This week’s newsletter is inspired by a really lovely meeting I had with a company who’ve asked me to deliver a session for them. I had never met anyone on the call before but it immediately felt like an incredibly safe place to be vulnerable with everyone gently and safely sharing their experiences and explaining why fertility in relation to career is an important topic for them. Their willingness to extend that vulnerability and share their experiences with their broader company in the session we’re planning was really beautiful. I think a key element to compassionate leadership, is a willingness to be vulnerable.
Compassionate Leadership = Psychological Safety
If you don’t feel safe, you can’t be fully effective. Your guard will be up which drains energy, you’ll be less creative because you avoid risking mistakes, you might even have one eye on your exit strategy. It’s a really simple concept that shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. I think that employers and leaders get it (because what’s not to get?!) but do they always remember it? In my experience when deadlines and bottom lines are at risk, corporate cultures tend to forget to prioritise compassion. The party line may well be “we’re like a family here” but do they really walk the talk? I think for the most part they want to, but find compassion difficult to maintain in the face of high pressure.
What would compassionate leadership and psychological safety mean to people on their fertility journey? Well not everyone wants to tell their employer that they are experiencing fertility challenges. But when I was going through it, knowing my manager was giving me the space to be a human being with a bucket load of stressful and upsetting stuff going on, I did feel safe. She knew exactly what I was going through because I told her and she understood. But my point about compassionate leadership is that truly compassionate leaders don’t need to know exactly what you’re going through to show compassion. They will understand that your passion, performance and engagement may ebb and flow with life’s ups, downs and challenges and will allow a reasonable amount of space for that. If you’re a committed employee, your company will gain more in the long term if they ride a temporary dip out with you. Even more still if they do more than simply ride it out, but actively encourage you to feel safe by modelling not always being perfect.
Leaders who model vulnerability
How refreshing would it be to have our leaders tell us they were nervous, worried, tired, uncertain or had made a mistake. Yes we want leadership to be good decision makers, confident and knowledgeable but do we need them to be infallible? If I knew my manager could occasionally admit their off days and their weaknesses I might be quicker to forgive myself for my own. If leaders could strike a balance between recognising lessons learned as much as the wins, perhaps we could let go of our perfectionism at work and forgive ourselves when fertility challenges get in the way of our normally stellar performance. Perhaps we would even be more creative and open to risk taking if there was more of a positive perspective around mistakes and lessons learned.
Compassionate leadership would definitely create psychological safety for when we’re experiencing challenging life events but actually I think compassionate and empathetic leadership would improve managing just humans in general. What do you think? Have you seen compassionate leaders in action? What makes them stand out?
