Nate Regier II, compassionate accountability

Nate Regier PhD is Founder and CEO of Next Element, a global advisory firm specializing in leadership communication, and author of Beyond Drama: Transcending Energy Vampires, Conflict Without Casualties: A Field Guide For Leading With Compassionate Accountability and Seeing People Through.

Nate was a guest on episode 17 of the Compassionate Leadership Interview in February 2020. Since then Nate has been reinventing, rebuilding and realising new opportunities for sharing compassionate accountability.

Nate is launching a new book in July - Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. A year ago, he was planning a second edition of Conflict Without Casualties but his team changed plans in order to respond to the challenges faced by companies coming out of the pandemic.

The book reflects the tension leaders experience between paying attention to relationships and getting things done. Nate’s understanding of compassionate accountability was in its infancy when he wrote Conflict Without Casualties. Since then, his team has developed the three switches of the compassion mindset, a framework for activating the behaviours required within a culture of compassionate accountability.

Nate’s latest book complements the many excellent books on Compassionate Leadership, as the only one with ‘accountability’ in its title. He contends that ‘accountability’ is an essential component of compassion, reflected in the latin root of the word, which means ‘struggle with.’ We live in community with one another and that involves affirming human capability and being accountable to one another.

In the book Nate establishes the relationship between the interactions connecting people, organisational culture, and brand. Culture is fundamentally the sum of the interactions between your people and, as Nate’s friend Bobby Herrera has observed “brand is a lagging indicator of the quality of your culture.”

Part 3 of the book is about implementation. It recognises that you have to “address common systems and processes that reinforce behaviour.” It starts with identifying behavioural norms, and then identifies the functional areas where processes need to reflect those norms. There is a tool for assessing compassion within the culture of an organisation.

Nate maintains that onboarding, performance reviews, promotions, and reward systems in particular need to be aligned with compassionate accountability. Regular in-house training and practice are required to keep the materials alive.

He acknowledges that “everyone is different, everyone comes on board from a different place, and it’s not easy.” Sometimes the assumptions we hold can create barriers for us. The notion that compassion is soft can be prominent among these.

Nate believes compassion can change the world. For example, he believes compassionate accountability is the next evolution of inclusion.