Lately more and more people have been asking me what Compassionate Leadership is.

Instead of repeating myself over and over again, I thought it would make sense to write this article.

Compassion and Leadership

Let’s start with the two words that are in the title.

Compassion

To me compassion is being able to be with someone or a situation without judging it. It is about creating and holding the space for what needs attention. It is about being there as a resource that might help, but not necessarily needs to fix things.

Compassion is also not the same as sympathy or empathy, which usually weakens one of the involved parties (read my article about the difference between them). Compassion is not having pity, but seeing the strength of others and keep the focus on it.

Compassion is about being equal as human beings. In the workplace this means that we make a distinction between having different roles (with different tasks and decision-making responsibilities) and being equal as a human being.

Leadership

Leadership to me is having a vision, creating energy, inspiring others, being a change agent, a coach and a facilitator.

So, it is something else that managing a team or an organization. Managing means getting results with the available resources. It is about organizing, planning, processes and procedures.

When you search for the definition of leadership on the Internet, leadership and management are often represented as opposites of each other. While in my opinion they are complementary.

Someone can be both a leader and a manager. Small business owners and entrepreneurs need to be both.

What is often noticed in larger companies is that most people have more managing qualities than leadership ones since the latter weren’t developed in the education system nor in the workplace.

Compassionate Leadership is about Balance

In an era where we see a transition out of dominant masculine energy, Compassionate Leadership is a balancing factor. So, it is not about going from one extreme (dominant masculine energy) to another (dominant feminine energy). It Is about balancing both energies.

For me the word “compassion” has a more feminine energy and the word “leadership” a more masculine energy. So together they represent this balance.

The Definition of Compassionate Leadership

There are several elements in this definition, so let’s explore them to get more clarity.

1. “… yourself, individuals, teams and organizations … ”: compassionate leadership plays a role on all these levels and beyond. It will have ripple effects to the local community, region and even the world.

2. “… to a higher level of performance and well-being … “: compassionate leadership is about both results and well-being. They are not trade-offs, but catalysts for each other.

3.“… in a safe and stimulating way …”: compassionate leadership provides safety and support on the one hand and challenges on the other hand. It depends on the situation and the vibe of the person or team (see below).

4.“… when tensions occur …”: compassionate leadership doesn’t ignore tensions (like most people do because they don’t like the energy), but instead use them as drivers to increase results and well-being.

Four Vibes

The two axes in the visual above are: feeling safe and feeling supported. This relates to the part of the definition “… in a safe and stimulating way …”.

Compassionate Leadership takes these axes and vibes into account:

• In the negative and neutral vibe this means creating a comfort zone.
• In the positive and inspiring vibe this means challenging someone to leave their comfort zone.

Compassionate Leadership Adds An Extra Dimension

Tensions

Most people haven’t learned how to solve personal or interpersonal tensions. That’s why they pretend those tensions are not present. Or they vent these tensions in way that hurts others or pulls down their own self-esteem.

Practical tensions are also dealt with in a way that causes extra tension (often at another level). For example:

• By blaming a colleague from the IT department when the Internet is down, an interpersonal tension is created.
• By blindly following those that have the loudest voice, a solution is chosen that costs more time than necessary. This creates a practical tension because other tasks or projects are postponed and often also interpersonal tensions since the introverts were not asked to voice their solution, which could lead to a personal tension (e.g. not feeling worthy).

Transforming Tensions using the D.U.E.T. Process

For all techniques there is special attention to:

• Incorporating safety and security in order to avoid the creation of new tensions.
• Short and powerful techniques that can be applied in any situation and are hence compatible with any business model.
• Applicability for everybody (in other words, there is no need for a coaching background).

Of course, not all techniques have to applied in every case. It depends on the situation and the desired vibe transition (e.g. from neutral to positive vibe). However, for leaders and coaches it is helpful to know the whole toolkit and be able to increase the vibe in any situation (or at least make sure it doesn’t decrease).

On this page you can read which problems are solved by each of the techniques of the D.U.E.T. model and which results you can expect.

Compassionate Leadership: Coaching and Facilitating

The focus of Compassionate Leaders is to coach and facilitate their team(s) to the inspiring vibe.

On the one hand this comprises having a toolbox to transform tensions (like the D.U.E.T. framework).

On the other hand, it is: not being a bottleneck for the teams.

This means that Compassionate Leaders have increased their awareness about their own strengths and weaknesses, needs and desires, qualities and shadow sides, fortes and blind spots, conscious and unconscious patterns.

