Cultivating Compassion In Leadership

If you're a leader of a team or a business or a function within a business, then I'm willing to bet that you genuinely want to do right by the people that you lead. You want to be the kind of leader that people love working with. You really do want them to be positively engaged, to feel included,

valued, supported. They feel that they belong and that they're growing so that they're able to and want to show up and give their best to their work, to their team, and to all those that are served by the team. And of course, it's really hard to provide that kind of leadership vibe without there being access to certain qualities and attitudes on your part, such as patience, empathy, compassion, a genuine interest in the welfare of others, the ability to be present and attentive and curious about their experience and what they need.

And therein lies a BIG challenge, because if you're like most people on the planet, when you've got loads on, if you're really up against it, the proverbial doo-dah's hitting the fan, maybe you haven't had a lot of sleep. Perhaps you've got stuff going on at home, or maybe you're the one that's being treated unfairly in some way.

In those moments, you might not be feeling particularly patient, or empathetic, or compassionate towards others. Not because you don't care, you do. It's just that it's really hard to be present for others in that way, all the time you're distracted with your own struggles. So how do we work through this?

If there's one message that I seem to spout more than any other it's that leadership is a PRACTICE. And nowhere is that more true than in how we show up for others. Which is why mindfulness is such an important element in how I coach people in conscious leadership. Firstly, because it helps you to navigate your own stresses and struggles in more elegant ways.

It helps you get back to a more balanced and easeful place where you have the agency to feel more present and grounded. And also because it's a practice that helps you to cultivate - to strengthen - these really vital leadership qualities within yourself. So you don't have to wait for the feeling of patience to arrive.

You don't have to hope that you happen to be feeling compassionate at just the right moment. You're more readily able to access these qualities because they already feel so familiar to you. You deliberately practiced accessing them on the regular. Now that may sound really odd. To practice being empathetic. To practice being interested in others.

To practice wanting to be there for them. But all of these things are already seeds within you that just take nurturing. And the more time you spend practicing nurturing them, the more time you spend contemplating them, allowing yourself to connect to the sentiment of them, then naturally, the associated feelings and mind states of them become more prominent over time.

And with continued practice, it becomes a tendency of your mind to incline in that direction. So that combination of having the mindfulness skills to deal with your own stresses and strains in more easeful ways, and then the intentional practice and cultivation of these valuable leadership qualities is really powerful stuff.

If you'd like to know how I can support you, your teams, and your business, in the area of mindful conscious leadership through coaching, workshops, and structured learning journeys, then just reach out and let's start having that conversation. But for now, I'm really curious, what are some of the things that you already do that help you stay centered, available, and present for those around you, even when everything else is going at bit squiffy?

Let me know in the comments.