Compassionate Leadership: For Individual and Organisational Change

Experts increasingly recognise that our volatile, complex, and fragile world requires a new type of leadership. More than ever, we need leaders who understand how compassion connects them with their employees, stakeholders and wider communities. Yet compassion in organisations is often misunderstood, with many leaders reluctant to embrace it lest they appear weak. Compassionate Leadership draws on new and established research in psychology, behavioural science, neuropsychology and leadership theory to show that compassion, when correctly understood and applied is, in fact, a formidable and sustainable force for positive leadership. This book explores the common myths, pitfalls, and concerns about leading with a compassionate approach. It discusses the leadership, organisational and individual benefits of compassion and shows how leaders can design an organisation which establishes, then reinforces, a compassionate culture. A practical guide, this book provides evidence-based tools, appraisals, and frameworks which emphasise everyday applications that leaders, managers, and business students can adopt both individually and for their organisations. Compassionate Leadership presents a new model of compassion, an approach based on multidisciplinary research in a variety of organisational settings. It gives leaders a theoretical and practical underpinning they can use for deeper reflection and personal growth to turn their new-found knowledge into action.