In other words, they have entered on the journey of personal development.

Although this might sometimes feel like a scary enterprise in unknown waters, they have experienced that it makes them stronger and that it raises their own vibe.

To make this journey easier and lighter, we have created the Compassionate Leader Pathway (which we use in our group program and personal coaching programs) to progress step by step in the direction of being a true Compassionate Leader.

The result?

You will experience more freedom in your professional and personal life because you will be free from the distractions, preferences of others, and protective patterns. You will live in a higher permanent state of compassion.

The consequence is that it will be much easier to cope with any situation that presents itself, no matter how tough it may seem at first.

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then:

• download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results,
• donwload the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams“
• or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.

Grieving is a part of human life. However, it is not something we do well in the West. Most of us don’t take time for it, don’t allow it to each other and also don’t know how it actually works.

In the West we have banned decay and death out of our lives. We put elderly people in retirement homes where we don’t see them pass away. It is only when someone in our family or a close friend or colleague dies that we are confronted by it. And then it can hit us hard, really hard.

Actually, any change in our lives, is kind of the death of the old situation and the birth of the new one. Again, since we are not used to deal with death in the western world, this might be another reason why many people can’t handle change well even if it’s not about the physical death of a person, but the proverbial death of an old way of doing things, the structure of a company, a brand or a logo. In other words, grief happens when we have to say goodbye to someone or something. Most people only think of grief when a loved one has passed away.

When a term is coined, there are as many definitions and interpretations as there are people.

Personally I don’t like to give a one sentence description, but more a summary of traits.

For me, a Compassionate Leader is someone:

• Who knows what compassion is – and is not – and lives accordingly.
• Who is vulnerable (which is a source of strength to be present with someone).
• Who knows what their stress factors are and is able to deal with them.
• Who is open minded.
• Who is curious about differences and offers a safe space for them to be present.
• Who balances:
  • Masculine and feminine energy in themselves.
  • Doing and being.
  • Technology/results and humaneness/connections.
  • Down-to-earthness and spirituality.
  • Fun and getting stuff done.
• Who acts from their own purpose and values and have them aligned with the ones from the organization.
• Who looks for clarity and the essence, core or root of the matter.
• Who listens with compassion and speaks from the heart (which doesn’t mean this is soft or fluffy, Compassionate Leaders can be very direct at addressing pain or tension and point people to their responsibility; the difference is that they do this with compassion).

The result is that they experience a lot of freedom in their lives. They are not dependent anymore of other people’s approval. They are free from the opinions and judgments of other people. They are free from patterns that hold them back. They are free from fears.

With ‘free’ I mean: all those elements can still show up, but Compassionate Leaders are not taken hostage by them. Those elements don’t shake up their world. Compassionate Leaders can be present with stressful situations, with people in victim mode and with uncertainty. They are able to deal with them with a compassionate attitude. In this way they provide solutions for themselves, the people they work with and their organizations. They make way for options that nobody thought of before.

By being who they are and by living compassionately, they invite others (unconsciously) to become Compassionate Leaders as well. They inspire by being.

Leading by example can also encompass following the path, making mistakes, admitting them, choosing something else and talking about the whole process. This might even be more powerful and inspirational for other people than someone who is already a full-grown Compassionate Leader. In other words, in my opinion a Compassionate Leader is also someone who hasn’t ticked all the boxes yet, but has the heart-felt desire to follow this path and become a genuine Compassionate Leader.

Feel free to add your own definition below or provide some suggestions regarding extra characteristics.

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results, the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams” or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.

All growth happens naturally. Actually we don’t need anything to start or support growth.

However, what does happen on that natural path, is trial and error. Whenever an error is made, an injury or block can emerge. When that happens, it can be looked at or it can be ignored or dismissed.

Whenever it is ignored or dismissed, it occupies development points. Those points are stored in the unconscious and not available anymore for further growth. When there are no free developments left, growth comes to a halt.

This process happens both in human beings and organizations.

Let’s look at an example.

Let’s suppose that someone has 100 development points and that for each development stage he needs 10 additional points. In theory, he would be able to reach stage 10.

But things happen along the way: external and internal hurts, traumas and blocks. External ones are life circumstances like war, drought, famine, illiteracy, poverty, accidents or physical abuse. Internal hurts, traumas or blocks can be: be neglected, diseases, mental trauma or mental abuse. Both external and internal circumstances can be large or small. A war is a major external circumstance, which might lead to a major trauma. A fight between youngsters a minor one, which only causes a minor injury. Being neglected for years as a child can be a major internal circumstance. The fact that his mother picked him up very late from school without alerting anyone, which has never happened before, can cause a minor hurt for a toddler.

