Compassionate Leadership

Leadership is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in getting the job done? A global pandemic, economic volatility, natural disasters, civil and political unrest. From New York to Barcelona to Hong Kong, it can feel as if the world as we know it is coming apart. Through it all, our human spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion. But in hard times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions—deliver negative feedback, make difficult choices that disappoint people, and in some cases lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing out the best in others? Most people think we have to make a binary choice between being a good human being and being a tough, effective leader. But this is a false dichotomy. Being human and doing what needs to be done are not mutually exclusive. In truth, doing hard things and making difficult decisions is often the most compassionate thing to do. As founder and CEO of Potential Project, Rasmus Hougaard and his longtime coauthor, Jacqueline Carter, show in this powerful, practical book, you must always balance caring for your people with leadership wisdom and effectiveness. Using data from thousands of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors find that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty, and well-being in their people. With rich examples from Netflix, IKEA, Unilever, and many other global companies, as well as practical tools and advice for leaders and managers at any level, Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.

One of the myths in business is that people resist change. Not everybody resists change. And the ones who do, don't resist the change, but the tensions that come with change. As a consequence, the first step is to see in which vibe an individual or team resides. Is that the negative or neutral vibe then change will usually be considered as negative. If it is the positive or inspiring vibe, then change is welcomed as an opportunity. In the positive and inspiring vibe people are also willing to enthusiastically pursue goals and contribute to the purpose of the organization. The reason that tensions by people in the negative or neutral vibe are considered as negative and why they get stuck in those vibes, is that they don't know how to deal with the tensions. They don't have any tools or techniques at their disposal. The key to successfully working together and reaching the goals of (change) projects is first raise the vibe in the day-to-day operations. And only then implement large or small change projects. The book The Compassionate Leader provides you with the right tools: The D.U.E.T. framework includes techniques to solve the different kinds of tension (practical, personal or interpersonal). As a consequence, the vibe of an individual or team rises automatically. A specific approach for leaders and coaches to facilitate others in this process: Compassionate Leadership. The tools, techniques and insights are presented via the practical case of the fictitious company Gizmo Objects Inc. in which the story of manager Catherine shows how step by step the space is created for the inspiring vibe, where results and well-being reinforce each other. The Compassionate Leader is the fourth book of Jan Vermeiren, who received worldwide recognition with his books Let's Connect! and How to REALLY use LinkedIn. With his current company he supports leaders and coaches to become Compassionate Leaders who guide individuals and teams into the inspiring vibe.

Are you ready to revolutionize your leadership style and foster a thriving, high-performing team? Leadership expert Paul Axtell reveals the secrets to becoming a truly compassionate leader, one who empowers their team members, encourages growth, and ignites a passionate drive for success. By combining his vast expertise with practical, actionable strategies, Axtell offers a step-by-step roadmap for transforming your workplace into a harmonious, dynamic environment. Empower Your Team: Discover the art of fostering a culture of trust and promoting a sense of ownership that leads to outstanding results. Inspire Peak Performance: Learn how to inspire and motivate your team members to consistently deliver their best, fueling a collective drive for excellence. Nurture Employee Well-Being: Prioritize the well-being of your team, promoting work-life balance and reducing burnout to create a happy and engaged workforce. Boost Collaboration: Cultivate an environment of collaboration and open communication, enabling your team to leverage their diverse skills and perspectives for innovation and success. Effective Feedback Techniques: Master the art of giving constructive feedback that inspires growth. Conflict Resolution Strategies: Equip yourself with powerful conflict resolution techniques to transform challenges into opportunities for stronger team bonds. Adaptability and Resilience: Develop the resilience to navigate through uncertainties and embrace change, guiding your team toward continued success. Enhance Emotional Intelligence: Cultivate emotional intelligence to connect with your team on a deeper level, understanding their needs and aspirations. Inclusive Leadership: Embrace diversity and inclusivity in your leadership style, fostering an environment where every team member feels valued and heard. Drive Innovation: Inspire creativity and innovation within your team, driving the development of groundbreaking ideas and solutions. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, Compassionate Leadership will equip you with the tools to build a highly engaged, inspired, and successful team that thrives under your compassionate guidance.

