Legacy Leadership and Compassion

Of the four C’s of Legacy Leadership, the most important one is compassion. You can be committed and be an excellent communicator and be the most consistent leader ever but if you lack compassion, all of that does not amount to much more than being a hard-nosed, smooth-talking, always present pain-in-the butt! Compassion connects us to one another. It is more than empathy. It is that amazing quality that tells another person “I may not be able to fully understand all that you are going through but I have this human connection with you that says I want the absolute best for you and I am willing to work with you so that you can achieve the best you can today, tomorrow, and on into our connected future. If I am a leader of an organization, and I approach everyone in my organization this way, the message I am sharing is that I understand that in order for this organization to succeed, each and every one of you must also succeed. And in order for each and everyone of you to succeed, I must be cognizant of everything each of you must deal with in your journey and I must connect with each of you on a truly human basis.

Why don’t more leaders do this? Because it is so hard and takes so much energy, most leaders are unwilling to do what it takes. Too many leaders want to take the easy way out. Too many leaders just want all of the their people to just get over it and get on with it. This leads to a plethora of inadequacies. Inadequate communication, training, research, expectation clarification, information sharing, guidance, and many other organizational necessities result in inefficeint and ineffective operations. When compassion is considered to be fluff rather than the most important quality, all other qualities become less meaningful. The fundamental truth is that followers will not give a rip about how much you know, how much you can do, how many people you know, or how important you are until they know how much you really care about them. Getting others to do what must be done depends far more on our caring than it does on our planning and strategizing. The best strategic plan will never be effectively implemented by people who do not believe in the person bringing them the plan. Those people will never believe in someone who they do not trust and they will never trust someone who they believe does not really care about them.

I can hear the protests now! But these people don’t work hard enough to deserve any compassion from me. If they just worked harder, then I would feel like I could show them I care. This is putting the cart before the horse! It never works backwards. Feeling worthless cannot be converted into feeling worthy by being beaten into submission. The individual that feels beaten down may do what is minimally required to prevent then next beating but will never do the quality of work needed to produce greatness. The goal of every Legacy Leader is not to exist as an organization that just gets by. The goal is always to achieve excellence; to be recognized for greatness! Truly great organizations are fueled by compassion.

The next question is, “How does the compassionate leader deal with those individuals that would take advantage of a compassionate system for their own personal gain at the expense of others?” If compassion is a core value of the organization, the answer is clear. Those who would take advantage of the system are violating that core value and need to correct the situation or they cannot be part of the organization. Shirking one’s responsibilities, whether that means getting tasks completed and meeting expectations, or it means being considerate and compassionate of others, is not consistent with being part of the organization. Those that cannot live by the values of the organization, cannot be part of the organization.

The last piece I would like to address is the mistaken view that compassion is a sign of weakness. Much to the contrary, I would suggest that compassion is really a sign of strength. To truly display compassion requires that a leader become vulerable and those who will expose their vulerabilities are always stronger of character than those who will not. It takes an incredible amount of strength to be able to expose one’s own “soft spots” to a world that might choose to take advantage of those apparent weaknesses. Those who keep their own vulnerabilities hidden out of fear of those who might attack are actually far weaker than are those who are brave enough to open up. It is through compassion that we truly demonstrate our strength as a leader. This is true because the compassionate leader is not a sappy, sentimental person, but is quite the opposite. The compassionate leader is an individual of conviction and action. It is not about laying about and sympathizing with those less fortunate. It is about engaging in the activities that will lead to the betterment of all. True compassion gets important things done. True compassion is characterized by decisive action. True compassion does not just point out the inequities, it rights wrongs and corrects inaccuracies. True compassion is how we move from where we do not want to be to where we know we should be. Legacy Leaders are compassionate leaders!