Let’s suppose that each minor injury or block costs 1 point and each major hurt or trauma 5 points.

When we start adding them up, we see for example: 5 minor injuries in stage 1 (5 points), 4 minor blocks and 1 trauma in stage 2 (9 points), 2 minor hurts and 1 major block in stage 3 (7 points), 4 small injuries and 1 trauma in stage 4 (9 points), 3 minor hurts and 1 major block in stage 5 (8 points) and 2 minor injuries and 1 larger one during the development to stage 6 (7 points). These are 45 points that are occupied and are not available for growth anymore. In other words, there are only 55 development points left.

This person will never be able to grow to stage 6 because he needs 60 points to do so. He is now in stage 5. Moreover, if he experiences more hurts, he will go back to stage 4 since he doesn’t have enough points to remain in stage 5.

This process of growth and occupation of development points by injuries and blocks applies to both human beings and organizations. If there are too many of them, the flow won’t be optimal and at a certain moment no further development will be possible.

What does this look like in an organization?

Hurts or traumas might be obvious in the case of a fire, a terroristic act or another disaster. However, most of the time it is about minor incidents that accumulate during the growth process.

Some examples: the loss of a major customer or subsidies, the dismissal of an important co-worker, but also changing the target market, logo or location or the acquisition of a family business by an outside management team could cause some kind of injury.

When too many development points are occupied and stored in the undercurrent (which is like an individual’s unconscious), no further growth is possible, no matter how many strategic or innovation sessions are organized or how many promising marketing plans are implemented.

The good news is that these development points are not lost in both individuals and organizations! They are only temporarily occupied till they are released or transformed.

Even better news is that when you approach this releasing process very deliberately, the transformation can even lead to accelerated growth!

Compassion is a crucial element in this process. More details and techniques for liberating development points, are shared in the book The Compassionate Leader.

Feel free to share your point of view below.

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results, the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams” or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.

Is it always easy to go and stay in a centered, compassionate mode?

No, it surely isn’t.

In this blog post I will address another reason why we don’t go into compassion mode. Actually, why we don’t choose ANY of the three approaches (sympathy, empathy, compassion).

That reason is: the difference between primary and secondary emotions.

Primary Emotions

Primary emotions are a direct reaction to an event from the outside. A characteristic of these real, direct emotions is that outsiders who are confronted with it, are touched. Intense human grief may touch your heart and invokes compassion. When someone is overwhelmed by anger, you are affected by it. And if someone feels pure joy, that is contagious, even if you are not directly involved.

Primary emotions are short in duration. They are short and intense. You can’t prolong them or cherish them.

Secondary Emotions

Secondary emotions are supplementary emotions that camouflage the real feeling because one feels that that’s not acceptable. Instead of following the direct, primary impulse and for example react angrily at a rude comment, one retreats insulted.

Contrary to primary emotions, secondary emotions evoke very different reactions. They annoy, bore and unnerve people because they feel that are not seeing what is really going on. They feel abused. Contrary to primary emotions, secondary emotions have the tendency to last for a long time.

Also, when practical solutions are put in place in order to accommodate the one with the secondary emotions, most of the time that doesn’t help. For example, when someone shows angry behavior because he has to put the garbage out, doing it yourself won’t help much. Another topic will come up where he will attach his anger to.

In other words, one of the reasons people don’t show compassion – and also not sympathy or empathy – is that they unconsciously feel that it is about secondary emotions. Most of the times secondary emotions and victimhood are interconnected.

What to do?

My invitation: the next time you feel like you don’t want to be compassionate when someone is (talking about their) suffering or the tensions they perceive, ask yourself: am I picking up primary or secondary emotions?

If you are picking up secondary emotions, I invite you not to turn your back to the other person, but ask from a compassionate state what they really are suffering from.

In other words: consider the secondary emotions pointers to the root or cause of the suffering or tension. See them as helpful instead of being turned off by them. Switch your perspective.

From my own experience I can testify that this can solve tensions that were below the surface for ages and dramatically improve relationships in a very short period of time.

What are your experiences regarding primary and secondary emotions? Feel free to share them below.

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results, the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams” or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.

When we talk about compassion as a feeling or an attitude, it is of major importance to make a difference between sympathy, empathy and compassion.

They are not the same, but they are used by many people as synonyms. This creates confusion and undermines the real power of compassion.