Gold Nautilus Book Award Winner Realize your fullest leadership potential, claim your boldest vision, and prioritize the well-being of your team and world with this new science-based approach to leadership. Boundless Leadership provides a complete and systematic roadmap to finding meaning in your work, realizing your full leadership potential, and inspiring your team with resilience, innovation, compassion and confidence. Contemplative psychotherapist Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, and executive advisor Elazar Aslan, MBA, PCC, offer a new science-based vision of leadership that prescribes disciplines of mind, heart, and body to help leaders cultivate clarity, compassion and fearlessness for themselves and throughout their organization. Boundless Leadership offers accessible, real world applications to bring ease to leading oneself and others, and provides examples from the authors' experience with clients, including CEOs of multi-billion-dollar businesses, entrepreneurs and managers trying to balance the complex challenges of work and life in our interdependent age. Each section includes a range of practices based on neuropsychology and contemplative science, including guided meditations to improve focus and awareness, cultivate empathy and compassion, and build fearlessness and flow. Each section also offers a practical application to ease daily challenges, including clarifying intentions for better decision-making, improving accountability and responsibility for better team collaboration, and embodying purpose to optimize impact on one’s organization and society at large. Boundless Leadership is especially needed during this explosion of remote working and provides advice and guidance to remain productive and joyful when your work environment is in flux. Whether you're a CEO, manager, team leader, consultant, coach, social entrepreneur or community activist, this book offers the tools you need to clarify your vision, lead others, and ignite positive change in the world--giving you a much needed advantage in today’s fast-paced digital age.

In Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging, Kathryn Riley draws on 40 years of international research and professional practice to show how schools can be places of safety and fulfilment, even in the most difficult of circumstances. When belonging is a school’s guiding principle, more young people at all levels experience a sense of connectedness and friendship, perform better academically, and come to believe in themselves; their teachers feel more professionally fulfilled, their families more accepted. The originality of this highly readable book lies in its scope. It offers international analysis from the OECD alongside insights from the author’s extensive research in schools, powerfully supported by observational vignettes and drawings from the children, young people and teachers who have been her co-researchers. The book reveals patterns of dislocation, disaffection and exclusion, and highlights the points of intervention in policy and practice needed across school systems to create the conditions for school belonging. The methodologies, concepts and research tools offered can be used by practitioners and researchers in their own contexts, and to guide school leaders towards creating their own places of belonging. This is an urgent book of hope, offering knowledge so that schools can open up possibilities to all children and young people in an increasingly uncertain world.

Compassionate leadership isn’t about being nice; when practiced effectively, it’s a strong leadership style that can elevate your spirits and profits. Compassionate leaders are not weak. They are tough leaders who understand that they can be good to their people and deliver stronger results. In fact, taking care of your people actually leads to better results. In his new book, Donato Tramuto—recognized CEO, business leader, innovator, and philanthropist,—makes the case that compassion is a key leadership principle that • powerfully drives trust, success, and innovation; • raises morale, builds stronger teams, and improves overall performance; • creates sustainable commitment to an organization’s mission and values. Tramuto interviewed nearly 40 successful leaders who practice compassionate leadership and reveals the best strategies from their playbooks. He then combined these interviews with his own insights, numerous studies, and original, qualitative research of 1,500 participants to unleash the measurable data and benefits of compassion in the workplace. Most leaders have an innate desire to be compassionate, but many don't know how to put it into practice. This book shares inspiring stories and actionable examples of how proven leaders have accomplished this and how you can too. The bottom line on bottom lines: compassionate leadership is about better people and better business.

