Some entrepreneurs think that being a feeling, sympathetic manager will be mistaken as a weakness in their leadership style. Thus, they would prefer to take a hard-nosed stand and put pressure on their employees to extract maximum performance from them.
New research suggests that when an ethic of compassion rather than a culture of stress prevails in an organization, the result would be a happier workplace as well as an improved bottom line.
According to Roger Falk (The Business of Management), compassion in management refers to the ability to understand with both head and heart the personal and official problems and concerns of people in the organization. This is a quality compounded of humility and inner strength.
Why does it pay to infuse compassion into one’s management style?
The compassionate manager often promotes a sense of ordered calm and planned progress and consequently is assured of the abiding loyalty and respect of his people.
Leaders who are described as “ruthless,” “hardnosed” or “hard-hearted” are likely unable to build and maintain a strong and enduring work team . A team with such an unfeeling leader would probably break down under stress, strain and a sense of uncertainty.
Psychologytoday. Com reports compassionate management fosters a happy workplace. Happy employees make for a more congenial atmosphere and improved customer service. Employees in positive moods are more willing to help peers and to provide customer service on their own accord. What’s more, compassionate, friendly, and supportive co-workers tend to build higher-quality relationships with others at work. In doing so, they boost coworkers’ productivity levels and increase coworkers’ feeling of social connection, as well as their commitment to the workplace and their levels of engagement with their job.
Given the costs of health care, employee turnover, and poor customer service, it is easy to see how compassion might very well have a positive impact not only on employee health and well-being but also on the overall financial success of a workplace.
Those who connect compassionate leadership with being weak or a pushover may derive inspiration from the likes of Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela, who were such strong and compassionate leaders that their people would drop everything to follow them.
Photo: from consciouslab.wordpress.com.