Let’s look at an example. I will use the word ‘suffering’ here since that makes the example more clear. However, the same dynamics occur with smaller tensions.

Iris arrives at work and looks pale. Her colleague Mary notices this and asks if Iris is allright. Iris tells that she didn’t sleep at night because her son told her that his wife wants to divorce him. Iris says that she has been up all night wondering what she did wrong as a mother. She says she feels so hurt by her son and his wife.

Mary can react in several ways:

• She says she is so sorry for Iris and starts sharing examples about how her son has mistreated her as well.
• She feels the pain that Iris is going through, both as a mother and as a human being.
• She listens to Iris, doesn’t participate in her complaining and asks her what she needs.

The first reaction is out of sympathy, the second out of empathy and the third out of compassion.

What is the difference between them?

Sympathy

When someone acts out of sympathy, (s)he doesn’t really connect with the other person. It is pity for them.

Many times there is also a disbalance: the one who is suffering is ‘smaller’ and the other person is ‘larger’. This can feel like a victim-savior or child-parent relationship for the listener.

The image that can be used is that Iris is in a dark pit and Mary pays her a short visit. Mary leaves Iris after a while.

Sometimes the one listening (in this case Mary) even hijacks the moment or someone else’s pain to focus the attention on themselves.

What happens a lot is that the listener needs to tell what happened to someone else. This might be perceived as gossiping, but what happens is that the listener needs to get rid of the energy of the one suffering. Since there was no real connection, the venting can be short and superficial.

Empathy

When someone acts out of empathy, (s)he makes an opposite movement than someone who sympathizes: a symbiosis with the feelings of the one who is suffering emerges.

In the case of empathy the listener perceives the other one (unconsciously) most of the time as small, needy or someone to pity. The result is that they end up in a similar pattern as in the case of sympathy. The other one is seen as a victim and they are a kind of savior, even if its just suffering along out of solidarity.

The image is that of Iris being in a pit. Mary joins her in the pit. Even when Mary leaves the pit after a while, she is still connected to the emotions of Iris.

What happens a lot is that the listener needs to tell what happened to someone else or need time and space for themselves. Again, this might be perceived as gossiping or being a weak person, but what happens is that the listener needs to get rid of the energy of the one suffering. Since a deep connection with the emotions was created, it takes effort and time to dispose of this energy.

Compassion

When someone acts out of compassion, something else happens. There is a connection with the person who is suffering, but not a symbiosis.

The person who is suffering is considered a powerful human being, not a weak victim.

The listener is in his or her center and can be with the pain and with the person who is suffering, without suffering along.

The goal is to help the one suffering find clarity about what (s)he needs and if possible / necessary provide that support.

The image that can be used is that Iris is in the pit and Mary is outside the pit. From that position Mary has a good perspective about solutions how Iris could get out of the pit. Mary is not dragged down by the energy of the pit, but is present for Iris.

As a result there is no need to vent afterwards, since there is no energy that needs to be discarded.

What is interesting is that the reaction of the person who is suffering will vary depending not only on whether you are responding out of sympathy, empathy or compassion, but also whether they consider themselves a victim or not.

Let’s go back to the example.

In this case Iris considers herself a victim. Depending on Mary’s choice, she will react in this way:

• Sympathy: Iris will still feel the pain and nothing will change. There is a temporary relief since her suffering is acknowledged. If Mary hijacks the moment to complain about her own suffering, Iris will feel even more like a victim. She will add Mary’s unrespectful behavior to her list of things she is suffering from. Her feeling of suffering increases.
• Empathy: Iris will feel a temporary relief because her suffering is acknowledged and her pain is shared. The relief is deeper and lasts a bit longer than with empathy, but is still temporary.
• Compassion: Iris might get angry, because for a victim real compassion might feel cold or heartless. Victims actually don’t want help, they want their suffering to be acknowledged. They want the other person in the pit together with them. They are not really focused on solutions (yet). So if someone is not connecting with their suffering, they might get angry. Iris can be hurting more now, since she considers Mary’s behaviour as a rejection and adds that to her list of things that causes her to suffer.

In other words, in the case of someone feeling like a victim, the best solution is to receive empathy. However, for the one who empathizes, this can be a draining experience.

That is the reason that many people working in healthcare get burned out. The words that are used to describe this phenomenon are ‘compassion fatigue’. However, it is not about compassion, but about empathy. It is actually ‘empathy distress’. As long as we keep using empathy and compassion as synonyms, this problem might never be solved.

