Can You Be Commercial and Compassionate? with Rasmus Hougaard
Apr 9, 2021
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Rasmus Hougaard, an influential business thinker, discusses the importance of wise-compassionate leadership. He explains how leaders can transition from empathy to compassion, highlighting the benefits of creating a culture of trust and high performance. Rasmus also explores the connection between being a good leader and being a good parent or friend. Additionally, he teases an upcoming book on gender differences in compassionate leadership and shares insights on the power of well-being practices and mindfulness.
Compassionate leadership goes beyond empathy by combining it with action to help others, enabling leaders to make tough decisions while still being kind and effective.
Understanding the difference between empathy and compassion is crucial for developing wise and compassionate leadership, as empathy alone can hold leaders back from making difficult decisions and taking necessary action.
Deep dives
Moving Beyond Compassion in Leadership
Compassionate leadership means going beyond empathy and taking action to help others. Empathy allows us to connect with others, but compassion combines empathy with action. Being a compassionate leader means doing hard things in a human way. This requires making tough decisions while still being a good human being. Research has shown that it is possible to be both kind and effective in leadership. Compassionate leaders are able to be present, have the courage to confront uncomfortable situations, be direct and transparent, and prioritize the greater good. This leads to the development of trust, psychological safety, and high performance in teams.
The Difference Between Empathy and Compassion
Leaders often confuse empathy and compassion, seeing them as the same thing. Empathy is feeling what others feel, while compassion combines empathy with action to help people overcome their challenges. Empathy can hold leaders back from doing hard things that need to be done, such as giving tough feedback or making difficult decisions. Compassion, on the other hand, enables leaders to be more direct, transparent, and effective in their actions. It moves beyond just feeling what others feel and focuses on taking steps to improve the situation. Understanding the difference between empathy and compassion is crucial in developing wise and compassionate leadership.
The Benefits of Wise and Compassionate Leadership
Wise and compassionate leaders create a culture of psychological safety and trust within their teams. They are present with their team members, have the courage to confront difficult situations, and are direct and transparent in their communication. This fosters an environment where team members feel safe and valued. Wise and compassionate leaders prioritize the greater good and long-term success, rather than seeking popularity or short-term gains. By combining kindness with effectiveness, these leaders create high-performance teams and drive personal and professional growth.
Rasmus Hougaard is the founder and managing director of Potential Project. He’s recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the most important emerging business thinkers and leaders in the world. He writes for Harvard Business Review and Forbes and lectures at the world’s leading business and executive education schools like IMD, Rotman, and IESE. Rasmus has led more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops, and he’s recognized as the leading global authority on training the mind to be focused, effective, and clear for great leadership, performance, innovation, and resilience.
In this week’s podcast, we find out about the difference between compassion and empathy and how wise compassionate leadership is the most effective way to lead our teams.
Thanks so much for joining me again this week. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.
You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing.
Until next time, take care! Thank you, Rasmus!
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