Laila Tarraf was the Chief People Officer for Peet’s Coffee and Tea, the iconic Berkeley coffee roaster that launched the craft coffee movement in America, but she had a secret: she was failing in the most important relationships in her life. Yes, she was a strong and effective business leader, the successful daughter of immigrants, and the mother of a toddler; but she was also disconnected from her own feelings and had little patience for the feelings of others. All that changed when life handed her a trifecta of losses: her husband died of an accidental drug overdose, and her parents' deaths followed in quick succession. Laila had spent her life leading from the head, convinced that any display of vulnerability would make her soft. What she didn’t expect was that soft would turn out to be strong. As she reconnected to her heart, one painful step at a time, something remarkable happened: she became a better leader, a better mother, and a better person. Her heart turned out to be the true source of her power, at home and at work. This is a book about healing, about waking up, about learning who you are—who you really, truly are at the core—and reclaiming and embracing all the pieces of yourself you long ago abandoned in the name of survival. Women longing for balance will discover a path to infusing our leadership and relationships with love, compassion, and authenticity.

Awaken the power of compassionate leadership The Compassionate Leader's Playbook provides a powerful and pragmatic approach for leaders everywhere who are inspired to build a more compassionate and inclusive world of work, where everyone can thrive, achieve, and stay well. In this important and timely book, Leader, Coach and Founder of The Compassionate Leadership Company, Steven Hargreaves, demonstrates how leading with compassion is great for business, culture, and the bottom line, and how when we lead with compassion everyone benefits. The Compassionate Leader's Playbook is accessible, practical, and full of tools, tips, and insights to support leaders to awaken and leverage the power of compassion. It introduces the reader to the 360° of Compassion Framework(TM). A powerful, holistic framework which the author has developed to identify the values, qualities, skills, and competencies, which are required of leaders and their teams to build and sustain a more compassionate workplace. It is informed by contemporary writing and research into compassion, leadership, wellbeing, and high performing teams, along with the authors own perspective, leadership experience and time he has spent coaching leaders and their teams in how to develop a more relational, connected, collaborative and compassionate approach to their life and work. The framework is also an accountability structure to ensure that the leader, their team, and the wider organisation work in such a way as to honour those values. It provides a solid foundation and guide to leading with compassion. The book explores in depth each of the component parts of the 360° of Compassion Framework - Self-compassion, Attention, Humility, Fairness, Respect, Integrity, Empathy and Courage - to support leaders to tap into and leverage the resources they already have in abundance, whilst helping them generate new insight, perspective, and learning, supporting them to work effectively and with agility within and across these 360° of Compassion, enabling greater performance, productivity, engagement, inclusion and wellbeing across the teams and organisations they lead. The book contains the new 360° of Compassionate Leadership Self-Diagnostic Tool to enable readers to identify where they are on their journey to awaken their own compassion potential, along with what steps can be taken to elevate their leadership to a more compassionate level. The diagnostic process takes the shape of a series of themed self-reflection exercises for the reader to complete, which build by the end of the book into a complete 360° of Compassion Self-Diagnostic(TM). This is designed to help the reader to build self-awareness and to self-assess where they are on their journey towards awakening and optimising their compassion potential. The author believes that the contemporary workplace is one where relationships, connectivity, wellbeing, and purpose now take centre stage and believes it is time for us to seize this moment. For leaders to lead with renewed energy, enhanced kindness, integrity, and empathy. For a more connected, personal, and relational approach to leadership to emerge and become business-as-normal for everyone. The author believes that what people need and want from leadership has changed, and leaders and organisations need to maintain pace with those changes and create the optimal conditions for everyone to be their best and to do their best. This book provides a response to that leadership 'call to action' and to bring compassionate leadership to life as a definable, tangible, and practical approach to the day-to-day leadership of the self and others. To explain why compassion in leadership matters, what compassion is and how leaders can bring it to life in their everyday leadership, in order to enhance the value they bring to a modern, more relational world of work.