Now, let’s change the example a bit.

This time Iris doesn’t feel like a victim. This is the situation:

Iris arrives at work and looks pale. Her colleague Mary notices this and asks if Iris is allright. Iris tells that she didn’t sleep at night because her son told her that his wife wants to divorce him. Iris says that she has been up all night because she was thinking of how she could support her son and his wife to go through the coming period.

Mary can react in several ways:

• She says she is so sorry for Iris and starts sharing examples about how her own daughter in law is unfair towards her son.
• She feels the pain that Iris is going through, both as a mother and as a human being.
• She listens to Iris and asks her what she needs.

The response of Iris will be different since she doesn’t see herself as a victim:

• Sympathy: Iris gets angry, because she doesn’t want to be seen as a victim and she doesn’t want Mary to hijack the moment to talk about the things that make Mary unhappy.
• Empathy: Iris feels sad, because she feels misunderstood. She doesn’t want to be seen as a victim.
• Compassion: Iris feels supported. A solution might be found or not. For Iris the most important aspect is that she is seen as a (powerful) human being, not a helpless victim. This gives her strength to face her suffering and find the courage to ask for the support she needs.

In the case of someone who doesn’t feel like a victim, the best support is to receive compassion.

Now let’s go back to the first case where Iris felt like a victim.

This is a more difficult situation. As the one giving support sympathy and empathy are not an option. When you sympathize nothing changes and empathy might drain you. Being compassionate is the only approach that is left. However, the other person might get angry with you. So you might want to refrain from being compassionate as well.

If you want to support the other person, I invite you to stick with the compassion approach.

Why? In the first place because this is the only approach that is sane for you. You don’t pick up the energy from the other person. So it doesn’t affect you and you don’t have to get rid of it by venting or taking time for yourself to recuperate.

In the second place because it might help them to get out of victim mode. That can happen during the time you spend together. If they are stuck in victim mode it can take much longer time. This can be the next day or week. Or maybe they need a few more compassionate moments with you before the leave the path of victimhood.

My invitation is to stay in compassion mode, whatever happens. That is the only way to stay healthy yourself and get results.

Summary of the Difference between Sympathy, Empathy and Compassion

As a quick reminder, this is a visual representation of how people feel when they are involved in sympathy, empathy and compassion.

Feel free to share your point of view below.

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results, the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams” or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.

HR manager Jake and Chief Financial Officer Robert constantly fight. They don’t agree on anything. When Jake is asked about Robert, he calls him a robot without a heart. When Robert is asked about Jake, he describes him as a difficult person who is constantly picking on him and always resists his suggestions. The tension between the two doesn’t only affect the atmosphere in the board room, but has also spread to their departments. Whenever someone of the HR and Finance department needs to work together, they first have to present their findings to Jake and Robert before they can start executing them. This has slowed down the operations a lot. Many people in the company, even outside the HR and Finance department, experience this as a difficult wade through mud instead of an easy walk on the pavement.

Account manager Jeffrey has had a couple of very slow months acquiring new customers. Since this affects his paycheck, he experiences a lot of stress from it. One day he storms into a meeting of the marketing team and shouts out: “Why are you giving me such lousy leads? I can’t do anything with them!”

The majority of secretary Manuela’s work consists of putting data from paper survey forms into a database. However, the past three weeks she has been processing less forms than usual. Her manager notices this. He also got alerted that at this pace the deadline won’t be met, which gives him stress. He asks Manuela what is going on. She answers that her wrist hurts pretty badly and that she needs to give it a rest every 20 minutes.

These are a few examples of common situations in the workplace. Tension is felt a lot. Since tension isn’t a nice feeling our default strategy is to avoid it, ignore it, push it away or project it on something or someone else. We don’t want this energy, so we don’t allow it or we want to get rid of it.

However, when we do that, we miss opportunities. We miss opportunities to grow as a person, as a team, as a department or as an organization.

Tension is actually only pointing to something that is not in flow. When we change our perception of tension and consider it as a pointer to a deeper root or towards a solution instead of a problem, beneficial changes can happen.

Let’s look at the examples again.

