Leading with Compassion

May 7, 2023

2 min read

An article on understanding the role of a compassionate culture and compassionate leadership within health and care

Understanding compassion

Before we deepen our understanding of compassion, let’s first talk about empathy. Empathy and compassion are both related to the ability to understand the feelings of others, but they have different meanings. To offer one possible meaning, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, while compassion is the desire to alleviate the suffering of others. We could think of empathy as our capacity to understand another’s experience; putting oneself in another's shoes and experiencing a simulation of their experience, if you like, while compassion involves taking action to help someone who is suffering. Compassion often arises from empathy but can also arise from a foundational value of "we are all human". Both empathy and compassion are important for building strong relationships and leading teams where each person is seen and valued.

Compassion in leadership

Broadly defined, compassionate leadership is a management approach that prioritises empathy and kindness towards employees and colleagues. It involves understanding and acknowledging the variety of experiences and emotions of others, while encouraging open communication and collaboration. Compassionate leaders recognise that taking care of their employees not only leads to better staff morale, but also promotes a sense of belonging, and contributes to better care for patients.

Compassion in leadership means leaders ensure they have capacity to listen, enquire into, and understand another person’s unique experience in a given situation (here, we’re talking of empathy). Then, the leader will (arising from the empathy) act with a desire to help and support their colleague.

Importance in health and care

With high levels of burnout in the health and care workforce and low rates of retention, we need to collectively foster a culture of caring for staff. A big part of that movement is leaders taking on “compassionate leadership” into their management approach.

These leaders support individual staff to feel ‘a sense of autonomy, belonging, and contribution to [their] workplace’ (Kearney, 2022) and can also model self-compassion as part of looking after one’s own mental health - both positively impacting staff retention.

Developing a compassionate leader

For the purpose of being easily digestible, we’ve compiled compassionate leadership into three core elements which we invite you to see as practices to take on:

the self

self-awareness (of biases, pre-judgements, narratives)
self-compassion (modelling this for others)
mindset of curiosity (from a place of not-knowing and seeking understanding)

the enquiry

active listening (limiting distractions, dedicating time)
open ended questions (deepening the enquiry to gain understanding)
separating problem from people (see below)

the action

making acknowledgments (witnessing people's qualities and ways of being)
taking thoughtful and appropriate action (acting with compassion from empathy)
valuing each individual (as unique and a contribution)

References and other sources

Supporting staff wellbeing with a focus on health visitors Rachel Kearney, Nursing Times, (February 2023, Vol 119, Iss. 2)

What is compassionate leadership? Suzie Bailey & Michael West, The Kings Fund (February, 2022)

Talent for Care provide support, learning and development programs; transforming wellbeing, engagement, and retention for the health and social care workforce. Compassionate Leadership is a core element of our leadership programs such as: Leaders of the Future and Developing Healthcare Leaders.