Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way

Description

Leadership
is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in
getting the job done?

A global pandemic, economic
volatility, natural disasters, civil and political unrest. From New York to
Barcelona to Hong Kong, it can feel as if the world as we know it is coming
apart. Through it all, our human spirit is being tested. Now more than ever,
it’s imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion.

But in
hard times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions–deliver
negative feedback, make difficult choices that disappoint people, and in some
cases lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the
responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing
out the best in others? Most people think we have to make a binary choice
between being a good human being and being a tough, effective leader. But this
is a false dichotomy. Being human and doing what needs to be done are not
mutually exclusive. In truth, doing hard things and making difficult decisions
is often the most compassionate thing to do.

As founder and
CEO of Potential Project, Rasmus Hougaard and his longtime coauthor, Jacqueline
Carter, show in this powerful, practical book, you must always balance caring for
your people with leadership wisdom and effectiveness. Using data from thousands
of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors
find that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the
job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance,
loyalty, and well-being in their people.

With rich examples
from Netflix, IKEA, Unilever, and many other global companies, as well as
practical tools and advice for leaders and managers at any level,
Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to
doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.

Harvard Business Review Press