When Robert was asked when their relationship started to be so difficult, he couldn’t remember. Jake on the other hand, knew exactly the date and circumstances. Six years ago, there was an unexpected and urgent board meeting. It was on the afternoon of day of his 10-year wedding anniversary. To celebrate Jake had booked a hard-to-get dinner table in a famous restaurant, months in advance. He had been looking forward to this evening since then. During the meeting Robert went deeper and deeper into the numbers of the company and asked every board member detailed questions regarding costs and budget. The result was that the meeting ran two hours longer and Jake didn’t make the dinner. He was very disappointed and blamed Robert. When Robert was presented with the facts, he also remembered the meeting because it was indeed an exceptional occasion. However, he didn’t recall Jake mentioning anything about his 10-year anniversary dinner. He added that if he had been aware of the situation, then he would have asked Jake about the numbers of the HR department first so Jake could have made the dinner. When Jake was asked about this, he admitted that he hadn’t told Robert that he had booked that table. When they both understood what the root of their conflict was, it was almost solved immediately. As a result, things went smoothly again in the board room, between the HR and Finance department and in the rest of the company as well.

In this case the tension between Jake and Robert pointed to a misunderstanding. Once that was cleared up, flow and growth could be restored.

The background of Jeffrey’s situation was that he got indeed less than optimal leads from the marketing team. What Jeffrey forgot, was that he refused to give input for the creation of customer profiles. In a session with a coach it appeared that this reminded him of the homework when he was a kid and that he got bad grades for. In order to avoid reliving the pain of ‘bad grades’ again, Jeffrey chose to not give input.

In this case the tension that Jeffrey felt (small paycheck) was actually a pointer to a pain from his childhood. When he was able to see this, he worked on this issue with a coach, delivered the input to the marketing team and was back on track with regard to acquiring new customers.

After a doctor’s visit Manuela was diagnosed with RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). Her wrist was hurting severely because it was in the same position day in day out. The advice was to do other work or find another job. Since her manager didn’t want to lose her because she was a fine team member, he needed to find another solution. A few days later, scanners and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software were installed. In that way Manuela nor her colleagues had to do the dull work of inputting the data anymore.

In this case the tension (stress from the manager regarding the deadline and the physical stress of RSI) pointed to an outdated way of working and opened the way for more efficient processes.

Not only can growth be restored or accelerated, but it becomes a lot more fun to work together. When tensions are detected right away, they don’t get the chance to branch out to other people or teams like in the examples of Jeffrey and Jake and Robert. Or they don’t get the chance to linger on for years like in the example of Jake and Robert.

Being willing and able to look at tensions can lead to new opportunities.

Many customer service agents are under a lot of stress because they have to deal with unsatisfied customers. Those customers are sometimes so frustrated that they first need to vent before they can even explain what their problem is. They need to get rid of their tension first. If customer service agents were more trained in compassionate dealing with customer complaints, less burnouts and less resignations would be the consequence. They would enjoy their work more. And when they would be facilitated in detecting and logging patterns in complaints, the company might be able to more optimally streamline their processes or detect the need for new products or services.

An example from my own life goes back to August 2008. It was the moment that Groups were introduced on LinkedIn. Until that moment LinkedIn was more like a directory of people. But from that moment on, interactions became possible. My company at that time, Networking Coach, had added several online business networks to the strategy of our clients besides offline networking. Until that moment, LinkedIn only came third in our list behind Ecademy and Xing. But from August 2008 on that changed. I felt the positive tension that huge things were going to happen. So I bought every book that was available about LinkedIn. At that time there weren’t many though. And they also just focused on the features and weren’t addressing the strategy and attitude that was necessary to be successful with LinkedIn. The result was that I decided to write a book about LinkedIn myself. It became a huge success: the book became an international bestseller and Networking Coach became LinkedIn’s first official training partner in the world.

Another example is that of Slack, the workplace messaging app. Not many people know that they were first a gaming company, called Tiny Speck, that created the massively multiplayer game Glitch. They shut down Glitch in 2012 and then started further developing the messaging tool they used internally. Because they looked at the tensions they were experiencing, they were able to make the transition into a wildly successful company.

In other words, when a new perception on tension is embraced, a pointer instead of a problem, organizations might suddenly face a bright future! Conflicts are turned into growth opportunities and harmonious high performing teams are created along the way.

What also helps to shift the perception of what tension is, is to look at Brian Robertson’s definition (the author of Holacracy): Tension is the feeling we get when we sense a gap between what is now and what could be. When we perceive tension as a neutral fact that just points out where the opportunities for growth are, working together reaches a new level.

Feel free to share your own experiences!

If you are interested in Compassionate Leadership, then download the free New Guide for Business Owners & Managers to Increase Ownership without Worrying about Results, the free e-book “5 Most Overlooked Dynamics that Impact Agile, Self-Organizing and Traditional Teams” or join the free Compassionate Leader Community.