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The Compassionate Leader
Articles by Bill Cropper, Director - The Change Forum Extracts from Conversational Coaching E-NEWS Issue 10, The Change Forum, Summer '08/09
Compassionate Leaders – a new breed?… Most leaders are still trained to lead with their heads, not their hearts. They’re conditioned to put business before benevolence. The public profile of a good leader espoused in the press, for instance, routinely includes attributes like 'tough, decisive, hard-nosed, quick-to-judge, ultra-rational and results-driven'. Yet this is changing. Organisations are now showing interest in a more compassionate style – in leading with feelings. Let’s face it, there hasn’t been a lot of room for compassion in most workplaces – and the shift to a more emotionally intelligent, empathetic and caring style of leadership invokes questions like: 'What is compassion? What does it mean to be a compassionate leader? How can I inspire others to create a more caring culture? Will being more compassionate mean going soft, diluting hard decisions and watering down a solid focus on outcomes?' There’s no simple definition of compassion and ‘task-first’ leaders used to concentrating on systems, structures, facts and figures can feel ill-equipped journeying into this relatively unknown territory. Here’s some ideas on how to spot a compassionate leader. How many have you seen around your workplace?
Of course we’re conditioned to think that if we show compassion in business, people will think we’re vulnerable, have no backbone and exploit our ‘weaknesses’. We’ve spent decades becoming more businesslike. In the process, many have encased themselves in some pretty impenetrable, compassion-proof armour. Is it time to climb out and make workplaces more humane? (The more effective ones have always been like that anyway!). Is there a place for a new breed of compassionate leader? While we’ll no doubt never rid ourselves of the hard-hearted, bottom line exec, we may find those who exhibit the characteristics of a compassionate leader may just fare better in handling crises, inspiring people to committed action and communicating more effectively in the more challenging economic, ecological and social climate this new millennium brings. Want to be Happy? Cultivate Compassion… Stimulated by a series of dialogues sponsored by the Dalai Lama between practitioners of Buddhism and western psychologists, a number of leading researchers are now studying the positive psychology of compassion. Notable amongst these is Dr Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin. Davidson’s deep brain scans of Buddhist meditators using functional M.R.I. and advanced EEG analysis, confirm that meditation strengthens connections in those parts of the brain that calm feelings like fear or anger and help regulate emotions1. For example:
From a Buddhist perspective, all of this comes as no surprise. Buddhist practitioners have always maintained the most powerful way of becoming happy is to cultivate compassion. Western psychology often forgets that happiness is a state of the mind – just as much as depression is – and so its main cause must also be psychological. While we strive to find happiness outside ourselves – in wealth, success, fame, work or relationships – the truth is that the extent of our happiness depends mainly on our emotions. And compassion is key. It’s possible to train our brain to be happy. So if you want to be happy – don’t worry – and cultivate compassion! What makes up compassion? Is there such a big gulf between east and west in our understandings of this term or is there agreement on some of its essential components? In Daniel Goleman’s 4th book “Destructive Emotions: A Dialogue with the Dalai Lama”2 which brings together some of the best minds on the subject from both east and west, a discussion develops over the divergence in our mental models of compassion.
Despite this fundamental difference, it seems there are more commonalities than we think:
Being tender-hearted though is not the same as being soft-headed. There are two areas The Dalai Lama highlights about compassion, on which the west still seems vague. He cautions not to confuse genuine compassion, which is constant, with attachment, which is ‘controlling’, ‘unstable’ and changeable: “If (they) do something to make you angry, all of a sudden you find emotional attachment evaporating.” Compassion, he confirms, is also a selfish motive – “There is also a sense of its being a state of mind that can include a wish for good things for oneself” – that it can make us feel good and look after ourselves. Buddhists call this notion 'self-cherishing'. It reminds us of the old adage that ‘To love someone well, you need to love yourself first.’ Compassion – reviving ‘a lost art’?…
Compassion is often seen as a distant, altruistic ideal cultivated by Christian Saints and Buddhist monks or as an unrealistic response of the naively sentimental or kind-hearted. When we see it this way, says Lorne Ladner in The Lost Art of Compassion5, we “lose out on experiencing the transformative potential of one of our most neglected inner resources” – and his self-proclaimed mission in this book is to rescue compassion from this marginalised view. Clinical psychologist and long-time Tibetan Buddhism practitioner, Ladner has a foot in both camps so to speak. For we in the west, groomed on fast-fixes to put ‘me-first-and-second’, to be impatient, frenetic, restless, intolerant, egocentric, competitive, insatiably dissatisfied and graspingly materialistic (no – not just a description of your teenagers) – Ladner’s book is a wake-up call – a spiritual whack in the side of the head! Ladner recalls how he’s never forgotten hearing someone in Los Angeles once ask the Dalai Lama "What was the 'quickest and easiest' way to enlightenment?" The Dalai Lama bowed his head and cried. Ladner deftly reminds us that genuine happiness won't come from our misdirected striving and craving. He covers some clear, effective practices for cultivating compassion in daily living and shows how its practical application in our life can be a powerful force in achieving happiness.
Ladner draws widely from Buddhist methods of mind-training to cultivate positive emotions such as affection, loving-kindness, even-mindedness, empathy, gratitude and particularly of course, compassion – as well as contemporary research to make the case for reviving it. Choose any two pages from his book and you’ll find some useful wisdom there.
While “The Lost Art” could almost be a
primer to Buddhism, its real value is as a ‘how-to’ guide. Not a fast-fix,
but Ladner offers 10 reflective practices to open up to compassion –
emphasising that "you cannot give others what you do not have
yourself." His method gradually builds outward from establishing a
secure self to caring for others. And he does this without making us feel
like we need to reach nirvana next week. _________________o0o_________________ Articles copyright © Bill Cropper - The Change Forum 2009
Back to Main page Sources: 1 “The Neuroscience of Emotion” Richard Davidson in Destructive Emotions and how we can overcome them: A Dialogue with The Dalai Lama (pp 179-204) Daniel Goleman 2003, Bloomsbury, London 2 Destructive Emotions and how we can overcome them: A Dialogue with The Dalai Lama, Daniel Goleman 2003, Bloomsbury, London 3 The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living – His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C Cutler, M.D. 1998, Hodder, Sydney 4 Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee 2005, Harvard Business School Press, Boston Mas. 5 The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology, Lorne Ladner 2004, HarperCollins NY coaching@thechangeforum.com OR +61-(0)7-4068 7591 or Mob: +61-(0)429-687 513 |
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