they need to have clear understanding grounded in robust research if they are to have truly beneficial impacts.

Timeliness of compassionate leadership

Our volatile, complex and fragile world will continue to present unexpected challenges and pressing mental health issues for the foreseeable future. These issues, combined with the preference of younger generations to move jobs more frequently, and their desire for more purpose-led employment, make a compelling case for compassion to take on a more significant role in organisations. Compassionate leadership matters because people matter.

Compassion is, in some ways, nothing new. It is a cornerstone of most religions, and has attracted the attention of philosophers, economists and writers for centuries. Sadly, it also labours under an unfortunate reputation problem and is often considered a weakness in an organisational setting. In chapters 4 and 5, as well as exploring where this dubious reputation came from, we will assess more contemporary research which shows why compassion is, in fact, an extraordinarily powerful force for good. The old ways of profit-above-all, great-man leadership have been found wanting. Our world has changed, and we urgently need a new paradigm for leadership.

If the task of compassionate leadership sounds daunting, do not give up. This book will guide you through evidence-based ways to make a real difference. Consider this: every forty seconds, someone somewhere in the world dies by suicide. Forty seconds. Coincidentally, Johns Hopkins University research (Fogarty et al. 1999) found that a simple, verbal compassionate intervention significantly reduced anxiety in cancer patients. Each intervention took just forty seconds.

Sometimes the smallest actions can have the greatest impacts.

What is compassion?

The origin of the word compassion is derived from the Latin compati, meaning ‘to suffer with’. When we notice someone suffering, we can feel their distress and take action to alleviate their pain. Compassion is, in the simplest terms, an emotional and practical response to suffering.

Earlier models of compassion

Paul Gilbert is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and a leading expert on the psychology of compassion. He writes, “compassion can be defined in many ways, but its essence is a basic kindness, with a deep awareness of the suffering of oneself and of other living things, coupled with the wish and effort to relieve it” (2009: xiii). What Gilbert is describing covers the common tripartite conceptualisation of compassion: noticing someone suffering, having an emotional response to that suffering and then taking action to try to alleviate the suffering, as shown in Figure 1.1.